Eric Gordon. Sharpshooter, assister, lover

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In his eighth season in the league, Gordon has focused more on being a sharpshooter, and his extra practice has paid dividends–he’s second in the NBA in 3-point percentage at 46.1 percent, behind only vaunted marksman Kyle Korver. Gordon told Epoch Times that he identified a need on the team in the offseason and strove to fill it, practicing his already-solid outside shot even more than usual. “I went into the season wanting to do something different that our team hasn’t been doing, and that’s making a lot of three-point shots,” he said. “Because we have a lot of guys that can get to the rim, get to the basket, but we don’t have very many that can make a lot of threes.”

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“I’ve always been a pretty good shooter,” he said. “Thing is, I’ve liked to play a well-balanced game, where I do a little bit of both [driving and shooting] but this year I’ve shot more threes than I normally have and definitely been hitting them more.” Gordon is taking five 3-pointers a game, up from four a season ago; and about six 2-pointers a game, down from about nine a season ago. That means 46 percent of his shots are now from long range. Gordon is particularly good at shooting after receiving a pass, or catch-and-shoot opportunities, from both behind and inside the 3-point line. He has a 70.6 Effective Field Goal Percentage, or a percentage adjusted for 3-pointers being more valuable than 2-pointers, according to the NBA’s SportVU tracking cameras. That percentage is third in the league among players above a minimum number of points, behind only Korver and Gordon’s teammate Luke Babbitt. Almost every 3-pointer that Gordon makes–93 out of every 100–are assisted by one of his teammates.

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Gordon is in an interesting position in terms of his contract, having a $15.5 million player option for next season. The shooting guard said that the recent update on the cap–how it won’t be “smoothed,” and instead jump by tens of millions after next season–presents “good timing,” seeming to hint that he’d opt in. But he would not answer definitively. “It’s all about finishing up this season and see what happens,” he said. So he hasn’t decided yet? “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s been good here, we’ve been getting better each year, and this team can only go uphill, I would say.” So he’s leaning toward opting in? “It’s either/or,” he said. “I mean, this year’s been a great year, been an exciting year. I know what the future holds here.”

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In his efforts to prevent future injuries, he traveled to Germany during the All-Star break to get some treatments. He’s been going there for about two years now. “It was good, over there they really just get back to basics with things,” he said. “They did some helpful things over there. They give you treatments, and then they also give you exercises that you should do that will re-align your body all back together. “They look at your overall body, they don’t just look at the problem, like how we do in America where if it’s a knee problem we only focus on the knee, whereas when you’re over there you’re focused on everything else besides the injury, or just focus on other things that are not the main problem.”

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