When I play HORSE and am feeling particularly confident in any given game, I'll sometimes slap a "swish" denotation to the end of my shot. It's not just a pull-up elbow jumper. It's a precise, perfectly placed elbow jumper that hits nothing but net. More often than not, that approach fails, but it's always worth it to see it go down.
For Collin Sexton, though, anything other than a swish is unacceptable, and that may be part of the reason why he's shown such monumental improvement as a shooter. He's attempting the most three pointers in his career to this point in the 2020-21 season, with 4.1 per game, and is converting at an outrageous 47.2 percent clip, as compared to his career mark of 39.9. His overall shooting percentage is up by more than 60 points from his career average. His scoring average is up over 25 points per game through 13 games, good for a top-15 ranking in the NBA. And he has single-handedly won some big games for the Cavaliers, including his performance against the Nets that thrust him into the national spotlight and earned him praise from his peers.
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That aforementioned no-rim-allowed workout was something Sexton discussed on the latest episode of ESPN's "The Lowe Post" podcast after Zach Lowe questioned the validity of the rumors of Sexton's drills.
That definitely is true, especially like in the summertime, I try to pretty much just protect the things that I need to improve on and that summer was learning how to shoot the three and being more confident. So, when I feel like it didn't go in the way I wanted or didn't leave my hand the right way, I was like, hey, we gotta start over. We gotta start over.
That shot — maybe in the game when I don't have no legs or just played three straight possessions on defense against somebody — that shot might be a miss, so that was going through my mind so I was like, yea, we gotta start over again. I don't want it to just barely go in, I want to see it like actually go in. I still do it here if I feel like the shot doesn't go in the way I want it to or just rattles in and stuff like that, I'm like 'hey Mike G (assistant coach Mike Gerrity), run it back, let's do it again.' and he's pretty much just realized, we have our pregame stuff, if he sees a shot that doesn't seem for me... he'll swing me the ball right back.
If he misses a shot, he's running. If he makes a shot, but it hits the rim, he's running. If he makes a shot that just "doesn't go in the way" he wants it to, he's running. I'd become Forrest Gump if I tried that drill with how much I'd be running.
But it's these types of drills that separate certain players from the rest of the pack. Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, who is actually off to a tough start this year, became the top scoring threat he is thanks to his insane workouts. You know, the ones where he shoots "3-pointers outside, in the snow, with a bitter Ontario wind ripping through [him], after [he'd] just held a deep-knee squat for 12 minutes, a cup of piping hot tea carefully balanced on [his] thigh" thanks to his martial arts extraordinaire of a father (via Jackie MacMullan of ESPN). It's the stuff that Dirk Nowitzki did that drove his teammates up a wall.
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When you're playing in the most competitive league in the world in one of the world's most popular spots, you've got to pay your dues. And it seems as though Sexton has done just that.
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