Are we done with shooting threes?

[DropStep]

We were last in threes and bottom 5 in fta last season moving up past the league average in both while keeping our midrange potency. I don't know why expectations somehow became we should go from worst to first in 4 months

I don't think a single person thought that, though I'm not in the heads of everyone. If we were average in three points attempted that would be a monumental change in our offense. I think just not being in the bottom 10 teams in attempts would be a good goal and would hopefully help the offense's efficiency without damaging the things we do well.

Edit - It just occurred to me that when I said "the top 2/3 of teams in the league" that you may have thought I meant, in the top 2 or three teams in the league. Nope - I mean that as a fraction, as in, not in the bottom third of the league. LOL.

[DropStep]

To put a bow on all the talk as the season began about our new offense and shooting more threes, the final results are in: 1.1 more threes made per game, on 3.2 more attempts. Still in the bottom 4 or 5 teams in the league on volume, still average/slightly below average on accuracy. A 10% increase in volume over last year isn't nothing - but overall, one extra three made per game on slightly lower accuracy is pretty marginal, and it seems like this endeavor may have been swallowed up by personnel concerns as the season went on.

DDR did attempt nearly an extra 3 per game himself (2.8 vs. 1.9) over last year, at slightly better accuracy (33.3% vs. 32.4%). If he could make a similar improvement next year, four 3pa a game at league average-ish accuracy would make him a slightly different kind of threat than he used to be. Coby made 2.6/7.0 @ 37.6 this season on 13 more minutes a game, vs. 1.7/4.6 @ 37.2% last season. So, minus DDR and Coby, the rest of the team shot fewer threes at a worse percentage that they did last year, albeit in a few less mpg. Vuc shooting 1.2/4.1/29.4% vs. 1.5/4.2/34.9% last year didn't help. Zach's absence made a difference, too.

Overall, not sure things changed much.

2023 3pm/3pa/3p%: 11.5/32.1/35.8
2023 ranks out of 30: 27th/26th/20th

2022 3pm/3pa/3p%: 10.4/28.9/36.1
2022 ranks out of 30: 30th/30th/16th

[kodo]

What's unfortunate is that the younger players absolutely worked on their shooting profile and made big improvements on 3P shooting.

Coby went up on from 4.6 attempts to 7.0 and slightly increased his efficiency at that high volume.
Ayo went up on attempts and made a gigantic leap on efficiency from 31% to 40%.
Caruso went from 2.3 attempts to 4.7 and also made a big leap on efficiency to 41%.

And we still barely improved on 3P shooting, because this team's offense still runs through Demar & Vuc no matter what.

We're also much, much slower as a team with Demar running the show. Being 30th in pace also hurts the overall 3 numbers regardless of our efficiency.

[DropStep]

What's unfortunate is that the younger players absolutely worked on their shooting profile and made big improvements on 3P shooting.

Coby went up on from 4.6 attempts to 7.0 and slightly increased his efficiency at that high volume.
Ayo went up on attempts and made a gigantic leap on efficiency from 31% to 40%.
Caruso went from 2.3 attempts to 4.7 and also made a big leap on efficiency to 41%.

And we still barely improved on 3P shooting, because this team's offense still runs through Demar & Vuc no matter what.

We're also much, much slower as a team with Demar running the show. Being 30th in pace also hurts the overall 3 numbers regardless of our efficiency.

Good point on the other guys getting better. Really, with all those guys improving, only three guys with any volume went down in accuracy, and yet our team as a whole went down 0.3%. PWill went from 41.5 to 39.9% in 43 games, Zach went from 37.9 to 34.9% in 25 games, and then Vuc plunged over 5%. (Jevon Carter's 33% wasn't great, either). I didn't realize until now how much Vuc's 3 point shooting at his volume dragged us down by itself. If you remove his stats, this team gets almost a percentage point better. Do that, and also get PAW and Zach healthy and shooting threes like they did last year, and we'd be shooting over 37% and battling with Milwaukee at the edge of the top 10 in 3p%. That's just back of the envelope stuff, as their return would affect the people who took their place this year. But I'm saying if we solve our Vuc shooting problem in one way or another, we could be not just a middle of the pack 3p% team, but we could aspire to be top third of the league in accuracy. Our significant improvement was masked by Vuc, Zach and PAW's issues/absences this year.

Volume is another beast. Hopefully we'd scheme to get more volume if we were shooting that well.