As you can see from this shot chart put together by Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry, Dirk Nowitzki remains pretty great at basketball. How great? The second-best shooter in the game and by far the best at shooting the kind of shots he takes. (As it happens, fellow Mav Jose Calderon is the third best.)
This season, 27 NBA players have attempted at least 200 midrange shots, but Nowitzki is the only one of them making 50 percent of those attempts. What’s crazy is that he is the most efficient midrange shooter in the game despite the high level of difficulty associated with most of his attempts; he constantly creates his own shots in the face of defenders who are expecting him to do that exact thing.
I feel like I’m forgetting something here. Hm. Oh, right. I SEE YOU, BIG GERMAN.
