3 Most exciting takeaways from Spurs' back-to-back wins

Keldon Johnson is rediscovering his in-between game

To be blunt, it's no secret at this point that Keldon Johnson has been on one hell of a shooting slump. Since the Spurs' game against the Golden State Warriors on November 14, Johnson has shot 25% from beyond the arc on over 7 attempts per game, and up until recently, has really struggled to score at all as a result. In the span of games between the Spurs' matchup in San Francisco and their most recent loss to the Phoenix Suns, Johnson has only scored 16.5 points per game--just over 7 points per game less than the average of his first 12 games of the season (23.6).

I don't think Keldon's three-point shooting struggles are quite over yet (he missed both of his attempts against Miami), but he's beginning to return to form as an overall scorer because he's rediscovered his in-between game. In the same stretch of games mentioned above, he took 13.3 shots per game within 24 feet of the bucket (roughly within the 3-point line), while he took 15.5 shots in that range in his last two games. But the massive differentiator is that he shot the ball nearly 30% better in that same 24-foot range in his past two appearances (64.5%) compared to the previous stretch of 10 games (35.3%).

To put it more simply, Johnson is shooting more two-point shots than normal and he's making a lot more of them than he was during his dry stretch. This is far from the first time a young player has hit a "wall" in their development, but what these stats say is that Johnson is finding his way around the wall. His ability to get to the rim and finish--the reason many gave him the nickname 'Big Body' in the first place--is what will be key to him still being effective on the floor while he works to find his three-point shot again.