A deep dive into scouting conversations at The Next

The most important and arguably most difficult skill for us to project in a player is their jump shot; someone who can consistently hit 3-pointers and pull-up 2s is valuable in just about any context and role, but the sample size needed for “true talent” field goal accuracy stats to stabilize is enormous. A prospect could be a perfectly average 3-point shooter but simply get poor sequencing on spot-up shots over her first two collegiate seasons, leading to a low accuracy mark that belies what she’s likely to do in the future — but by the time she gets more average sequencing, she’s already changed her mechanics and is an even better shooter now.

In this case, the overall stats would show an average shooter who is streaky, when in reality, a good shooter turned into a very good or great one. This was the case with Te-Hina Paopao during her time at Oregon.

---

Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?

Subscribe now to our sister publication The IX and receive our independent women’s sports newsletter six days a week. Learn more about your favorite athletes and teams around the world competing in soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers.

Readers of The Next now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.

---

Conversely, a player with an advantageous shot diet and the right sequencing can look far better than what they’re likely to do in the future. Kelly Miller was drafted over her Georgia teammate Deanna Nolan for basically this exact reason.

All of which not only makes assessing jumpers vital, but it makes that assessment as much an art as a science. All of which brings us to James’ 3-point shot. Because as a steady scorer with average playmaking and overall defense, James’ future value weighs heavily on how good her 3-point jump shot is, both off the catch and off the dribble. Increased pull-up volume from deep and big splits between open and contested accuracy make this a particularly interesting question.

What follows is a conversation about her shooting form, edited for clarity:

---

Lincoln Shafer: God bless [our video service] because I’m doing a deep dive on Aziaha’s shot … she gathers the ball on her right hip, brings it up on the right side of her face (by a lot) and then kinda snaps her shooting elbow and wrist back to the left side through the shot to keep it lined up.

Emily Adler: Is that … good?

LS: It kinda limits her shot versatility and makes any sort of stepback going to her strong hand almost impossible, but it’s not either a good or bad thing necessarily.

Something to keep an eye on, she tends to gather and shoot moving to her right. Preferring to shoot while driving weak[side] is fairly common, but this is not just a preference to me.

Hunter Cruse: Biomechanics guru is back.

EA: Also to be fair, stepbacks going to the dominant side are pretty rare anyway.

LS: I saw something weird on her jab-then-shoot against [Last-Tear] Poa and watched it like eight times then went and just watched like 35 more jumpers.

HC: I’m a stepback left merchant.

LS: She doesn’t have an overwhelming side [of the rim] she missed to the way Lou [Lopez Sénéchal] does² but it was a notable extra kind of hand/wrist motion.

HC: Do the spot-up vs. pull-up mechanics look the same to you? I’ve noticed she’s more comfortable off the bounce.

LS: I think she’s not super comfortable with a ‘standstill, feet set, catch in the shooting pocket and immediately go up’ 3. She likes to take the extra step. Rhythm shooter.

EA: Which is made generally OK by the fact that she moves her body into the catch as opposed to reaching for the catch and pulling it back into her body. So she’s creating natural sidesteps into the shot.

LS: This season she’s 8-for-14 on guarded catch-and-shoot threes and 1-for-15 on unguarded [per Synergy].

OK, a big problem on the shots off the catch is inconsistent footwork. The one she made had the quickest and most natural-looking gather/foot reset of all her catch-and-shoot attempts.

EA: Interesting. I should just copy this entire conversation thread and make that this week’s article.

HC: Whew don’t put in too much work.

LS: About a third of the listed catch-and-shoot unguarded shots were off movement. She does reset her feet every catch, but there are times that it looks almost hitchy, the timing on the foot reset is a bit inconsistent, and the big dip she uses to get into her shot means a lot of the time she feels less open than she is.

EA: I’ve definitely noticed her reticence to let that shot fly in situations where I’d expect capital-s Shooters to get it.

LS: Also I think a problem for her is the quality of pass. Because if the pass is low, it screws up her rhythm, and if the pass is too high she struggles to catch and reset in rhythm too.

But especially bad on passes low, because then she picks the ball up to her shoulder, sets it to the hip on the dip, then brings it up. All this means that I started the NCST-LSU game over an hour ago and have made it through 3 minutes and 15 seconds and the video is paused at the apex of Aziaha’s jump.

EA: The particularly interesting thing to me about all this microanalysis over her lower half is the fact that her upper body is just clean as heck. Not textbook form at all, but clean.

LS: Oh yeah, very good hands.

EA: Super quiet shoulders.

---

Order ‘Rare Gems’ and save 30%

Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The Next and The IX, released his latest book on May 7, 2024. This deeply reported story follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.

If you enjoy his coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.

---

LS: And she is able to consistently get to the same hand positions no matter what her lower body is doing. Which should be a good thing theoretically.

EA: I much prefer inconsistent lower half and consistent upper half to the inverse. Might vary by shooting coach, but correcting footwork:

1. makes more sense to me than correcting upper body;
2. if anything it should make the kinetic chain more efficient as a downstream effect;
3. lower body usually means power where upper means accuracy and I feel like betting on the former is much less random than betting on the latter.

LS: Fair. Footwork here would definitely help get her a more consistent power transfer, which would help with the fact that she misses short a lot.

EA: Yeah like would you rather be tasked with cleaning up Aziaha’s 3-point shot or Janiah’s?

LS: I think I prefer good touch into jump shooting over either inconsistency.

EA: I will always pick ‘good touch, unknown form’ over ‘good form, mediocre touch.’

LS: Absolutely agree.

---

1. It’s countless for Hunter and Lincoln; for me, because I’m the perfect intersection of dork and deranged, it’s 33 hours and 45 minutes so far this season. I’ve generally hovered around 180 hours watched per college season over the past few years. ↩︎
2. Lincoln once charted every Lopez Sénéchal 3-point miss from her season at UConn to confirm a hunch he had that her release caused the vast majority of her misses to fall to the right side of the rim. No, this was not useful in any way to our evaluation of her as a prospect, but he had fun. ↩︎