Tobias Harris credits eye surgery for improved jumper
Tobias Harris, the leading scorer for the 9-3 Detroit Pistons, looks like a serious candidate to take one of the Eastern Conference All-Star spots vacated by Jimmy Butler, Paul George and Paul Millsap.
Harris’ field goal percentage is down slightly from last season, but his effective field goal percentage is at a career-high 57.3 percent, because he has cut down on his mid-range shots, is shooting almost 40 percent – a career-high mark by a wide margin – of his shots from 3-point range, and has made 49.3 percent of those threes. Through Saturday, only Portland’s C.J. McCollum (52.2 percent) has shot better on at least 50 attempts from beyond the arc.
Harris credits his improvement from long range on aggressiveness, improved mechanics, and improved vision, as James L. Edwards III writes for The Athletic…
“Letting it fly, for sure,” Harris told The Athletic about the secret to his 49.3-percent output from long range through 12 games this season. “Some other things, but we’ll talk about that later. I have to be consistent with it first before I talk about some other secrets, but there’s a couple other things that have gone into to help improve it.”
Eventually, though, he elaborated.
“The emphasis, really, is to get good raise on [the shot],” Harris said. “I also got LASIK eye surgery, which was able to help me get better vision.”
Until this summer, the 25-year-old Long Island, New York native said he had been a lifelong eye-lense wearer. And throughout last season — a year in which he shot 34.7 percent from three-point range, which is near his career average and just below the league’s average — Harris said he suffered “a couple of eye infections” due to sweat colliding with his lenses, ones he didn’t consistently swap, he added.
He consulted with an ophthalmologist and decided it was time to finally rid himself of his previous visual aides.
