David West’s Mid-Range Game
West shares why he learned the mid-range jumper and the importance of it.
If you go onto YouTube and type in David West, chances are the majority of the highlights will be of him dominating in the mid-range or of someone talking about his mid-range game because it was that good.
But West wasn’t always a mid-range maestro.
Early in his career, he refused to shoot the jumper because it wasn’t part of his game -being a shooter wasn’t his identity. He believes he was a slasher and an inside scorer.
And it worked for him for a little bit. He did make it into the NBA after all (he was drafted by the New Orleans Hornets in 2003).
But he got snatched up one game in his second season and had to change his on-court identity.
On The Forgotten Seasons podcast, he told a story about how an opponent’s coach taught him the importance of jump shots.
“The reason I started shooting jump shots; I was not a jump shooter coming into the NBA,” West said. “My second year, I got hurt and I got hurt because I wasn’t listening. I got hurt against the [Detroit] Pistons. Somebody dumped it off to me and I should have shot the ball, right? And I heard Larry Brown behind me. And you know, if you’ve ever played in a game with these older coaches, they coaching everybody. They coaching their team, coaching you.
“As I go to drive and get fouled, I hear Coach Brown specifically say, ‘You should have shot the ball, West.’ In my mind, I go to the free-throw line, ‘Like man, he's another one telling me to shoot the ball. I don’t shoot the ball.’ Two possessions later, same type of play and I go to the basket and I get completely destroyed… 55 games I missed. And if I had shot the ball, I wouldn’t have got hurt.”
West went on to say that after the 2004-05 season, his assistant coach, Kenny Gattison, had him study Karl Malone’s (whom he wasn’t a fan of) mid-range game.
But he admitted that watching Malone’s tape and implementing the mid-range jumper helped lengthen his career in every sense of the word (he was healthier and teams wanted him in his old age because he could score).
After that offseason, West became the Hornets’ full-time starting power forward and went from averaging 6.2 points to 17.1 points per game. His field goal percentage also jumped from 43.6 percent to 51.2 percent.
He continued to work on his mid-range game and became one of the best jump-shooting bigs in the NBA.
And because he stopped being stubborn and made the change, he became a two-time NBA All-Star and two-time NBA Champion.
West retired in 2018 with career averages of 13.6 points on 49.5 percent, 6.4 rebounds and 2.2 assists.
He’s also considered as one of the greatest mid-range players in NBA history.
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