The mystery of road McDermott versus home McDermott

The Indiana Pacers signed Doug McDermott to shoot the three-ball, and that he does… well, in 29 of the 30 arenas.

Doug McDermott was signed by the Indiana Pacers for one overarching reason — he can shoot put the ball in the basket consistently from the area of the court where it is worth more points to do so.

McDermott is good at other things, but shooting is his main attraction. He’s hit over 40 percent of his bombs throughout his career, and he can get them up so quickly that he is an off-ball threat at all times. In the shooting department, he’s one of the best.

Just not at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, the arena that he plays half of his games in.

On the season, McDermott has hit 41 percent of his 3s, a very good percentage. At home, though, in front of a familiar crowd and on a familiar hoop, he’s not the knockdown shooter that the numbers suggest. In fact, at home, he isn’t even a good shooter.

In 33 games at home, Mcbuckets has hit 31% of his 3s. Thirty-one percent! For reference, that would be about 5% below league average and would make McDermott the 317th most accurate shooter in the NBA from deep (as of Match 20).

Yet on the road, on unfamiliar baskets and in front of foreign crowds, Dougie is money. He’s canned 49.5 percent of his bombs in opposing buildings, a percentage that would be near the top of the league if he could do it every game.

This phenomenon makes no sense to me. On his career, it actually holds a small amount of weight. In 163 career home games, McDermott has hit 38.8 percent from deep. In 168 road games, he’s hit 42.1 percent. Apparently, home court advantage has the opposite effect on McDermott.

This season had been far more extreme, though. Our own Ben Pfeifer had a theory on Twitter yesterday.

Perhaps some players have some issues with depth perception on certain courts. If you want to read more about this, there’s some research on it here.

Because it is a career trend for McDermott and not just a Pacers one, I doubt it has anything to do with any specific arena. It is probably just a flukey thing, to be honest. But it is a potential explanation to a wild statistical phenomenon.

Mark Monteith recently asked McD about it for Pacers.com. “I don’t know,” McDermott told Monteith of his mysterious splits. “I usually look at overall and not get too hung up on the home and road.”

So, Doug McDermott doesn’t know why and we don’t know why. That basically means it’s an unsolvable mystery. But it’s still incredibly interesting and worth monitoring for the rest of the season, if not for any reason other than for fun.

McDermott’s net rating at home is actually better than on the road, so it looks like he does other stuff well in BLF for the Indiana Pacers. But his shooting splits are comical. For consistency purposes, hopefully, they normalize. But for the purpose of interest, hopefully, they don’t.