Tobias Harris averages seven fewer points per game than Carmelo Anthony, and given the similar skill sets it’s worth looking at how he can make those up.
The most common comparison made for Orlando Magic swingman Tobias Harris is indisputably that of Carmelo Anthony, for better or worse. But what does Anthony do that has renders him a perennial All Star while Harris is still searching for his first All-Star bid?
This era of NBA basketball has gone further away from the notion a forward must be either a ‘3’ or a ‘4.’ There can be endless debate about which position a guy should really play. But when all frivolous arguments are cast aside, there is still the raw matter of how well a player can actually play.
The Sixer Sense
Carmelo Anthony has put together a great career as a “tweener,” and while he may be best suited to the 4-spot, his successes have shown that a great basketball player is going to find ways to excel.
The real parallel here is trying to determine what Harris can do to become as good as his pro comparison. How can Harris go from being a “poor man’s Melo” to a player who is just as good as the Knicks’ marquee player?
First, let’s save the debates about whether Harris should try to emulate Anthony citing Anthony’s lack of rings as some sort of proof his style is not effective. It is.
Anthony may not be on the level that LeBron James is, but a lot of (great) players go entire careers without a ring, and it really is not the metric we are focused on in looking at Harris’ opportunities to improve.
So, sure, Anthony has not won a ring, but he has made eight All Star appearances and he won a NCAA title in his lone season at Syracuse.
There is no doubt he can hoop, and any arguments that his style of play leads to losing basketball really need to begin and end with the disaster that has been the Knicks franchise for a while now.
That said, let’s move into what makes Anthony a better player than Harris, and how Harris can begin to incorporate new features into his game to make him a more effective player.
Next: Improvement One: The Mid-Range
1) Mid-range Shooting
While Harris and Melo may be very similar players, there are some pretty big disparities in key stats. Start with the fact Anthony takes 32.5 percent of his shots in the mid-range while Harris attempts just 14.6 percent.
That is illustrative of a huge difference in their games.
Anthony also hits the mid-range. He shot 41 percent from 3-16 feet last year, while hitting 58.4 percent in the restricted area. Comparatively, Harris was good for just 37 percent from the mid-range.
Both the lack of his volume from that distance and the poor shooting are accounting for part of the disparity between Anthony’s 24-points-per-game scoring average and Harris’ 17 per. Harris is going to get looks in the mid-range as a result of Elfrid Payton penetrating so often. It is up to him to both take those shots and hit them (The same applies to Victor Oladipo, but that is another time for another day).
Too often Harris puts the ball on the floor and passes on a mid-range shot to take a much tougher look at the rim.
NBA basketball is often all about threes and dunks, and not much in between, but the most effective scorers are able to capitalize on what a defense gives them. And often defenses live with the mid-range shot, the least of all evils as far as what a defense can concede.
Harris has to shoot better than 40 percent from mid-range, because there is really no reason his three-point percentage should be about the same as it.
Shooters make their own sweet spots, and too often we see Harris just taking it at the rim if he is unable to get the look he wants.
Improvement one starts with better mid-range shooting. Anthony is pretty solid, while Harris shies away.
The result is Harris attempts 46 percent of his looks in the paint, and that can be viewed as a positive, but it has to be considered that many of those attempts are heavily contested. Offensive efficiency begins with taking what the defense gives you.
Next: Improvement Two: Hit the boards!
2) Hitting the offensive glass
Another major disparity between Anthony and Harris is the work Anthony puts in on the offensive boards.
Anthony averages 3.7 points per game on second-chance looks, while Harris musters just two. Anthony has averaged 1.9 offensive rebounds per game through his NBA career, while Harris is at just 1.1.
Yes Anthony is a bull and is stronger than many power forwards even, but if Harris is going to get the most out of his court time some buckets can be found by following both his own shots and those of teammates.
The overall picture is still two guys who average about six boards per game, but Anthony is snagging an extra board on the offensive end to get his putbacks.
With a more concerted effort, Harris wiggles his way in for more extra chance points, helping to shore up the second shortcoming in comparison to Anthony. Offensive rebounding, much as was said about defense, is very effort reliant.
The guys who go after boards are the ones who get them, and even Dennis Rodman acknowledged the one thing that made him a better rebounder than others was mostly desire.
Desire the fire — you can see it in the eyes of guys that know they can prey on the offensive boards for buckets. If Harris just added one putback per game, he would have been on the cusp of averaging 20 points per game.
Next: Improvement Three: Become a True Isolation Scorer
3) Scoring Effectively in Isolation Sets
Lastly, this is probably the least easy for Harris to add: Anthony is a master at isolation offense and one of the best in the league at creating his own shot.
Harris scored 55 percent of his buckets on assists from teammates, while Anthony was at just 38 percent. For 3-pointers, Harris relied on an assist 96.6 percent of the time (!), while Anthony was just 78.7 percent.
Both these stats are very illustrative of the fact Anthony is one of the best players in the NBA at creating his own shot.
Harris may isolate a lot, but the shots he is hitting are often not the ones he gets himself. Otherwise, he would have hit more than three percent of his threes self-created.
Obviously, it is asking a lot of Harris to expect him suddenly to become an elite isolation scorer. But he has been billed as a scorer since jetting Tennessee after just one NCAA season, and he is still improving at now 23 years old.
Harris has a lot of the same talents as Anthony and the confidence to go with it. So, while it may seem unreasonable to ask Anthony-level isolation it is the kind of expectation that accompanies a contract like his.
While the numbers are fairly reflective that Harris is fitting in with his teammates, a No. 1 option has to be able to create his own shots in isolation or drive and create for others — another area Harris struggles.
That is really the next step for Tobias, because he is not all that bad at it truthfully. By all accounts, he is the best on Orlando’s roster at creating when it is cleared out for him.
Even so, Harris is still passing on a lot of good looks in the mid-range and really only attempting threes when the ball is kicked out or swung on the perimeter. He is not just taking guys on the wing and drilling it in their faces off the dribble like Anthony, or even James Harden. And yes, we are now comparing Harris to an eight-time All Star and the runner-up for the league’s MVP award and the NBPA’s MVP award winner — but it is high time those expectations start.
Next: Time to deliver
Time to deliver
It really, actually is — contracts come with expectations.
Harris is now going to receive $16 million on average over the next four seasons, and that contract comes with the requisite talent to lead a team, both in scoring and off the floor.
Harris’ skill set makes him probably the most explosive and dangerous scorer on Orlando’s roster, and he is the guy teams will worry about and make the effort to shut down.
Overall, Harris is still trying to become a more complete player, and while Anthony may not be the hallmark of that notion, he is a very complete offensive player. He is a player whose talents are similar enough to Harris to use as a model for what Harris can become on that end of the court.
More mid-range shooting, aggressive offensive board work and creating shots from isolation are on the check list for Harris.
These are the three elements that are lying between his 17 points per game and Anthony’s 24 to 26.
It is a quantum leap to reach that level for sure, but just on the basis of the offensive board work alone Harris has a lot of his work cut out for him.
Harris got paid like a star, and now it is time to produce like one. It is time to be more than a “poor man’s” Melo, in other words.
This progression likely does not all occur in the span of one season, but Harris needs to at least eclipse the 20-points-per-game mark this season and that can actually be done on the basis of small improvements just this year.