Should the Miami Heat target Ben McLemore in free agency?

Arguments against signing Ben McLemore

As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie.

After four seasons, McLemore is a career 41.7 percent shooter from the field. Therefore, consistency has been a real issue in trying to establish himself as legitimate NBA player. Just last season, McLemore had 14 games where he scored two points or less, including eight scoreless games.

In fact, McLemore had 28 games where he scored just six points or less, averaging 2.8 points on 28.2 shooting from the field in 12.8 minutes per game. While the playing time was not always there, this represents a large of slice of the season in which McLemore has performed very much to the detriment of the team.

Although McLemore shot a career-best percentage from behind three, the rest of his offensive game still requires a lot of refinement. Last season, 77.2 percent of McLemore’s made field-goal’s came via an assist from a teammate. Considering he shot just 43.0 percent overall, the seemingly inability of McLemore to create his own shot, combined with a poor shooting percentage, certainly limits his effectiveness for the team at the end of the court.

Furthermore to that, McLemore shot at just a 19.2 percent clip between 5-9 feet from the rim. With just 40 percent of these shot’s assisted, this alone demonstrates McLemore’s lack of efficiency when creating his own shot.

And even dating back to his college days in Kansas, McLemore was viewed as being far from the finished product. Here’s a further excerpt from the Draft Express scouting report:

"….McLemore is very much a work in progress, as he seems to lack both the aggressiveness and ball-handling ability to make use of his impressive athleticism, and doesn’t possess a great feel for the game at this stage of his career. His points come mostly in transition, from spot-up jumpers on the wing, and finishing any plays his teammates can create for him at the rim. McLemore is a relatively inexperienced player relative to many of his peers, as he didn’t play high-level AAU basketball until last spring, and only transferred to a major basketball school such as Oak Hill a few months ago."

If you were to compile a scouting report from McLemore’s NBA career thus far, it wouldn’t look dissimilar to this one from four years ago. In essence, McLemore is a 24-year-old with a number of flaws.