Shrinking your gift: the curious case of Brandon Ingram's threes

Brandon Ingram has already proven he can change, but will he?

Brandon Ingram is at a crossroads.

The former All-Star, whose 27th birthday was just a few days ago, is seeking a maximum contract extension: four years and just north of $200 million. Unfortunately for him, neither his current team, the New Orleans Pelicans, nor any of the league’s 29 others appear inclined to give it to him. Ingram is a very good player, but he isn’t a great one — although he could be if he so chose.

It starts and comes near to ending with Ingram’s three-point shot. Ingram’s career long-range shooting stats are bizarre:

Ingram started as a three-point non-believer while he got his NBA footing under him in Los Angeles, but his triple attempt rate skyrocketed in 2019-20, his first year as a New Orleans Pelican. Under coach Alvin Gentry and playing next to point guards like Jrue Holiday and Lonzo Ball, Ingram launched from deep with a quickfire trebuchet’s volume and accuracy. Better health and a revamped shot form masterminded by shooting coach Fred Vinson didn’t hurt, either.

Ingram had nearly identical numbers under Stan Van Gundy in 2020-21, but everything changed in the 2021-22 season. Ingram’s three-point rate dropped significantly thanks to three factors. First, Zion Williamson (and his drive-and-kicks) missed the entire season, depleting Ingram’s catch-and-shoot opportunities. Second, there was no bonafide point guard on the roster — CJ McCollum was a late-trade addition, but he’s more of a combo guard than a floor general. And finally, one-and-done Van Gundy was replaced by Willie Green, who was less militant about forcing Ingram to jack up threes.

With fewer ballhandlers available, Ingram took on more of an on-ball playmaker role, setting a then-career-high in assists. The byproduct of that shift and the personnel issues we discussed: fewer catch-and-shoot opportunities. That’s a real problem for Ingram. Most players have a better conversion rate on catch-and-shoots than pull-ups, but there’s a wider discrepancy for Ingram than similar ballhandling stars:

The TL;DR: Ingram is good-to-great at catch-and-shoot triples and quite bad at pull-ups!

By comparison, Khris Middleton, who fills a parallel role for the Milwaukee Bucks, has hit at least 36% on pull-up threes in four of the last five seasons. Kevin Durant, a superior player with similar tendencies to Ingram, has hit at least 37% in three of the last four (he missed all of 2019-20). It’s a weapon that nearly all perimeter scorers can unsheathe to some extent.

Ingram has always had far more comfort pulling up from the midrange, where he’s very prolific and very good — 46% or higher in each of the last four seasons. Midrange jumpers have different mechanics than three-point jumpers, and Ingram is more confident and fluid when he’s closer to the basket:

Ingram has a relatively slow but high release. It’s a far better form for shooting over the top of defenders in the midrange than it is for creating space from behind the arc:

Ingram’s defenders constantly go under picks, giving him plenty of space to walk into an open three-pointer, but he prefers to take one step inside the arc even when his screener pancakes the defender like an angry Whomp:

The pull-ups are one thing. Ingram isn’t comfortable with them and likely never will be. However, Ingram passes up far too many open catch-and-shoots, a shot he’s good at! The record-scratch moments often end with a forced jumper in traffic or a drive to nowhere that needs an offensive reset.

Far too often, we’ve heard Pelicans play-by-play broadcaster Joel Meyers despondently announce, “Ingram, from 20… and [insert opposing player] corrals the rebound.” This is not an NBA play:

Defenders know they can run Ingram off the three-point line; in fact, he wants to be pushed into his comfort zone (and coach Green has been unwilling to push him back out). His reluctance to fire from deep hinders an offense that needs to space the floor around Zion Williamson to reach its ceiling — and it will inhibit any other team that considers trading for him, too. In this league, it’s nearly impossible to be an effective non-big second or third banana if you can’t shoot from deep.

The crazy thing is that we’ve seen Ingram succeed at a significantly higher level from downtown; can that player return? More importantly, is he willing to return? I never want to put much stock in social media posts, especially in this economy. But Ingram did post a curiously salient video a few days ago in which a motivational speaker tells his rapturous audience that they “cannot stay in environments where people don’t know the true value of you. If you stay in environments where people don’t recognize the value of you, you’ll shrink your gift to the size of what they can stand.”

I like this quote, but Ingram is misunderstanding the context. The Pelicans (and the rest of the league) don’t want to shrink Ingram’s gifts. They want him to expand his gifts like those inflatable lawn Christmas presents!

In some ways, the stage is set for Ingram to thrive. Zion Williamson is healthy and looking better than ever (stop me if you’ve heard that before), and the trade for Dejounte Murray gives the Pelicans the best point guard they’ve had since Lonzo Ball. You may be surprised to learn that Zion and Ingram on the court without CJ McCollum last season had a net rating of +13.4 in 706 possessions, in the 98th percentile; with McCollum likely moving to the bench, we should see more of those minutes.

New Orleans now has two players capable of getting both feet into the paint and spraying the ball to open shooters. Zion was a top-10 three-point creator on a per-possession basis last season (although not many of those went to Ingram), and Murray might approach similar numbers without having to share the rock with Trae Young. If head coach Green and offensive guru James Borrego can effectively create Williamson/Murray actions that suck in the defense, Ingram should have far more catch-and-shoot opportunities.

Is Ingram willing to screen and pop for Murray or Williamson? (Trey Murphy will be a superstar in that role, but Ingram will have chances, too.) Is he willing to show more activity off the ball? I’d like to see Ingram sliding more along the perimeter in reaction to Zion and Murray’s forays into the paint; too often, he appears unaware that he can create passing lanes for others with even subtle shifts. More purposeful movement like this, please:

If Ingram can rediscover his three-point appetite, he would be an excellent fit for this Pelicans team — or most other contenders. Shot selection aside, he’s a far more complete player than his reputation suggests.

For example, Ingram has sneakily become a very good passer. He’s not always the quickest decision-maker, and he can pound the ball a bit too much for my liking. But he’s learned how to leverage the attention he draws to spring teammates open. He’ll put the ball on the floor and fake a shot for the sole purpose of wedging open a narrow passing window:

He’s also become an excellent pick-and-roll player. Ingram was in the 81st percentile for points per pick-and-roll possession, per Synergy. He’s become more creative with his use of space and angles:

And defensively, Ingram has competed hard of late. His play on that end faltered when he initially moved to the Pelicans, but to his credit, his effort level has increased for the past few seasons. He’s not a top-flight defender, but he’s not the weak link his skeletal (Skelican?) frame might suggest, either. Synergy rated him in the top quintile in pick-and-roll defense and isolations, and teams rarely targeted him (it helps to play a lot of minutes next to a player with a flashing neon bullseye on his jersey like McCollum).

He’s always been an excellent foul-drawer with high-end free throw percentages. Ingram is even a strong finisher at the rim (although he doesn’t get there as much as I’d like) and an underrated defensive rebounder.

Unfortunately, recency bias has been monstrously detrimental to his playoff character. Ingram rushed back from injury this season and then had to go up against Lu Dort, an elite, physical defender who gave a clearly hobbled Ingram zero breathing room, zero quarter, and zero mercy. But we’re just two years removed from Ingram averaging 27-6-6 on solid shooting while leading the Zion-less Pelicans to two wins against the top-seed Phoenix Suns in the playoffs, all with DPOY runner-up Mikal Bridges hung over his wiry shoulders like a particularly itchy scarf. It was a genuinely impressive performance that showed Ingram’s playoff upside.

There’s a winning basketball player here. All Ingram has to do is move, say, two of his worst midrange attempts (perhaps those deep, one-legged runners he’s inexcusably fond of) to the three-point line, a thing he’s already done, and he’d certainly get big dolla bills, y’all!

Well, almost certainly. We alluded to Ingram’s health (or lack thereof). He’s played just 64, 45, and 55 games over the last three years. I believe a market correction on availability is coming — see Kawhi Leonard’s sub-max deal and Pat Riley’s recent comments about Jimmy Butler for two top-of-mind examples. Ingram may be one of the first victims of that mentality.

But we just saw an injury-prone 3-and-D superstar in OG Anunoby get pretty darn close to max money. Currently, Ingram is missing the “3” component that every non-superstar desperately needs to maximize their value. I talk about players needing to increase their three-point volume a lot, but Ingram is the extremely rare case in which we’ve already seen it! The lack of distributors, be they an elite point guard or a healthy Zion, can no longer be an excuse. Ingram will have catch-and-shoot opportunities; he has to take them.

“I know who I am,” Ingram once said. “In ways, I can get stuck and think my way is the best way.” There’s at least a modicum of self-awareness here. The path to Ingram being a $200 million player (or close to it) is so easy to see. Ingram just needs to stop shrinking his own gifts.