Sam Hauser, corner-3 specialist
What a clean specialist's shot chart actually looks like.
Thesis
Sam Hauser is the cleanest current example of a one-skill role player whose entire value depends on the system around him. His shot chart is the textbook visualization of the modern specialist archetype, and it's also a reminder that the same chart on the wrong roster would not look efficient at all.
Hypothesis
A chart this concentrated would be ineffective on most teams. Its value depends entirely on a system that engineers a high frequency of clean, open corner looks, exactly what the Celtics' five-out spacing reliably produces. Drop the same shot profile on a roster without elite drive creation and the open corners disappear, the volume drops, and the conversion rate collapses with it.
Data
- Three-point attempts as share of total
- very high (~85%+)
- Corner-3 + above-break share of his threes
- dominant
- Mid-range volume
- almost zero
Commentary
What Hauser's chart shows is striking precisely because of what isn't on it. The big hexes are clustered in three places: the two corners and along the above-the-break arc. Inside the three-point line, the chart goes almost entirely quiet, small hexes at the rim from cuts and broken plays, almost nothing in the floater range, almost nothing from the mid-range. He doesn't attack the lane. He doesn't pull up. He spaces, he relocates, he shoots when the kickout comes.
The color tracks his role. The corners are warm because the looks the Celtics generate for him are mostly catch-and-shoot off drive collapses, wide-open, on-rhythm threes, the type of shot any rotation NBA shooter will hit at a high clip when allowed to take it cleanly. The above-the-break hexes are smaller but still warm, because the same spacing principles that create his corner looks also create relocation threes when defenders close out and recover poorly.
This is the role: Hauser stands in a high-EV spot, the offense engineers a clean look, he shoots it. There is no creation requirement. No isolation burden. No mid-range bailout shots for a possession the offense couldn't finish. It's a perfect fit because the team around him has the drive creation (Tatum, Brown, Pritchard pulling defenders out of rotations) and the spacing discipline to keep him available.
The instructive part is the negative read. The same chart on a worse roster would look thin. Without drive gravity collapsing the defense, the corner kickouts never come, Hauser would be standing in the right spot but never getting the ball. Without spacing discipline from his teammates, defenders would help off him to bracket the ball-handler, and the few looks he did get would be contested. His value isn't just his shot. It's his shot times the system's ability to generate the right looks for it.
This is the lesson that gets lost in role-player evaluation. Shooting percentages travel poorly across systems. A 40%+ corner-3 shooter on a five-out roster might be a 35% corner-3 shooter on a half-court team that can't manufacture open looks. The Celtics aren't lucky to have Hauser, they're the only team where his particular skill compounds the way it does.
Conclusion
Hauser is the proof of the corner-3 era. A player whose entire value is built around being available in the highest-EV spots a modern offense can manufacture, and whose chart shows exactly that. The chart wouldn't work everywhere. It works because the system is built to find him.
Try it
Pull up Hauser's actual chart on the players page → and check the corner footprint. Then click into one of the Celtics' lead drivers and notice how their drive-heavy chart is the upstream cause of his corner-heavy one.