We Can't Shoot for Sh*t

[ConSarnit]

Defence and rebounding wins chips. Not saying this team is a contender but you can’t say 3pt shooting trumps those two categories.

Being ranked 30TH in 3PT% in the NBA certainly does trump defence and rebounding. We have no respectable shooters on this team. Pathetic

This team can't be taken seriously in the playoffs until this changes

I suspect we'll run into some major issues in the playoffs when teams lock in and stop guarding many of our players if they are on the perimeter.

Barnes, Shead, CMB, Poeltl. All candidates to not get guarded when they don't have the ball.

The entire offense is pretty much surviving off of transition right now. That's a bandaid solution for larger offensive issues. It's also something that tends to get shut down in the playoffs.

Lack of shooting + heavy reliance on transition = not the recipe for playoff success.

[Tha Cynic]

Data is showing otherwise so far that one player has been that big of a difference. Do I think he actually makes as big of a difference as the numbers say? No, but it's very likely that he still does matter a lot for us.

No, the data is just showing that we are shooting poorly lately compared to earlier in the season. You could very easily say they’re tired too. You’re interpreting this has to do with RJ on very limited data. That data in itself gives us nothing other than coincidence if just used like that. You’re going to need a lot more like how do they do on open shots. Are we good on open looks and not on others compared to the league? If we are a good shooting team on open looks is RJ Barrett generating more open looks than what they’re getting? There are so many different data points that need to go into this.

If they suck on open shots too then how is having RJ going to change that for the rest of the team? I think people have posted over the week that we are generating open looks and just not hitting them. That talks more about individual players not shooting well in general.

As provided above (including link), we were much better with Barrett with the shot clock between 15 - 7 seconds left, clearly that is the half court offense. The number of 3 point attempts in the half court was league lowest with Barrett, that clearly showed the impact of his rim pressure and ability to provide another efficient scoring option that allows our 3 point shooting to be situational (15 - 7 seconds left on shot clock, our 2FG% were top in the league with Barrett).

I won't dismiss the early season and opponent level, but again, half of this would be Barrett. The other half is our PF spot has not able to space the floor. Looking at LeBron and Hachimura, those were the ones who made the 3s in the 4th and took the lead last night.

We are the worst in the league in shooting percentage from 3 at 15-7 seconds. Battle was perfect until the RJ injury on open 3s, Walter was shooting 60%, IQ was at 48%, Barnes was at 47%. All these are with defender 4-6feet away which is considered open.

Basically we’re just shooting way worse now than before. You can’t use timeline and equate that to one player being away. A player being on the floor should not change open shots going in for others.

[YogurtProducer]

If they suck on open shots too then how is having RJ going to change that for the rest of the team? I think people have posted over the week that we are generating open looks and just not hitting them. That talks more about individual players not shooting well in general.

Last 15 games we are shooting 29.0% on ALL 3's.

Over those 15 games our wide open 3 stats:

IQ - 32.1% (81 attempts)
Shead - 30.0% (50 attempts)
Mamu - 23.3% (43 attempts)
JKW - 44.4% (27 attempts)
Ochai - 28.0% (25 attempts)
Ingram - 47.8% (23 attempts)
Dick - 28.6% (21 attempts)
Barnes - 15.0% (20 attempts)
RJ - 43.8% (16 attempts)
CMB - 15.4% (13 attempts)

It is just puzzling how bad we have become on open 3's suddenly. I know even guys like Barnes and Dick are not historically good shooters by any means, but they should be better than 28% and 15% respectively.

[YogurtProducer]

Defence and rebounding wins chips. Not saying this team is a contender but you can’t say 3pt shooting trumps those two categories.

Being ranked 30TH in 3PT% in the NBA certainly does trump defence and rebounding. We have no respectable shooters on this team. Pathetic

This team can't be taken seriously in the playoffs until this changes

I suspect we'll run into some major issues in the playoffs when teams lock in and stop guarding many of our players if they are on the perimeter.

Barnes, Shead, CMB, Poeltl. All candidates to not get guarded when they don't have the ball.

The entire offense is pretty much surviving off of transition right now. That's a bandaid solution for larger offensive issues. It's also something that tends to get shut down in the playoffs.

Lack of shooting + heavy reliance on transition = not the recipe for playoff success.

Yeah this shouldn't be confused as a team who is going to perform well offensively in a playoff atmosphere. But then again, neither is a team like Orlando so if that somehow is our round 1 matchup I think we got a very good chance.

This is year 1 of winning. We have lots of time to make moves and find some guys who can actually shoot the ball.

Also important to remember that it is unlikely a guy like IQ is going to shoot this badly forever. That alone is making it seem a lot worse than it truly is.

[grimlock]

Not shocked by the fact we can't shoot....We have zero knock down shooters on the team and majority are streaky...

For the playoffs even if we were fully healthy where we lack 3pt shooting is what will be the reason we lose....In the playoffs guys have to hit shots and i don't think we have the team for that....Once a team stops our fast breaks, Plays zone on us, and slows the game down we become very bad on offense.

Lack of scorers as well Ingram can do his thing and Barnes is coming around to it but not much else.

You also need big bodies to to set screens to open up 3 point shots

[Brinbe]

yeah, said as much a while ago. it's a big problem

a lot of the misses have been on wide open looks too

[tsherkin]

You also need big bodies to to set screens to open up 3 point shots

You don't need to be 7 feet to set a nice screen. We have the bodies, we just need the will and the execution.

[Tha Cynic]

If they suck on open shots too then how is having RJ going to change that for the rest of the team? I think people have posted over the week that we are generating open looks and just not hitting them. That talks more about individual players not shooting well in general.

Last 15 games we are shooting 29.0% on ALL 3's.

Over those 15 games our wide open 3 stats:

IQ - 32.1% (81 attempts)
Shead - 30.0% (50 attempts)
Mamu - 23.3% (43 attempts)
JKW - 44.4% (27 attempts)
Ochai - 28.0% (25 attempts)
Ingram - 47.8% (23 attempts)
Dick - 28.6% (21 attempts)
Barnes - 15.0% (20 attempts)
RJ - 43.8% (16 attempts)
CMB - 15.4% (13 attempts)

It is just puzzling how bad we have become on open 3's suddenly. I know even guys like Barnes and Dick are not historically good shooters by any means, but they should be better than 28% and 15% respectively.

My guess is this:

- in general we are a bad shooting team
- early season with fresh legs, we were shooting above our normal averages
- by end of November and into December we started shooting below our normal averages as our legs have gotten less fresh
- a bit of that is of course losing RJ means others have to play more minutes (our defenders)
- around the time RJ went out you could visibly see our team looked very tired for a few weeks
- considering this is how the NBA works you need guys who can hit shots through an 82 game schedule and if you have poor shooters that won’t hold up

We’re not as bad as we have been but honestly we’re not that far off. We’re a bad shooting team. This isn’t a big revelation. I expect IQ to be better but not many of the others. Walter coming back should help.

[PushDaRock]

You guys are over-indexing this way too much. If you watch the games, you can clearly see that our players flat out miss wide open shots and can’t burn defenders when they go under screens. This team is very bad at shooting and having one player back isn’t changing that.

At this stage I’m questioning our development staff and how they’re teaching shooting. Everyone is using the same tools/system but the message and execution is different. Raptors are bottom of the league. Something needs to be revamped completely here.

Data is showing otherwise so far that one player has been that big of a difference. Do I think he actually makes as big of a difference as the numbers say? No, but it's very likely that he still does matter a lot for us.

No, the data is just showing that we are shooting poorly lately compared to earlier in the season. You could very easily say they’re tired too. You’re interpreting this has to do with RJ on very limited data. That data in itself gives us nothing other than coincidence if just used like that. You’re going to need a lot more like how do they do on open shots. Are we good on open looks and not on others compared to the league? If we are a good shooting team on open looks is RJ Barrett generating more open looks than what they’re getting? There are so many different data points that need to go into this.

If they suck on open shots too then how is having RJ going to change that for the rest of the team? I think people have posted over the week that we are generating open looks and just not hitting them. That talks more about individual players not shooting well in general.

No, I'm just presenting the data. Up to everyone to interpret it however they want.

I also pointed out that we were generating more wide open shots without RJ.

Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's not. But, the numbers are what they are. We shoot way better from 3 and have the 3rd best offense with RJ and we shoot atrocious from 3 and have the 2nd worst offense without RJ this season.

[YogurtProducer]

If they suck on open shots too then how is having RJ going to change that for the rest of the team? I think people have posted over the week that we are generating open looks and just not hitting them. That talks more about individual players not shooting well in general.

Last 15 games we are shooting 29.0% on ALL 3's.

Over those 15 games our wide open 3 stats:

IQ - 32.1% (81 attempts)
Shead - 30.0% (50 attempts)
Mamu - 23.3% (43 attempts)
JKW - 44.4% (27 attempts)
Ochai - 28.0% (25 attempts)
Ingram - 47.8% (23 attempts)
Dick - 28.6% (21 attempts)
Barnes - 15.0% (20 attempts)
RJ - 43.8% (16 attempts)
CMB - 15.4% (13 attempts)

It is just puzzling how bad we have become on open 3's suddenly. I know even guys like Barnes and Dick are not historically good shooters by any means, but they should be better than 28% and 15% respectively.

My guess is this:

- in general we are a bad shooting team
- early season with fresh legs, we were shooting above our normal averages
- by end of November and into December we started shooting below our normal averages as our legs have gotten less fresh
- a bit of that is of course losing RJ means others have to play more minutes (our defenders)
- around the time RJ went out you could visibly see our team looked very tired for a few weeks
- considering this is how the NBA works you need guys who can hit shots through an 82 game schedule and if you have poor shooters that won’t hold up

We’re not as bad as we have been but honestly we’re not that far off. We’re a bad shooting team. This isn’t a big revelation. I expect IQ to be better but not many of the others. Walter coming back should help.

I actually do expect most guys to be better. Just look at our stock %'s over the last 15

IQ - 31.8% - gonna progress
Ingram - 31.4% - gonna progress
Shead - 29.4%
Mamu - 28.8% - gonna progress
Walter - 34.1% -
Dick - 26.2% - gonna progress
RJ - 35.1% -
Barnnes - 14.7% - gonna progress
Agbaji - 24.1% - one would think he won't shoot sub 25% forever
Battle - 31.3% - gonna progress
CMB - 14.3% - TBD, but I don't think he is a 40% shooter like early year, but he also is not a 14% shooter

Like even the "meh" shooters like Dick, Barnes, CMB, Ochai are shooting 5-15% lower than what you think they will. We have no one that you look at and go "yeah, that is due for some serious regression".

Getting open looks? YES
Historically shooters have shot better? YES

IDK - part of me thinks we are just hitting a really bad luck stretch here. And it does not take a lot of "extra" shooting (OT LAC loss, and 3 pt DEN loss) to think we "should" have gone 10-5 in the last 15 instead of 8-7.

Which is the next part... Going 8-7 while shooting 29% from 3 and with key guys out a lot is a pretty promising thing to me. Not only for this year, but also for the future where we can start to prioritize some "fit" trades (like getting another high level shooter in our main rotation).

[PushDaRock]

1) Our 3 point shooting was pretty good with Barrett, even he is not an elite 3 point shooter, that may answer half of the problem
2) Best player isn't a 3 point shooter nor playing at C, so it will always be 1/4 lower than other teams.

12.3 makes on 36.3% in games RJ plays
10.4 makes on 30.6% in games RJ doesn't play

Regression.

Barnes and Shead each shot 45% from 3 over the first 10 games of the season.

Here is what they've shot over the last 30+ games:

Barnes: 26%

Shead: 29%

2 of our top 4 3pt shooters (in terms of volume) are Scottie and Shead.

Dick and Agbaji are a definitely a problem but what other team gets such anemic shooting from 2 of their top 4 shooters?

No team gives as many 3pa to worse shooters than us.

I'm just presenting the data, interpret how you please.

[PushDaRock]

There also might be something to the tired legs theory. We shoot best in the 1st and 3rd Q where presumably our legs would be the freshest in a game, poor in the 2nd Q and especially poor in the 4th Q where we are likely most tired.

37.5% on 9.2 3PA in the first Q
31.7% on 8.6 3PA in the 2nd Q
36.7% on 8.1 3PA in the 3rd Q
28.4% on 7.7 3PA in the 4th Q

[Clutch0z24]

Last 15 games we are shooting 29.0% on ALL 3's.

Over those 15 games our wide open 3 stats:

IQ - 32.1% (81 attempts)
Shead - 30.0% (50 attempts)
Mamu - 23.3% (43 attempts)
JKW - 44.4% (27 attempts)
Ochai - 28.0% (25 attempts)
Ingram - 47.8% (23 attempts)
Dick - 28.6% (21 attempts)
Barnes - 15.0% (20 attempts)
RJ - 43.8% (16 attempts)
CMB - 15.4% (13 attempts)

It is just puzzling how bad we have become on open 3's suddenly. I know even guys like Barnes and Dick are not historically good shooters by any means, but they should be better than 28% and 15% respectively.

My guess is this:

- in general we are a bad shooting team
- early season with fresh legs, we were shooting above our normal averages
- by end of November and into December we started shooting below our normal averages as our legs have gotten less fresh
- a bit of that is of course losing RJ means others have to play more minutes (our defenders)
- around the time RJ went out you could visibly see our team looked very tired for a few weeks
- considering this is how the NBA works you need guys who can hit shots through an 82 game schedule and if you have poor shooters that won’t hold up

We’re not as bad as we have been but honestly we’re not that far off. We’re a bad shooting team. This isn’t a big revelation. I expect IQ to be better but not many of the others. Walter coming back should help.

I actually do expect most guys to be better. Just look at our stock %'s over the last 15

IQ - 31.8% - gonna progress
Ingram - 31.4% - gonna progress
Shead - 29.4%
Mamu - 28.8% - gonna progress
Walter - 34.1% -
Dick - 26.2% - gonna progress
RJ - 35.1% -
Barnnes - 14.7% - gonna progress
Agbaji - 24.1% - one would think he won't shoot sub 25% forever
Battle - 31.3% - gonna progress
CMB - 14.3% - TBD, but I don't think he is a 40% shooter like early year, but he also is not a 14% shooter

Like even the "meh" shooters like Dick, Barnes, CMB, Ochai are shooting 5-15% lower than what you think they will. We have no one that you look at and go "yeah, that is due for some serious regression".

Getting open looks? YES
Historically shooters have shot better? YES

IDK - part of me thinks we are just hitting a really bad luck stretch here. And it does not take a lot of "extra" shooting (OT LAC loss, and 3 pt DEN loss) to think we "should" have gone 10-5 in the last 15 instead of 8-7.

Which is the next part... Going 8-7 while shooting 29% from 3 and with key guys out a lot is a pretty promising thing to me. Not only for this year, but also for the future where we can start to prioritize some "fit" trades (like getting another high level shooter in our main rotation).

If we were like middle of pack in 3pt% shooting as a team you can use the "Just a bad luck stretch" excuse but being dead last at 30 in the league more than likely means we are just a bad shooting team.

[tsherkin]

There also might be something to the tired legs theory. We shoot best in the 1st and 3rd Q where presumably our legs would be the freshest in a game, poor in the 2nd Q and especially poor in the 4th Q where we are likely most tired.

37.5% on 9.2 3PA in the first Q
31.7% on 8.6 3PA in the 2nd Q
36.7% on 8.1 3PA in the 3rd Q
28.4% on 7.7 3PA in the 4th Q

A little damning of our guys if their shot can go away that consistently, though.

[PushDaRock]

There also might be something to the tired legs theory. We shoot best in the 1st and 3rd Q where presumably our legs would be the freshest in a game, poor in the 2nd Q and especially poor in the 4th Q where we are likely most tired.

37.5% on 9.2 3PA in the first Q
31.7% on 8.6 3PA in the 2nd Q
36.7% on 8.1 3PA in the 3rd Q
28.4% on 7.7 3PA in the 4th Q

A little damning of our guys if their shot can go away that consistently, though.

Yeah, that's not good if we need to presumably play not as hard on D in order to shoot better.

[Indeed]

There also might be something to the tired legs theory. We shoot best in the 1st and 3rd Q where presumably our legs would be the freshest in a game, poor in the 2nd Q and especially poor in the 4th Q where we are likely most tired.

37.5% on 9.2 3PA in the first Q
31.7% on 8.6 3PA in the 2nd Q
36.7% on 8.1 3PA in the 3rd Q
28.4% on 7.7 3PA in the 4th Q

A little damning of our guys if their shot can go away that consistently, though.

It is probably just our guys having dead legs, while league wide isn't necessarily the case, and instead of opposing teams tighten their defense. Very positive and highly rating our players and offense, maybe we should keep them instead of trading them for better players. /green font

[MEDIC]

Shead is an anomally. He shoots better above the break than the corners. Whenever I see him in the corner, I am expecting a miss.

He is actually shooting 40% from top of the key & left side above the break.

I think that's pretty promising moving forward. His shot has actually looked pretty good 5 feet beyond the 3 point line. I wonder if he has been working on distance shooting in the offseason.

Everywhere else is is below 30%. 20% from the corners.

[Indeed]

My guess is this:

- in general we are a bad shooting team
- early season with fresh legs, we were shooting above our normal averages
- by end of November and into December we started shooting below our normal averages as our legs have gotten less fresh
- a bit of that is of course losing RJ means others have to play more minutes (our defenders)
- around the time RJ went out you could visibly see our team looked very tired for a few weeks
- considering this is how the NBA works you need guys who can hit shots through an 82 game schedule and if you have poor shooters that won’t hold up

We’re not as bad as we have been but honestly we’re not that far off. We’re a bad shooting team. This isn’t a big revelation. I expect IQ to be better but not many of the others. Walter coming back should help.

I actually do expect most guys to be better. Just look at our stock %'s over the last 15

IQ - 31.8% - gonna progress
Ingram - 31.4% - gonna progress
Shead - 29.4%
Mamu - 28.8% - gonna progress
Walter - 34.1% -
Dick - 26.2% - gonna progress
RJ - 35.1% -
Barnnes - 14.7% - gonna progress
Agbaji - 24.1% - one would think he won't shoot sub 25% forever
Battle - 31.3% - gonna progress
CMB - 14.3% - TBD, but I don't think he is a 40% shooter like early year, but he also is not a 14% shooter

Like even the "meh" shooters like Dick, Barnes, CMB, Ochai are shooting 5-15% lower than what you think they will. We have no one that you look at and go "yeah, that is due for some serious regression".

Getting open looks? YES
Historically shooters have shot better? YES

IDK - part of me thinks we are just hitting a really bad luck stretch here. And it does not take a lot of "extra" shooting (OT LAC loss, and 3 pt DEN loss) to think we "should" have gone 10-5 in the last 15 instead of 8-7.

Which is the next part... Going 8-7 while shooting 29% from 3 and with key guys out a lot is a pretty promising thing to me. Not only for this year, but also for the future where we can start to prioritize some "fit" trades (like getting another high level shooter in our main rotation).

If we were like middle of pack in 3pt% shooting as a team you can use the "Just a bad luck stretch" excuse but being dead last at 30 in the league more than likely means we are just a bad shooting team.

Indeed, and half of those "gonna progress" are in a downward trend.

Meanwhile, Shead, Walter and Barrett are the ones who improved over the year. Those are the ones I value.

[johanliebert]

Shead is an anomally. He shoots better above the break than the corners. Whenever I see him in the corner, I am expecting a miss.

He is actually shooting 40% from top of the key & left side above the break.

I think that's pretty promising moving forward. His shot has actually looked pretty good 5 feet beyond the 3 point line. I wonder if he has been working on distance shooting in the offseason.

Everywhere else is is below 30%. 20% from the corners.

You guys have high hopes for a guy teams leave wide open.

[tsherkin]

It is probably just our guys having dead legs, while league wide isn't necessarily the case, and instead of opposing teams tighten their defense. Very positive and highly rating our players and offense, maybe we should keep them instead of trading them for better players. /green font

It's the first half of the season and our guys aren't playing anything like crazy minutes, so I'm not really seeing the "dead legs" things so much.