Austin Rivers improving his three-point shooting with Rockets

After an offseason shooting emphasis, Austin Rivers’ three-point percentage has risen from 32.1% to 43.8% in his second year with the Rockets.

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Now in his second year with the Houston Rockets, guard Austin Rivers entered the 2019-20 NBA season hoping that an offseason emphasis on long-range shooting would pay off.

As of Monday, it seems to have gone exactly as planned.

Through the new season’s first nine games, the 6-foot-3 guard is shooting a career-best 43.8% on three-pointers on an average of 3.6 attempts per game. That percentage is up significantly from his 32.1% in 47 games with the Rockets last regular season.

In Houston’s last two games entering Monday, which were blowout victories over the Golden State Warriors and Chicago Bulls, Rivers connected on 6-of-7 shots (85.7%) from behind the arc.

Overall, Rivers is averaging 6.8 points and 2.3 rebounds per game. His nightly minutes are down from 28.6 last year to 20.2 this season, but that’s not because the 27-year-old isn’t playing well. Unlike a season ago, when Rivers was signed in late December following a multi-week injury to Chris Paul, newly acquired guard Russell Westbrook has been much more durable, as expected.

One of the trickle-down effects of Westbrook’s superior durability is less minutes for reserve guards, relative to the Paul years. But Rivers is making the most of his opportunities, and so are the Rockets — who have now won three straight games to improve to 6-3 on the season.

Last year, Rivers’ three-point efficiency rose from 32.1% in the regular season to 45.7% in 11 postseason games, and he said in September that continued shooting improvement was one of his primary points of emphasis to best fit alongside Westbrook and James Harden.

That’s all I’ve been working on this summer. You’ve got to understand, I’m playing with two of the most elite guards in the league. A lot of attention is going to be on them.

So for me personally, playing with them this year… everybody knows I can score one on one and stuff like that. But my goal is to really be a knockdown shooter to help them with space, and then on defense to give them a break, because I want to guard the best player on every team.

So far, so good. But even if that blistering 43.8% clip through nine games isn’t totally sustainable, it should be noted that Rivers shot 37.1% and 37.8% on three-pointers with the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons, with both coming on relatively high volume at 4.0 and 5.9 attempts per game.

In other words, it’s actually the 2018-19 campaign at 32% that appears to be the outlier for Rivers, since he has been at 37% or better in every other year over his last four NBA seasons. Over a full season, that type of accuracy could be huge for the Rockets, given the historic rate at which Houston attempts three-pointers under Mike D’Antoni.

It hasn’t all been perfect for Rivers, whose defensive rating is currently at 118.6 after being at 108.1 with Houston last season. Thus, even though his offensive rating has jumped from 112.9 to 116.3, his overall net rating has actually declined from 2.5 to -2.3. Off-ball awareness has at times been a problem.

But at 27 years old, there’s no reason to think that Rivers’ skillset as a quality isolation defender versus quick guards ⁠— shown in the playoffs against Stephen Curry, who shot just 40.3% overall and 27.9% on three-pointers versus Houston — has declined. With time, his defensive showings should revert back to career norms.

The falloff in Rivers’ defensive metrics from a year ago might also reflect that Houston’s bench unit is now led by Westbrook, who historically is a worse defender than Paul. With time, their chemistry as a unit and knowledge of each other’s tendencies should improve.

At the beginning of training camp, Rivers said:

I want to be be one of the best perimeter defenders in the league this year, and that’s a challenge I made to myself. I told James and Russ whenever I’m on the floor, they’re not going to be guarding the best player, because they already have too much of a load.

Despite having significantly stronger offers from other teams, Rivers opted to re-sign with the Rockets in July for the league minimum. Given that bargain rate, simply carrying over his 2018-19 performance levels and defensive value would be more than adequate for the Rockets and GM Daryl Morey.

But to this point, Rivers has actually expanded his game relative to a year ago, with his offseason shooting emphasis paying off in a big way. The defense still needs to come around, but assuming it does, Rivers might end up being one of the NBA’s best values this season.

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