I had my doubts this offseason about Justin Anderson joining the starting lineup. We needed floor spacing and discipline, and he didn’t really show much of either (29.8% on threes, which made up 37.5% of his shots) over his first two seasons. I proposed Devon Hall (not a terrible choice, to be fair) as a potential starter on the wing, with Justin reprising the Super Sub role he excelled in during his first three years.
After three games, I’m willing to print out the above words and chow down. Compare these players:
Player A takes 81.5% of his shots from three (59.3%) or at the rim (22.2%), and most of his threes (100% actually) are of the nice, assisted variety. His offensive rating is 136.1, he boasts a high usage rate (25.4%) but finds the open man (18.9% assist rate), and he’s commonly guarding the opponent’s best wing player.
Player B takes 79% of his shots from three (53.3%) or at the rim (25.7%), and most of his threes (91.7%) are of the nice, assisted variety. His offensive rating is 113.4, he boasts a high usage rate (22.2%) but finds the open man (18% assist rate), and he’s commonly guarding the opponent’s best wing player.
Player A is Justin Anderson through three games of the 2014-2015 season. Player B is Joe Harris in last year’s ACC title campaign. Justin has taken to the Joe role with aplomb, showing off his improved shooting mechanics (feet set, elbow in, less floating to either side or fading away, tighter release) at every opportunity, and doing it right: he’s bombing away on assisted open looks from the corner, which is perhaps my favorite shot in basketball and why I geek out over the San Antonio Spurs every year. He’s not forcing things, and he’s cut down on the fadeaway twos (18.5% of his shots this season, 26.3% last season). He’s been my favorite part of our season so far.
Justin might even be doing some things better than Joe did right now. His percentages at the rim (16.7%) and from three (an absurd 62.5%) will even out to their respective means, but one nice thing about his new-found reliance on the three is that he hasn’t lost his ability to get to the line — his free throw rate (48.1) is up, but not so far out of line with his career (over 40 every season) that it isn’t sustainable….and it’s a mark that is significantly higher than Joe’s (33.1), which makes a lot of sense when you think about the players.
Let’s clear one thing up: Justin Anderson is not the best Joe Harris in the world, he is just a tribute. Part of why Justin has been able to be so successful is that defenses aren’t keying on him the way they did Joe (and thriving in the face of that attention is part of what made Joe the player he was) and the way Joe cut and could come off of screens with the most minimal windows were crucial elements of our offense that Justin hasn’t been called on to do (and it’s probably for the best, as JA’s jumper is still much better when he’s got time to load it up). If the ACC champ ‘Hoos were Wu Tang, Joe Harris was Inspectah Deck — able to occasionally drop a classic, but always a key part of the mix, while Justin was ODB — often exciting, occasionally disgusting, but never boring. Justin’s just taken a step toward the Deck role to start this season.
This isn’t trying to place Justin on Joe’s level or saying he’ll give us what Joe did over the course of the season. It’s just a public pat on the back for a player who has visibly made an effort to mold his game to fill a role that needed filling, and one more reason to root for Justin, who has never done anything but radiate a team-first attitude since arriving in Charlottesville.
