Patterson’s path to 3-point specialist began in Houston
The Rockets put
Patrick Patterson on the perimeter, and he was wide-open-minded.
The Oklahoma City forward, who started his career in Houston and will play there Saturday for the first time as a Thunder, didn’t hesitate when Kevin
McHale, his coach with the Rockets, told him to focus on 3-point shooting.
It went a lot better than the first time somebody tried to make a perimeter player out of Patterson.
That was John Calipari, hired at Kentucky before Patterson’s junior year there. Calipari arrived with a top-ranked recruiting class and a notion that Patterson would be best suited facing the basket.
Patterson’s reaction at the time?
“‘No,’ pretty much,” Patterson said.
For as long as Patterson had been playing basketball, he’d been doing it with his back to the basket. In his first two seasons at Kentucky, he’d gone a combined 0 for 4 from 3-point range.
“So my first initial reaction was no, but just seeing (Calipari’s) resume and what he’s done before and the success that he’s had with certain individuals, he pretty much opened my eyes up to what I am now,” Patterson said. “I definitely have him to be thankful (for the) change in my game.”
The Rockets nurtured that change.
Like at Kentucky, Patterson was primarily a low-post player for two years in the NBA, going a combined 0 for 5 from 3-point range. But after Patterson’s second season, McHale “pretty much told me that he wanted me to work on nothing but 3s in the summertime,” Patterson said.
“That’s obviously the way, the direction the NBA was headed towards at that time, a lot of shooting fours, a lot of small fours spacing the court out,” Patterson said.
In his third season with the Rockets, Patterson took 96 3-pointers in 47 games before Houston traded him to Sacramento. Over the past six seasons, he’s averaged 2.9 3-point attempts per game. That number has spiked to 3.3 per game over the past three years. This season, 64 percent of Patterson's shot attempts are 3-pointers.
Though the Rockets dealt Patterson, he said he still has connections to the franchise.
“It’s always cool going back to Houston because that is where I started,” Patterson said. “That is where I began my career. So, no weird feelings. It always just feels good in general.”
Working through it
After the Thunder wrapped practice on Thursday, Paul George put in some work behind the 3-point line. He gave up the ball, got it back and launched. He took a hard dribble and stepped back into a 3.
It was the sort of effort Billy Donovan encouraged from George. The Thunder coach said he told George “the more you can generate game-speed shots into your routine,”the better it’ll be for finding a rhythm.
George “was getting the work in” before and after practice, said Donovan, who added that he hasn’t seen any mechanical issue in George’s shot.
“I feel like elite scorers — it’s probably like Tiger Woods,” Donovan said. “No one knows his golf swing better him, and Paul George, no one knows his shot better than him. No one knows the experiences he’s gone through or maybe he’s gone through some ups and downs throughout the course of the season where he’s hasn’t shot the ball well. He’ll work his way out of it.”
They got the beat
As the Thunder got up jump shots and worked on post moves Thursday, a playlist of mostly 1990s rap and R&B blasted at the practice facility.
There were songs from Nas, Onyx, 2Pac and Bobby
Brown.
It’s a post-practice rarity, but the Thunder does occasionally have musical accompaniment. Patterson assumed that Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony or George handled the musical selections.
“Right now, with what’s playing I’m going to go with Melo,” Patterson said.
Donovan was not consulted.
“This is not going on in practice,” Donovan said. “But after practice, if these guys are working, I have no problem with it. But I don’t DJ it.”