Does Dajuan Harris Need To Shoot More?
There's one player on the Kansas Jayhawks that has been more polarizing than any other, and if you read the headline for this article, you probably know who I'm talking about.
There are a lot of complaints that get thrown out onto the internet when the Jayhawks lose a game, but the one that I hear all the time is some variation "You have to get Dajuan Harris out of there" or "Harris isn't as good as Martin/Yesufu, why does he play so much"?
Ultimately, Harris is the victim of comparison. Kansas fans have been blessed to watch some fantastic point guards man the position over the last few years, including Frank Mason, Devonte Graham and Marcus Garrett. Each of these players was a lock-down defender that could take an individual scorer on the opposing team out of the game entirely. Harris is a good defender in the system, but he's not quite quick enough to do that on his own.
The knock on Garrett was always his unwillingness to shoot when he was wide open, especially when Harris was also out on the floor. Harris is similar, in that he appears focus more on assists than points. And I agree that when defenses don't consider him to be a threat, they sag on defending him, which creates space issues for the rest of the offense.
But where I disagree is with the statement that he needs to actually be shooting more. Instead, he just needs to be a THREAT to shoot. That means taking shots when he is so wide open that it is a guaranteed good look.
He started to change that against Texas on Monday. If you look at the box score, he only took 7 shots. But 5 of those were 3-pointers, the first few of which were wide open looks where the defense tried to sag off him and help elsewhere. After the first 3 of these, Texas started defending him much more honestly, which opened things up for everyone else.
And honestly, when you really think about it, how much do you ACTUALLY want Harris to be shooting? When you have shooters such as Ochai Agbaji, Christian Braun and Jalen Wilson on the team, plus David McCormack on the inside, you don't really want one of the go-to options to be Harris, unless they just leave him wide open for something. And once he starts showing that willingness to shoot consistently, the attention he gets will open things up even more for the better shooters on the team.
Join the discussion! Come talk about this or any of our articles on the Blue Wing Rising Discord Server.
