Mike Conley - Savvy Scorer

Mike Conley Jr. is easily the most successful, least decorated NBA player in the league today. With a whopping ZERO All-Star berths, the only NBA honors he has to his name so far are 2 NBA Sportsmanship Awards (2014, 2016), and an NBA All-Defensive Second Team nod in 2013. During the 2016-17 campaign, he upped his scoring, going from a career 13.6 points per game to 20.5 ppg, while shooting a career best from the field (45.9%) and 3 point land (40.8%, good for 18th best in the entire league). He did all this en route to becoming the Memphis Grizzlies’ all-time leading scorer, and notching the highest scoring total in a playoff game in franchise history. He is also Memphis’ all-time assist leader, all-time steals leader, and holds the record for both most games and most minutes played for the Griz. In addition to all of that, in his 676 games across 10 seasons, and his 56 playoff appearances, he has NEVER registered a technical foul (he was assessed one in 2014, but that was overturned by the league); Conley might just be the king of cool.

Mike might make people a little uneasy when they see he’s a left handed player (that is with which hand he shoots the ball on jump shots anyway) taking those crazy looking right handed floaters, but frankly, his floater is phenomenal. It should be noted that while he does play lefty, he’s a righty outside of basketball, so naturally, the carryover is there. He’s also adept at adapting to contact and adjusting his shots to get around, squeeze by, duck under, or ARC OVER any and every defender. He’s got the poise, power, and proficiency to finish ambidextrously through contact. Conley’s bag of tricks is underrated (a word you’ll hear associated with him often), and the Buckeye’s basketball IQ is through the roof. His jail dribble, jab series, and prime time pump fakes and hesitations are often sequenced together in such a way that there is no way a defender can really be on balance trying to stay in front of him. It’s clear that Conley’s first look is to find his teammates, but as you will be able to see from this video, he’ll give you buckets.

This video is about all his exploits leading up to the 2016-17 season. I am actually a little embarrassed because I promised this video a LONG LONG time ago, but I thought I lost all the footage I had cobbled together. It turns out, I had tucked away a backup of a backup, but that’s not important now. The video is here, to be paired alongside two other videos: a sharpshooter/separation video (focusing on his newfound aggression on offense) and a video focusing on his fantastic finishing (I was debating just doing a video on his off-hand finishes, because this guy is a righty wonder, but I figured why not throw some other stuff in there, just for the fun of it). So, none of these clips are from this latest season (16-17), but this should make for good viewing nonetheless.