I usually will remind people closer to the season starting, but Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is one of the best beat writers in the country, and his phenomenal work as Marquette’s scribe deserves your support year round.
This morning, Ben put out a fantastic look at how Kam Jones has taken attacked this offseason to make the most of his senior season.
“He’s had his best offseason since he’s been here,” [Shaka] Smart said. “Honestly, Kam’s never been our best guy in the offseason. In the past. But he’s really matured this spring and summer.
There are so many great quotes from both Kam and Shaka in there, I really do think it’s a must read.
A True Unicorn
As content is hard to come by in the lean summer months, I took this article as a perfect excuse to do a little deep diving into what makes Kam such a special player. And despite being an outrageously good shooter, the trait that stands out the most for me is his ability to finish at the rim.
Here’s a list of all the high major players that matched or exceeded Kam’s efficiency at the rim in 2024, via Bart Torvik. Notice that every single comparable player below was at least 6’9″ and also Kam isn’t close to being 6’5″ no matter what Marquette wants to list him at.
To be able to be that efficient on shots at the rim with such high volumes, you have to be really big, there’s just no going around it. And yet Kam is definitely not.
So I had to dive into the last decade of comprable players, once more via Bart Torvik, to see how Kam compares historically.
Turns out there have been 124 individual seasons of high major players hitting at least 125 shots at the rim, with at least 66% accuracy on those attempts, about 12 a season. Of those 124 only 5 have been accomplished by players 6’5″ or under.
Again, it isn’t that there aren’t a lot of great guards over the last decade, it’s simply that being able to match volume and efficiency over a full season is incredibly rare. But wait there’s more.
I was curious about how Kam’s perimeter game fared against this subset of his elite-finishing peers, and as you would expect, he is in a class of his own. No other player has made over 70 3s while reaching these At The Rim thresholds, and as a whole, average just 11 makes a season at 33.1%.
Kam made 95! That’s good for 29 more than the next best (Kris Murray 2023, Keegan Murray 2022). And Kam did it at a 40.6% rate, which rates as the 6th best accuracy for those with double digit makes in this sample.
And one more thing.
One of the big knocks on Kam after his freshman season was his inability to get to the free throw line. Although he’s been better the past 2 season, he’s still not close to being “good” in this department. Of the 124 players here, Kam ranks dead last with a free throw rate of 16.2%, the only player under 20%.
(To be fair, part of the reason Kam is so incredibly good at the rim is he’s a wizard at contorting his body to avoid contact and finishing off the glass with english. But still, one of the best ways to grease efficiency at the rim is to take the more difficult, challenged attempts and have those misses not count in the stats if you do miss, by being sent to the charity stripe instead.)
Add all of this together and you get what may be my favorite data visualization in quite some time.
Kam is in his own atmosphere here.
Which is to say, over the past 10 years, we haven’t seen anything like Kam Jones at the high major level. I can’ wait for what his senior season may bring.
2025 Draft Stock
And because Kam has stated his goal is to be a lottery pick, we’ll use this space to start tracking those NBA prospects.
He’s currently at No. 22 in The Athletic.
And No. 52 at ESPN’s mock.
And because I will never tire of watching this…
Let Kam Jones SZN begin.
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