Brandon Rush: What Needs to Improve

Written by Evan Massey

I’ve been thinking about Brandon and thought about the things that I’ve seen he needs to improve on if he ever wants to become a good NBA player, and here they are.

1. Not Hesitating His Shot

This is one of the main reasons he was missing everything he shot short last season. A lot of the shots he took were good shots, and you can’t complain about them, but he would always think about the shot, think about what he wanted to do, then decide he should shoot and he would miss.

Basically the only way to really work on this is to have confidence (something I’ve heard almost every month of Brandon’s NBA career so far). If he were to just catch the ball and shoot the open shot seeing a made shot in his head, then he would make a lot more, and until he does start doing that, expect him to miss most of his shots like he has been doing.

2. Using His Athleticism to Finish Strong at Bucket

Once again, it’s something he doesn’t have confidence in yet, but has shown flashes of doing this very well. Rush has the ability to get by his defender, and get to the bucket, but half of the time when he accomplishes that, he tries to change his shot into a much more difficult look rather than just going strong to the bucket and finishing either over someone, or dunking the ball home. A guy I think he could learn how to do that from is Dahntay Jones.

Rush has the athletic ability to get the rim whenever he wants, and I think he does know it, he just has to get in the mindset that no one is going to stop him from putting the ball in the basket.

3. Fundamentals of Basketball/Free Throws

This is the third and final thing I’m going to point out about what Rush needs to improve in. First off the fundamentals part. Rush is a good ball handler, but he makes way too many mental errors such as floating passes across the middle, traveling, stepping out of bounds, and losing focus on easy shots and blowing them. He needs to slow himself down, and not try to force things, just let the game come to him.

As for the free throws part, he shot .629 % from the free throw stripe last season, and for a shooting guard/small forward who can get to the rim like he can, that’s not good enough. Unfortunately, the above paragraph means he didn’t get to the line as much as he should (only attempting 89 free throws, and making just 56), so that’s the final area I really see a big need to improve.

All that being said, I still think Rush has a shot to turn his career back around and make a name for himself in the NBA, he just needs to work on his game a little bit more, and not get flustered by defenses. If he improves in all of the areas that I just mentioned, even just a little bit, I could definitely see him being a solid starting shooting guard for us this season. On the other hand, if he comes into next year the same way that he ended this season, I have a feeling that he will, or at least should, lose his starting spot very quickly.

Thoughts?