Is Donte DiVincenzo the second-best shooter in the NBA?

And why the Knicks cannot afford to lose him in the shuffle

When enumerating the league’s elite three-point marksman, the unquestioned top dog is Steph Curry. He’s not just the GOAT; he’s still the best shooter in the league by nearly every conceivable metric.

But if you ask 100 average fans on the street, who would they place second? Klay Thompson would get a shout. Paul George? Luka Doncic? Buddy Hield? Grayson Allen? Kevin Durant, maybe? I bet you’d find a Cleveland fan who would throw Sam Merrill in the mix.

All respectable answers, but if we’re looking purely at the numbers, New York’s Donte DiVincenzo has a powerful argument.

When grading shooters, volume matters at least as much as accuracy. If a player shoots 50% on threes but only attempts two per game, they aren’t putting up enough to make a meaningful difference. And even if they’re trying a huge number of long balls per possession or per minute, there’s no guarantee they could scale up without losing precision. It’s hard to launch a large number of shots accurately!

Only 10 players shot at least eight three-pointers per game last season; after establishing that baseline level of attempts, I sorted by 3PA per 100 possessions to normalize. DiVincenzo is behind only Curry in normalized volume and is the third-most accurate shooter on the list (and he puts up a full 20% more threes per 100 possessions than second-place CJ McCollum):

Based on these numbers, DiVincenzo had the league's best non-Curry combination of volume and accuracy last season.

That’s not the whole story, of course. Calling DDV the second-best shooter in the league doesn’t quite hold up under scrutiny, as the degree of difficulty of his shots drags him down a little bit — but not as much as you might think.

Consider Curry, for example. The NBA has a shot dashboard that categorizes shots by how close the defender is when the ball is released. Shots with a defender 0-2 feet away, “very tight” coverage, essentially never happen — if a defender is that on top of a player, they can’t get the shot up. It will not blow your mind to learn that the more open a shot, the more accurate most shooters become.

Curry shot 2.0 attempts per game against “tight” coverage (between two and four feet), and he hit 35.1%. DiVincenzo, by contrast, attempted less than one such shot per game and shot just 23.8%. A greater share of DiVincenzo’s attempts were considered “open” or “very open” than players like Curry, Doncic, or Klay Thompson (hilariously, Thompson actually shoots a slightly better percentage on “tight” coverage than on “open” or “wide open” shots. When we talk about shooters not seeing contests, that’s what we mean.).

On a related note, most of DiVincenzo’s long balls are catch-and-shoot attempts, and more than 90% of his triples were assisted. Curry, Doncic, and more well-rounded superstars shoot a much higher share of triples as pull-ups off the dribble—self-generated shots, in other words. Pull-ups are more difficult shots than catch-and-shoots in part because defenders are usually closer and more alert when a player already has the ball.

But DDV shot 38% on his pull-up attempts, the same as Curry or Doncic, albeit on significantly lower volume. He certainly isn’t capable of creating and making the shots those two do so often; he’s not in their league on pull-ups, and my earlier warning about ramping up volume at the expense of accuracy applies here. But it’s not a weakness in his game. I wonder what he’d look like if given more room for self-creation from behind the arc.

We don’t have to wonder about DiVincenzo as a catch-and-shoot maestro. Perhaps his argument as the second-best shooter in the league loses steam over the lack of pull-ups, but The Big Ragu just turned in what was almost certainly the greatest C&S stretch ever after last season’s All-Star break.

Firmly entrenched as a starter and with a rise in minutes thanks to trades and injuries ravaging the Knicks’ roster, DiVincenzo launched an astonishing 9.6 C&S threes per game, nailing 40.3%. Klay Thompson was second place in that timeframe, with 7.7 attempts (although their per-minute output was about the same).

The biggest per-game volume ever for a full season was Thompson in ‘22-’23, with 7.8 per game. Nobody has ever had a post-All-Star stretch approaching DiVincenzo’s volume, much less his combination of volume and accuracy. I can’t say for 100% sure that nobody has ever had that kind of run over any random 27-game stretch, but I’d bet against it.

Why? It isn’t easy to get off that many catch-and-shoots. You have to work for it. Per the NBA’s nifty tracking data, DiVincenzo ran 1.56 miles per game on offense after the All-Star break, third-most in the league (a spot behind Josh Hart and a spot ahead of Jalen Brunson; for what it’s worth, Brunson played the fewest minutes of anybody in the top 10).

DiVincenzo got some up in transition, where Synergy says he averaged 1.5 triples per game for the entire season (and more toward the end). The Knicks also liked to use him in dribble hand-off actions, where he used fake cuts and jukes to manufacture space for a clean look behind Isaiah Hartenstein’s action-hero body:

Aside from the DHOs, DiVincenzo doesn’t use too many off-ball screens. Instead, he has a knack for sliding along the perimeter in the defense’s creases, anticipating where his teammates’ drives will take them. Plenty of shooters know how to make space for themselves, but few are better at making space for the pass:

Sometimes, just a few feet is the difference between nothing and a clean look. Notice how he waits till the defender’s head is turned before sneaking toward the corner:

Although DDV got up shots from all around the arc, he was hotter than Sydney Sweeney from the starboard side of the court. He shot 46% from the right shoulder and 52% from the right corner.

His preference for the right side works wonders with the Knicks’ sinistral ballhandlers. Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle can take the ball to the left before turning around and whipping it to DiVincenzo on the opposite side of the court. The Knicks were seventh in team drives per game this year (and third last season). Their entire offensive philosophy is built upon getting into the paint and making plays happen from there.

But all those drives need release valves, places to go if the rim gets walled off. That’s a convenient transition to this season; namely, how much can the Knicks play DiVincenzo?

The monster trade for Mikal Bridges sets in stone a starting lineup of Jalen Brunson, Bridges, OG Anunoby, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson, with Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo as high-minute backups. As good as Bridges is as a two-way player, it’s hard to imagine he’ll be a better offensive fit next to Brunson and Randle than DiVincenzo, although the defensive upgrade should be worth it. If the team were to move Randle, DiVincenzo could resume a starting role, but that might leave the team too light on creation.

However, nobody else on the team is the kind of catch-and-shoot artist that DiVincenzo is. While Bridges and Anunoby are good three-point shooters, they don’t have DDV’s hair trigger. Randle and Brunson are far more likely to pull up than work the floor for a catch-and-shoot. The Knicks might not need DiVincenzo to put up 15 threes every night, but I think they’ll miss his shooting in the starting group more than they realize. The Brunson-Randle-DiVincenzo-Anunoby quartet outscored opponents by +20.3 points per 100 possessions, a staggering figure that ranked in the 99th percentile for all lineups.

Of course, DiVincenzo will never have a shooting stretch like he did last season again; the trades of RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, and Quentin Grimes and injuries to Anunoby, Randle, Robinson, and others meant there were so many shots and minutes up for grabs. Back on the bench and surrounded by a healthier, more talented supporting cast, DiVincenzo will find his role significantly reduced; it’s up to Coach Thibodeau to ensure it’s not reduced too much. Perhaps he can be an early sub for Bridges, giving Bridges control of the second unit with Deuce McBride and Josh Hart.

These are solvable problems, if New York chooses to solve them. The Knicks know they can rely upon DiVincenzo. Whether they will or not remains to be seen.