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The numbers don’t show it, and at times neither does the eye test, but Dalen Terry’s outside shooting is making strides forward.
Which in Terry’s world forward is much better than missing left or right.
That’s where the Arizona product was last season, fundamentally broken with a guide hand that set up too far on the side of the ball. The results were a three-point shooting percentage of 25.9% with some really ugly misses.
“The biggest thing we’ve tried to work with him on was the consistency of where it’s not missing left, it’s not missing right, where there’s at least is it long, is it short?” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said of Terry. “Those things are more correctable. When you start missing left or right, generally that’s a mechanical issue. That’s where the focus has been on him.”
Starting right after his rookie season ended and then helped along with the addition of shooting coach Peter Patton to the staff in the summer.
But even with all that work there’s still some unflattering moments. That’s evident by the fact that Terry entered Monday’s game against the Wizards still struggling from three-point range and doing so at an even worse tick than last season (24.1%).
Not that it’s unexpected.
“I think the biggest thing we’ve tried to work on with him is I think when these guys get to be 19, 20 years old, it’s really hard to do like a total shot reconstruction because now what happens is a guy is completely unfamiliar with his shot,” Donovan said. “You try to make tweaks.”
It helps that Terry is a willing participant.
“I definitely believe it’s going to be a real big offseason for me, just taking care of my shot,” Terry said. “I think I’ve made some real big steps just in this season, just working with Coach Patton. “It’s really just a control thing. Like Coach said, it was a left-right thing at first and that’s a problem. Now that it’s a short or long thing we can work with that. It’s just touch at that point. Like I know when it’s going in now, I know when it’s short or long. Before when it was left or right that would kind of mess with my head.
“(Changing it) was tough at first but it got to the point where I had to tell myself, ‘If I want to be as great as I think I can be, I know this is something I really need to do.’ “
On the Ball
Donovan had no new news to report on the Lonzo Ball rehabilitation front, besides the fact that the injured point guard (left knee) was still sprinting and cutting with no setbacks.
As far as a timetable of when they would try getting him on the floor for some actual full-contact basketball? That seemed still a ways off.
“He goes in and gets his work done, and he’ll shut down,” Donovan said of the process. “There’s no, as they say, wasted calories so to speak. He is running and doing all those things, but in terms of him getting to play I think that will be a slow process getting him back to. Not that he’s behind anyway, it’s more of just being cautious in terms of understanding that we’re moving into April, and the hope is that he’ll have August and September.”
Ball was expected back in Chicago to meet with the medical staff as early as next week.
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