Highlighting each piece returned in the Tobias Harris trade
Landry Shamet
If ever there was a player to be the next J.J. Redick, Landry Shamet is the guy.
The 21-year-old rookie has been shooting the lights out this season in Philadelphia, averaging a near-41 percent rate from three-point range on 4.5 attempts per game. That’s 8.0 attempts per 36, and assuming Shamet continues to play at an elite level, it won’t be long before he’s regularly getting those kind of minutes.
Shamet is also about as perfect and modern of a shooter as the Clippers could have hoped to receive. According to Basketball-Reference, Shamet has taken just 43 midrange looks all season, compared to 47 at the rim and 239 from deep. He almost exclusively takes high-percentage, high-reward shots, and the LA Clippers are going to have a lot of fun using him in offensive sets.
Shamet’s best game of the season came on January 8, when he scored a career-high 29 points in 23 minutes in a win over the Washington Wizards. Shamet made eight of his 14 three-point attempts in that one, and made all five of his attempts at the stripe.
Like Redick, though, Shamet isn’t exactly a stellar defender. Among 484 qualified players this season, Shamet ranks 466th in defensive real plus-minus, according to ESPN.
He is very quick, so I wouldn’t expect him to get beat off the dribble that often. But if he’s playing one-on-one, don’t expect him to make many stops, either.
Shamet signed a rookie deal with the 76ers this summer, worth about $9 million in total. The final two years of the contract, worth the bulk of the money, are a team option, meaning the Clippers would have the choice to opt-in or out of his deal at that point. Because he’s such a cheap asset, LA should be able to keep him around for many years to come, and will certainly do so if he continues to produce like he is now.
It’s unclear where Shamet will fit into the rotation right now, but I also wouldn’t expect the LA Clippers to stop making deals just yet. With a plethora of guards still on the roster, look for at least one of them to be dealt ahead of Thursday’s deadline.