For being a white three-point shooter who is a starter on a playoff team, there sure isn’t that much hype for Joe Harris. Come on, people! He’s white! He shoots threes! Why don’t you care? We’ve got pretty much the entire population of Miami hugging Duncan Robinson’s nuts, but Harris has to toil away in obscurity?
He got a modicum of attention for winning the three-point contest last season, but that slight boost had worn off so much by the time this year’s iteration came around that it felt like he shouldn’t even be in the shootout, as everyone else had a lot more volume and a lot more hype.
That’s the thing: he just doesn’t shoot enough threes. He’s really good at them, but because he doesn’t (maybe because he can’t, maybe because he’s a good teammate) just take any three that he wants, he doesn’t have those eye-popping performances from deep that define other shooters. Marcus Smart took 15 threes tonight, and he sucks at them. Harris has never taken 15 threes in a single game, the most is 11. The most he’s made is a mere 7.
He also needs to start taking them from a little deeper. It seems like he’s always right at the line. He doesn’t need to go full Trae, but it’s easier to chuck threes when your defender is hanging back a little bit and you’re 30 feet from the hoop.