Jalen Brunson continues to elevate as an outside shooter

Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson is off to a hot start shooting the basketball.

The Villanova product shot 40.8 percent from three in his senior year but entered the NBA in 2018 as a non-shooter. Brunson shot less than 36 percent in his first two seasons with the Dallas Mavericks. His third season is when he started to make improvements. He went from 35.8 percent in 2019–2020 to 40.5 percent in 2020–21. After stepping up, he took a step back down the next season, only hitting 37.3 percent of his treys.

Brunson then signed with the Knicks in the 2022 off-season. Last season, Brunson had a career year from three. He shot a career-high 41.6 percent and knocked down a career-high 134 three-pointers. The new Knicks guard attempted more threes than ever, but it was really impressive considering he played 146 fewer minutes than in 2021-22.

In the playoffs, Brunson only hit 26/80 (32.5%) of his three-pointers. It was a tough 2023 playoffs for the Knicks shooting the ball.

2023-24 season:

Jalen Brunson is one of the best shooters in the 2023–24 season.

He’s fourth in total three-pointers per game, only behind Stephen Curry, Luka Doncic, and Tyrese Haliburton. Brunson has the best three-point percentage out of all players in the top 50 in total attempts. Attempting 7.0 threes per game, the Knicks guard is knocking down a dazzling 47.4 percent of them.

Catch & Shoot:

Brunson has gradually improved as a catch-and-shoot player in the last three seasons.

2021–22:

Jalen shot 40.1 percent on his catch-and-shoot triples. His overall numbers came out to 69/172 in 79 regular-season games played. He played 2,524 minutes this season.

2022-23:

Last season, he went from 40.1 percent in 2021-22 to 47.6 percent on his catch-and-shoot threes. In 68 games, Brunson hit 60/126 three-point attempts. JB played 2,379 minutes last regular season.

2023-24:

Almost 20 games into the 2023–24 season, and the Knicks guard has once again seen improvement. This season, he’s hitting 51.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes on 2.7 attempts per game. The overall numbers have him at 27/52 in 675 minutes. He’s on pace to easily set a career-high in catch-and-shoot threes this season. More importantly, he’s doing it extremely efficiently.

Pull-Up Shooting:

Jalen Brunson is shooting 43.8 percent on 4.2 pull-up threes per game this season. This is a big improvement from the 38.0 percent he shot in the 2022–23 season.

He looks more comfortable creating his shot and has hit 24 unassisted threes this season. Last season, Brunson hit 57 unassisted threes in 68 games.

His evolution as a shooter has helped the Knicks become a top-ten three-point shooting team this season. It has also opened the door to possibilities for different trades they could potentially make (more on that in a future article).

The soon-to-be first-time All-Star continues to be one of the toughest covers in the NBA for opposing defenses.

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