New Orleans Pelicans’ Trey Murphy III reveals the secret to his shooting motion

The runner-up to the 2023 Slam Dunk Contest and one of the brightest cornerstones on the New Orleans Pelicans’ Trey Murphy III went on “The Old Man and the Three” podcast this week and had a chat with another former Pelican, JJ Redick.

Redick made a career out of being a dead-eye sniper, averaging 41.5% from three and draining 1,950 triples (currently 18th all-time) over the course of his fifteen-year NBA career.

Murphy’s game appears to be heading in a similar direction (although even Redick will gladly admit that Murphy’s game is much more versatile than he ever was). This past season, Murphy hit a total of 202 triples and shot 40.6% while doing it.

So naturally, with both of them being such incredible shooters, the topic of shooting mechanics came up. And good thing it did because Murphy revealed some interesting little wrinkles regarding the intricacies of his jumper.

"“For me, I shoot more of a…lower release from three, and with that, I’m shooting from farther. And when you are jumping really high, shooting really high, and shooting from far, the mechanics are just off. The rhythm and the cadence is just off for me. So, you’ll see a lot of people that shoot from deep, like Stephen [Curry] and Tyrese [Haliburton], they don’t jump that high. [That’s] because you don’t want to mess that [rhythm and cadence] up. You are using your legs, but you’re using a lot of arms as well. [But] then when you get in that midrange area – you’ll watch [Devin] Booker, and he’s the perfect example of this. He doesn’t jump a ton on his threes, but when he gets to his middys, he’s jumping, elevating…his release is really high. When you get into that midrange area, there’s a lot of people down there – there’s a lot of hands, a lot of contests – you can’t shoot a low shot unless your fading, and I’m not there yet, so I need to get up a bit higher [on my midrange jumpers].”"

To distill this a bit, what Murphy is talking about is how he doesn’t jump too much when he is shooting threes, but he elevates a ton when he is shooting midrange jumpers. This is a subtle thing that most people don’t really pick up on during the course of a game.

But as Murphy goes on to admit late in the interview, he’s constantly studying the great shooters around the league, and it’s because of this that he’s been able to add this nuance to his shooting arsenal. Now, it is only a matter of time until other NBA players are studying him.