12 players making an efficiency leap in the NBA this season

The first quarter of every NBA season is a blast because there’s so much to learn. We’re creeping up on the 20-game mark for most teams, which means we’re starting to feel a little more grounded in our new evaluations of players, teams, and coaches – although plenty can still change.

Sample sizes at the player level are still small, but they’re not infinitesimal anymore. We can feel better about directional reads on where they’ve improved (or where they haven’t).

In today’s numbers-driven NBA, efficiency is king. We wanted to look at who has optimized their shot diet and leveled up their shotmaking compared to previous years to become a more effective scoring option. I looked at everyone in Basketball-Reference’s qualifying list of players from this year and last year and narrowed it down to players who have attempted at least 7.5 shots per game this season, leaving me with a pool of 119 players. Below are the 12 (the top decile) with the biggest jump in true shooting percentage (TS%).

We’re not at the point where these things are capital-T truths yet; a whole lot of the season still has to go on, and not everyone on this list will remain here if we re-run the exercise at the end of the year. But these players have made such significant jumps that it has to mean something, even if they come back to Earth eventually.

Josh Hart (New York)

2025 PPG: 14.0

2025 TS%: 70.0%

2024 TS%: 52.2%

Change in TS%: +17.8%

Did you know that Josh Hart leads the league in two-point percentage? (If you follow me on X or Bluesky, you do!). Well, he does, at 73.3 percent. That’s an insane number, even for someone who has traditionally excelled around the rim. It’s a huge difference from last season when he tied a career-low with 51.1 percent on twos. New York’s surprising plethora of shooters has opened up runways to the rim for the always-revving Hart.

Hart has an unusual mix of motor, burst, and craft:

He’s equally adept at cutting off-ball as grabbing it off the rim and sprinting 90 feet for a layup. With the defense focused on Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, and Jalen Brunson (“He is finally passing the ball, so that is a good sign,” Hart smirked about Brunson a few days ago), Hart is often guarded by a player either too small or too slow to impede him.

Hart has complimented his inside game with a surprising 37 percent from deep on more than three triples per game. Add it all up, and Hart’s 70 percent TS% is a Top 10 mark in the league.

Ochai Agbaji (Toronto)

2025 PPG: 12.2

2025 TS%: 64.9%

2024 TS%: 49.7%

Change in TS%: +15.2%

Ochai Agbaji, admittedly, isn’t the sexiest name on this list, and we don’t blame you if you haven’t watched much of the injury-riddled Raptors this season but he’s revitalized his career in a new country. 12 points per game on 60/46/70 shooting splits (not that he ever shoots free throws) is a heck of a role-player line.

Agbaji has ramped up his defense, too, to the tune of 1.2 steals per game. Although that’s not part of this analysis, it is a key consideration as to how he’s maintained his spot in the rotation even as the Raptors have finally started getting healthier.

Christian Braun (Denver)

2025 PPG: 16.2

2025 TS%: 68.3%

2024 TS%: 55.4%

Change in TS%: +12.9%

Kentavious who?

Christian Braun has been a seamless fit in the Nuggets starting unit this season. He’s defending hard, making his (scant) threes, and whirring around Nikola Jokic like a hummingbird darting around a feeder. Now you see him, now you don’t:

This isn’t really a fair comparison, but it’s impossible not to notice that the guy he replaced, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, has had nearly a 10% drop in true shooting percentage this year.

Braun is playing nearly twice as many minutes this season as last season, which has juiced his counting stats. But it’s very rare to see players increase both their volume and their efficiency like this. Whatever Braun lacks in shooting, he more than makes up for in hyperactivity – and nobody rewards clever cutters like Jokic.

Nikola Vucevic (Chicago)

2025 PPG: 20.4

2025 TS%: 66.1%

2024 TS%: 54.0%

Change in TS%: +12.1%

Surprise! While the Bulls are mired in another mediocre season, at least their big man in the middle is having a renaissance.

Vucevic is shooting less often but scoring far more. He’s rediscovered his jumper, and the resulting shot chart looks like someone spilled dark ink all over their desk. He’s on fire from everywhere!

Truthfully, I have less of a handle on why Vucevic is en fuego than I do for anyone else on this list, and that makes me a bit skeptical that it will stick for the whole season. But hey, it’s hard to argue with what he’s been doing so far! Vooch is setting career-highs from nearly everywhere on the floor. I’m not sure he’s missed his little push floater all season:

Chris Paul (San Antonio)

2025 PPG: 10.6

2025 TS%: 62.1%

2024 TS%: 54.4%

Change in TS%: +7.7%

Chris Paul’s surface-level percentages don’t do his jump justice. He’s shooting the exact same from distance as last year (37.1 percent), and his overall FG% has only risen from 44.1 percent to 45.6 percent.

But he’s taking 64 percent of his shots from deep this season (only 44 percent last year), and he’s also a perfect 29-for-29 from the charity stripe. True shooting loves free throws.

The scoring is all Thanksgiving gravy, anyway. Paul’s real impact has been setting up the Spurs on both sides of the ball to maximize their talent – on/off numbers are still very noisy, but the Spurs are +15.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court than off. Even Paul-less Spurs lineups anchored by Wembanyama are getting absolutely decimated, proving that the Point God is driving a lot of team's success this season. 

The increased efficiency, of course, can only help. If teams respect Paul more as a scorer, things will be easier for Wemby and the rest of the Spurs.

Cameron Johnson (Brooklyn)

2025 PPG: 17.9

2025 TS%: 65.6%

2024 TS%: 58.2%

Change in TS%: +7.4%

The first of two Nets on this list, Cameron Johnson has been a beneficiary of first-year head coach Jordi Fernandez’s excellent offensive system.

Brooklyn features two guards in Dennis Schroeder and the recently-injured Cam Thomas who excel at getting two feet into the paint and spraying out to shooters like Johnson (both players are Top 20 in drives per game), and Brooklyn as a whole is sixth in the league in passes per game.

Passes aren’t necessarily correlated with offensive success (Boston and Dallas, for example, routinely rank near the bottom), but they are a good sign for catch-and-shoot artists like Johnson.

Johnson deserves plenty of credit for himself, too. He’s nailing 42 percent of his triples on nearly eight per game, and he’s also crossed the 60 percent mark from two-point territory, which would be a career-high. He can attack sloppy closeouts and get into the paint for floaters and short jumpers when necessary.

Jordan Poole (Washington)

2025 PPG: 20.3

2025 TS%: 60.2%

2024 TS%: 52.9%

Change in TS%: +7.3%

An underrated storyline of the season is that the much-maligned Jordan Poole has actually been pretty good.

The eye-catching part is that he’s shooting 43 percent from deep after canning just a third of his triples last season. Some of these are nearly LaMelo Ball-levels of ludicrous:

But a deeper look reveals something almost as interesting: Poole isn’t settling for mid-rangers and is getting to the rim at career-best rates –  31 percent of his attempts at the rack is an above-average positional mark. Transforming a bunch of 12-footers into two-footers will do wonders for your efficiency.

Poole is turning it over a ton this year, but he has also become a better playmaker and more effortful defender (to an extent). Washington’s on-court play has been hideous, but Poole doesn’t bear nearly as much blame for that this season.

Jaren Jackson Jr. (Memphis)

2025 PPG: 22.2

2025 TS%: 62.3%

2024 TS%: 55.2%

Change in TS%: +7.1%

The Grizzlies really are something else, aren’t they?

Star guard Ja Morant has shuffled in and out of the lineup. They’ve been bedeviled by the cursed injury imp yet again. Desmond Bane has forgotten how to shoot, and Marcus Smart has been demoted in favor of a rookie.

It hasn’t mattered, as a rag-tag bunch of scrappy try-hards like Scotty Pippen Jr. and Jay Huff have helped keep Memphis not merely afloat but straight-up soaring.

There have been so many storylines in Memphis, both good and ill, that Jackson Jr.’s resurgent season hasn’t really made waves. The big man clearly learned some lessons as the alpha scorer for the Grizzlies hospital ward last year, and he’s been able to dramatically increase his efficiency this season (particularly in the paint).

Last year, JJJ often looked flustered trying to score in a crowd, forcing bad shot after bad shot. This year, however, with more talent around him, JJJ has looked far more in control attacking the basket:

JJJ’s inside game is still very floater-dependent, which always makes me a little nervous. But despite all their travails, the Grizzlies are still competing for home-court advantage in the West. Their unicorn is a big reason why.

Dorian Finney-Smith (Brooklyn)

2025 PPG: 10.7

2025 TS%: 61.6%

2024 TS%: 54.6%

Change in TS%: +7.0%

Everything we wrote above about Cam Johnson holds for Dorian Finney-Smith, too, although his jump in efficiency is almost solely due to hitting more threes: he’s up to 42 percent this season after hitting just 35 percent last year. Given that his previous career-high was just under 40 percent back when he had Luka Doncic spoon-feeding him shots, that feels unsustainable.

Finney-Smith has played a surprising amount of center this season for the Nets, which often gives him a little more room on the perimeter to get up shots.

Look for Brooklyn to ship out Finney-Smith and Johnson sooner rather than later, as both players have done a tremendous job of increasing their trade value this season.

Payton Pritchard (Boston)

2025 PPG: 14.8

2025 TS%: 66.4%

2024 TS%: 59.7%

Change in TS%: +6.7%

Payton Pritchard’s breakout performance this year shouldn’t surprise anyone who paid attention last season; it simply felt like a matter of opportunity. As with Braun above, Pritchard hasn’t simply maintained his efficiency as he shouldered a bigger load; he’s dramatically improved it.

Nearly 80 percent of his shots come from deep, and he hunts triples with the aggressiveness of a dragonfly – and he’s about as big as one, too.

Pritchard has shot his way into favorite status for Sixth Man of the Year, and if he keeps up the barrage, he’ll bring home the hardware.

Bennedict Mathurin (Indiana)

2025 PPG: 18.6

2025 TS%: 62.8%

2024 TS%: 56.2%

Change in TS%: +6.6%

Tyrese Haliburton’s struggles have overshadowed Bennedict Mathurin’s bounce-back year, but the 22-year-old deserves some shine nonetheless.

Although he’s shooting roughly the same number of shots as before on a per-minute basis, Mathurin has improved his three-point percentage significantly for the third time in three years – nearly 42 percent this season, up from 37 percent last season and 32 percent his rookie year. He’s also remembered how to draw fouls (nearly six free throws per game) and is shooting a career-high from two-point range, thanks to vastly improved finishing craft – look at the elongated step to throw OG Anunoby out of rhythm here:

Mathurin’s exciting rookie campaign set expectations high, and his disappointing sophomore season didn’t come close to meeting them. But in his third year, Mathurin has seemingly figured something out. His flaws haven’t changed much – he still doesn’t pass much, seems to predetermine his actions too far ahead of time, and forgets how to play defense regularly –  but he has earned playing time thanks to vastly improved work on the boards (seven rebounds per game and a 16 percent defensive rebounding rate are superb marks for a wing) and his efficient offense.

We're not sure what Mathurin’s ceiling really is, given that he hasn’t improved all that much at the things he’s bad at. But he has pronounced and valuable strengths that should only sharpen as he gets stronger and wiser.

Amen Thompson (Houston)

2025 PPG: 11.9

2025 TS%: 64.1%

2024 TS%: 57.6%

Change in TS%: +6.5%

Did we choose 12 players to highlight because it was the top decile of the sample or because it allowed us to include Amen Thompson?

Thompson has technically made strides on his three-point percentage, but he’s shooting just one per game. He’s also improved his finishing at the rim (from 67 percent to 73 percent), from floater range (37 percent→46 percent), and at the free throw line (68 percent to 73 percent, plus a jump in volume).

This is precisely the sort of skill improvement we hope to see from every second-year player. Thompson shooting 30 percent from three on negligible volume isn’t a game-changer, but his ability to go from good to great at scoring around the paint despite his lack of a jumper is hugely important for his offensive viability.

Intriguingly, Thompson has seemingly figured out how to play off Alperen Sengun. Lineups with the pair are outscoring opponents by +20.4 points per 100 possessions after getting run off the court together last season, and that newfound chemistry changes everything for his future trajectory.

Thompson is one of the most intriguing players in the NBA, with some of the most extreme strengths and weaknesses in the league. If his year-two improvement is anything to go by, this Rocket might be hitting escape velocity even sooner than we anticipated.

If you enjoyed this piece, you may be interested (or not!) to know that I write about the NBA at large a couple of times per week at the best-selling Substack, Basketball Poetry. Hope to see you there!

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: 12 players making an efficiency leap in the NBA this season