Defenses are still guarding who you were last season

Shooting reputations decay far more slowly than shooting ability, and the gap between the two is where offenses live.

Reputation lags. A forward shoots badly for eleven months and defenders still close out to him at full speed, because the scouting report they internalised was written two seasons ago and because nobody wants to be the man who left him open on the clip shown in tomorrow's film session.

That lag is an asset and teams should treat it like one. If your fourth option is respected beyond his current output, run him off the ball as a decoy in the ball screen, because the low man will honour him and the roll lane opens. If your fourth option has lost that respect, stop pretending. Move him to the dunker spot and use him as a body, since a defender who is willing to stand two steps off him has effectively been given a free extra man.

The mistake I see repeatedly is treating gravity as a fixed property. It is not. It is other people's belief about you, and belief updates slowly and unevenly. Some defenders update within a game because they watch and adjust. Others carry an old model for a whole season. A team that scouts individual defenders rather than team schemes can find genuine value here, and I would guess the better staffs already do, quietly.

There is an asymmetry that matters too. Belief goes up faster than it comes down for a young player with a small sample and a good week, because there is no strong prior to contradict. It comes down slowly for an established shooter, since everyone assumes the slump is noise. So the most exploitable person on the floor is often a veteran in year one of a real decline, and the most overrated defensive assignment is the rookie who made five in a row on television.

None of this appears in a shooting percentage. It appears in closeout distance, which is measurable if you have the tracking feed and invisible if you do not.

Gravity is not what you can do. It is what the man guarding you has not yet accepted.