Originally Posted by
COYS
If Duke and Cassius get a little bit of good fortune, I could see him having a Winslow-esque season from three. Winslow probably took a few more than Cassius will (he took over 100 and shot just over 40%), but the vast majority of them were of the extremely wide open variety. Justise was a mediocre-to-poor free throw shooter, had a questionable shot coming out of high school, and has continued to be streaky in the NBA. But he hit a good percentage at Duke because he was only taking them when he was completely unguarded. Granted, the 2015 team had excellent floor spacing after Matt Jones moved into the starting lineup as Tyus, Justise, Matt, and Quinn were all credible shooters surrounding Jah. This year's team won't be able to put THAT many shooters on the court at once, consequently, I'm not sure that Cassius will be completely uncovered on the perimeter as often as Justise was.
However, as long as Cassius picks his spots, I think he stands to get more than few wide open looks thanks to his driving ability and explosive first step. Defenders are going to back off of him. Teams are going to pack the lane. Vernon is going to command double-teams in the post. As long as he anticipates this and is ready to catch and fire away from three, I wouldn't be surprised if he is able to shoot a decent percentage, say 35%+ on 60-70 attempts this season. It doesn't mean that he's a good pure shooter. But hopefully it means that he will make teams pay once or twice per game for leaving him completely unguarded. Like Justise, though, I think Cassius have much better shooting numbers if he's a complementary scorer rather than the primary threat. If one or two of Vernon, Tre, or Matthew are better able to establish themselves as scorers, I think it will help Cassius overall shooting numbers.
(As an aside: Justise was really impressive across the board in 2015. While checking his free throw percentage and three point attempts, I happened to notice that he had a better defensive rebounding rate than Jah AND Amile that season. Defense, rebounding, three point shooting, a little ball-handling, Justise was an absolutely perfect complement to Tyus and Jah.)