Skill Spotlight: Carlton Carrington's Shot

Carlton Carrington, also known as Bub Carrington, has seen his stock rise throughout the 2024 NBA draft cycle thanks to two parts of his game: his passing and his shooting. He's one of the best passers in the draft – he finished with a 24.0% assist percentage and a 2.1 assist percentage, both indicative of an excellent decision-maker with the ball in his hands .

But Carrington's best skill is his shooting. Specifically, his pull-up shot, which is one of the best micro-skills in this draft class. He shot 50.9% on 116 mid-range pull-ups, or 3.4 attempts per game. And although he shot just 32.2 percent from three in his first season in Pittsburgh, including 32.1 percent on pull-up threes, there is some evidence to believe those percentages are improving.

The first piece of evidence is its age-appropriate combination of feel and volume. He has obvious elite touch with his mid-range pull-up excellence and solid floater game (19-38 on floaters dating back to 2021 in Synergy Sports' database) and shot the ball at a pace pupil ; 11.0 three-point attempts per 100 possessions. Touch and volume are both historically positive shooting indicators, and having the combination of both at 18 bodes well for his shot projection.

The second piece of evidence concerns his catch and shoot numbers. The 6-foot-4 guard shot 32.0 percent on 75 threes, but the numbers start to get even trickier with closer examination. According to Synergy, he shot 23.7% on unguarded threes and 40.5% on guarded threes, which deviates from the traditional norm of unguarded looks being easier than guarded looks .

This could be a product of variance, which could go two ways. Carrington made just 75 threes in total, including 37 guarded and 38 unguarded. With a relatively small sample size, he could be just as good at shooting unguarded catch-and-shoot jumpers as he is at guarded shooting. Or maybe the numbers kept were a fluke, and with a larger sample the percentage decreases and gets closer to the percentage not kept.

The first is more likely. With his mid-range excellence, overall touch and confident shooting, unguarded numbers are more likely to jump and guarded numbers can drop a bit and they can start to stabilize at a middle ground. Even if that's not the case, with that aforementioned combination of age-appropriate touch and volume, unsupervised jumpers are low-hanging fruit for improvement. And improvement means a huge increase in his 3PT% gross.

Carrington also shot 32.1% on 134 pull-up threes. But with his mid-range and guarded shooting at threes and his volume increasing from threes (3.9 attempts per game), that number likely won't improve in the NBA.

Overall, with Carrington's solid shot, touch, and volume at a young age, his shot has plenty of room for development in the NBA while already being a strength. Along with his excellent passing, any NBA team that selects him should be happy despite his finishing and defensive issues keeping him from lottery status.

Want to join the discussion? Like Draft Digest on Facebook and Follow us on twitter to stay up to date with all the latest NBA Draft news. You'll also get to meet the team behind the cover.