Critically, his shooting percentage dropped himself out of

NBA desirability as his shot volume went up. He went from shooting .368 on 1.1 attempt per game as a junior to .309 on 2.7 attempts per game as a senior. So it had the opposite effect. Yes, work on the things that the scouts want you to work on. So he should've worked on his outside shot. But the challenge is not to force bad shots. An NBA team would've rather have had the guy who shot .368 on few attempts than the guy who showed that he couldn't be an effective outside shooter if asked to do it more regularly.

Likewise, the NBA wasn't going to value Thomas more highly simply because he shot more from the outside. As a sophomore he shot .385 on 6 attempts per game. And his 2-point average was .416 on 8.8 attempts per game. The next year he chucked two more threes per year but dropped .034 points in average and took .5 less twos. And his assists dropped from 6.7 to 4.7 (though his TOs did drop from 4.2 to 2.4). If he wanted to improve his NBA game, he should've worked on getting better at scoring in the paint and continuing to work on his three-point accuracy. But simply shooting higher volume wasn't going to improve his numbers. Of course, part of this is also loss of supporting cast. However, in Thomas's junior year, Quinn was averaging 14 ppg with a better shooting percentage than Thomas on volume and efficiency not far of Carroll's.