If there was one major knock on Dion Waiters coming out of college it was that he was a shooting guard who wasn't a very good shooter. Sure, the numbers weren't bad, but he had poor shooting form which led to inconsistent performances. Bradley Beal and Harrison Barnes, on the other hand, were highly touted for their shooting.

So how is it that Dion has been the best rookie 3-pt shooter so far this year? Here are his game by game numbers:

vs. Wizards, 2/5 (40%)

vs. Bulls, 1/2 (50%)

@ Bucks, 1/2 (50%)

@ Clippers, 7/11 (64%)

@ Warriors, 2/5 (40%)

Total, 13/25 (52%)

5 games, each one shooting 40% or better. If you look back at his college game logs he didn't ever have a 5 game stretch where he shot 40% or better in each game. His best stretch in college came over his final seven games:

vs. Louisville, 2/3 (67%)

vs. UConn, 1/3 (33%)

vs. Cincinnati, 7/10 (70%)

vs. UNC Ashville, 1/5 (20%)

vs. Kansas State, 1/2 (50%)

vs. Wisconsin, 1/1 (100%)

vs. Ohio State, 0/1 (0%)

Total, 13/25 (52%)

So, over his last 12 competitive games he is shooting 52% from long range. There were a couple of poor games during that stretch in college, but nothing terrible. Moreover, if you eliminate both of the games he made 7 treys in he would still be shooting 41%. Not too bad.

That brings up some questions: How did this happen? Is it simply random luck that will even out, or can we expect more of this kind of shooting?

Someone over at the Syracuse blog mentioned that it looks like Dion has fixed his footwork on his jumper. At Syracuse Dion would often kick his right leg on his jump shot (check out the jumper at 2:39 in this video).

In this video (vs. Clippers) his footwork looks much better.

It seems like Dion has really been working on that part of his game. Based on what I've seen I think he has a good chance to keep up this level of play and shoot around 40% on the year. What do you guys think?