Cam Reddish caught a lot of flak early in the season for being a poor shooter. Some of the flak came from my direction. That’s not to say the flak was undeserved; in fact, it was very obviously deserved when you looked at his in-the-gutter shooting percentages. Reddish isn’t a finished product by any means, but even the lowliest rookie should be able to muster 30% from the field, a mark which Reddish seemed incapable of hitting.
But if you look at Reddish’s shooting splits by month, it paints a picture of rapid improvement. In December, Reddish is shooting nearly 40% from the field and 36% from three. Those aren’t great numbers, but they’re perfectly acceptable numbers for a rookie. A lot of players are doing worse than that. It seems that the collective punditry’s fears of Reddish putting together the least efficient scoring season of all time were unfounded. Jordan Poole is going to be the one doing that.
Maybe this improvement is a mirage and Reddish will just be an inefficient bust for a few years in the league until he is forced to play in the Philippines. But I’m allowed to display optimism from time to time, and I’m optimistic that Reddish can sustain these percentages to shut up the haters.
By the way, I am not a “hater” per se. I prefer the term “realistic naysayer”.