That has meant something a little different for Besiktas than one might expect. The table above displays the top-eight teams in points scored per jump shot this season with a couple of key details that often play an important role in a team’s efficiency: the proportion of a team’s attempts away from the basket that are catch-and-shoot jumpers and the percentage that come from beyond the three-point line. While Besiktas leads the EuroCup in jump shooting efficiency by a decent margin thus far, it has done so while attempting as many pull-ups and midrange shots as nearly any team in the competition.
It is no secret that teams have gone away from the midrange in recent seasons. The math is not hard to understand, a team only needs to shoot 33% from beyond the arc to match what they would produce shooting 50% from the midrange. In the EuroCup this season, teams are scoring 0.81 points per midrange attempt and 1.02 points per 3-point attempt. However, that has not stopped Besiktas, who has made a sparkling 47% of their midrange jump shots on the league’s highest volume of attempts—only Dolomiti Energia Trento has shot better on just over half as many attempts.
That stands a sharp contrast to undefeated Valencia Basket which has relied heavily on high-percentage spot-up jumpers and made a concerted effort to avoid long-twos on the way to the second spot on this list. With Buducnost VOLI Podgorica sitting a few makes off Valencia’s pace with a shot selection on the other side of the spectrum, it is worth noting that, even if teams are not settling for as many twos as they did even five years ago, shot-making talent has often seemed to set the pace from the perimeter this season over shot selection.
With a variety of players from Kyle Allman and Derek Needham on the ball, Kelan Martin and Dustin Sleva at forward spots, and Jonah Matthews on the wing among a host of others contributing to Besiktas’s consistency in midrange spots and from beyond the arc, they presents some matchup problems for opposing defenses. Outscoring Bahcesehir 47-9 from the perimeter, they shot the ball at a high level from the wings in Round 11 after giving Buducunost some issues from a step inside the arc a week ago. Their collective shot-making versatility is a big reason Besiktas ranks third in overall offensive efficiency and finds itself looking like perhaps the most likely candidate to trend up towards the teams at the top of Group A.
