Dunk Base

What exactly is a chucker in the NBA?

A chucker is a guy who takes a lot of ill-advised shots and is more of a volume shooter than anything else offensively.  There are good chuckers and there are bad chuckers.  A good chucker is a guy who makes a lot of those ill-advised shots while a bad chucker takes the ill-advised shots and tends to do more harm than good.

Good chuckers in this league would be guys like Kevin Durant, Kevin Martin and Ben Gordon.  Bad chuckers in this league are guys like Stephen Jackson, Larry Hughes and Jannero Pargo.

Don't confuse a chucker from a pure shooter.  For instance, Ray Allen is a pure shooter.  He typically does not take ill-advised shots and plays within his team's system.  Allen is actively involved in the team's offensive dynamics.  If he has to spot-up shoot, he'll do it.  If he is forced to create his own shot, he'll do it.  But Ray typically does not randomly create his own shot when out of sync with the rest of the offense.

Kevin Durant does do those things.  If he gets the ball in his hands, he's a lot more likely than the average player to try to quickly shoot the ball instead of gauging how the rest of the offense is set up.  He puts his agenda forward based on his winning mentality.  In his case, that's not that big a deal.  Why?  Because he's darn good at shooting the rock.  His team can afford him to act out of selfishness because his actions help them win.  He doesn't get called out that often for being a chucker these days because of how he's improved his franchise and his rising stardom in the media and with the everyday fans.  But how quickly people forget how much of a chucker he was considered as a rookie!  That label was just removed within the last couple of years.

In other words, Durant can afford to throw the ball up because he's helping his team moreso than hurting it when he does so.  A guy like Stephen Jackson chucks shots at a low percentage of success.  And while he may average roughly 21 ppg, he's not efficient at all with his shooting when he's hitting those shots at a clip of 42.3%.  So it's not so much of the number of shots a player shoots, it's how they shoot it.  And just because you take ill-advised shots does not mean that you're a bad player.  It only means you're not that great a player if you don't tend to make those shots.  And in Durant's case, he's a good chucker, not a bad one.