Last year, Kevin Knox was the worst midrange shooter in the league who had considerable volume. He was 42 of 173 on midrange attempts, good for 24%. This season, he is NOT the worst midrange shooter in the league. He’s pretty bad, but not the worst. Obviously, the raw volume of those shots is down because of his reduced role, but I think there must have also been some legitimate improvement happening as well.
This season, Knox is 13-of-41 from midrange, 32%. You can see that he’s not wasting nearly as many possessions as he used to with his ceaseless midrange bricks. Players like Cam Reddish (21%) and Jordan Poole (24%) are way, way below Knox in terms of percentages this season. Meanwhile, Aaron Gordon is shaping up to be the worst volume-shooting midranger in the game, having attempted 73 of those shots so far at a 27% clip. Strangely enough, Knox and Gordon have a similar physical profile. These tweener forwards just seem to fall in love with their jumper even if it’s unreliable. Derrick Williams (RIP) had that problem too (check out his 2012-13 shot chart if you love the color red, I’m not linking it directly because I would just rickroll you).
The short version of the story is, there are reasons to be optimistic about Knox. Having a smaller role is letting him develop at a more reasonable pace, I think. He might still turn out to be a big plate of bustaroni and cheese, but his abject bustitude is definitely not as certain as it seemed at points last season.