If there’s one thing Josh Richardson is good at, it’s playing basketball in the month of March.
Former Vol Josh Richardson is making a name for himself in the NBA with the Miami Heat right now, providing highlight after highlight night in and night out. But it’s not just electrifying dunks or timely threes; Richardson is consistently producing every game as a rookie in the month of March.
Richardson is averaging 12.4 points per game for the Heat in March after averaging just 3.2 points a game in the previous four months combined. And a large part of the reason Richardson has turned it on this month is due to his insane accuracy from beyond the three-point arc.
In the month of March, Richardson has connected on 62.8 percent of his three-pointers. And that’s not because he’s only shot a handful of threes; no, Richardson has attempted 43 threes in March and has made 27 of them. For reference, Steph Curry’s best month of three-point accuracy this season was 53.6 percent in February.
Richardson had two double-digit scoring games in the 29 games he played in before this month. He has six such games in 12 games this March.
But if you watched Richardson before he made it to the NBA, then his torrid pace in the month of March should come as no surprise.
Richardson first burst onto the scene in March of 2014 in the NCAA Tournament for the Vols when he averaged 19.3 points in Tennessee’s four tournament games. Richardson had averaged just 9.2 points in the Vols’ previous 33 games that season.
And despite the team having less success overall in the 2014-15 season, Richardson’s performance in March wasn’t any less impressive.
In four games in March of 2015, Josh Richardson scored an average of 19.5 points a game while filling out the stat sheet with 6.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 3.5 steals per contest as well.
For the first few months of his rookie season, Richardson struggled to garner much playing time outside of filling in for injured players. But his minutes per game have taken a dramatic increase since the All-Star break, and he’s putting those minutes to good use.
Before the league’s All-Star Game, Richardson was playing just 11.5 minutes per game and averaging a mere 1.9 points a game. In the 18 games he’s played since then, however, Richardson is playing an average of 26.9 minutes a game and has scored 10.8 points per contest for the Heat in that span, with most of that damage coming in the most recent month of play.
Josh Richardson has a knack for performing well in the month of March. And that wasn’t just contained to his college days, apparently.
