Is Three Greater than Two?
The results may shock you. They might not though.
When I ask you “Who are the most frustrating players in the NBA?” who comes to mind? For many, it’s not necessarily the Shabazz Napier and James Young types. Similarly, ou can expect Andre Roberson to be a non-factor on offense and similar results from Enes Kanter on the other side of the floor, but they’ll nevertheless have strong impact at certain impacts of the game. But what about the players that are evidently talented, but just for some reason don’t seem to impact your team in a positive way.
The D’Antoni Rockets have become the pinnacle of efficiency in the modern NBA. An on-paper team of James Harden+a collection of sharpshooters played better than the sum of its cumulative parts, and became a machine that failed to score over 90 points just once (by the Kawhi-less Spurs, of course). How did they do it? By refusing to take a deep two.
So lets say that every frustrating, top-mid range attempt player decided they wanted to buy into the Rockets offense on crack. Let’s say Rudy Gay, LaMarcus Aldridge, and DeMar DeRozan still made their same 3 point percentages but took a few steps back from their deep 2s. Would they miss more shots? Absolutely. Is this realistic? Absolutely not. But would they be more valuable to their team? Let’s find out.
I started off by getting a list of the players with the most attempts from 16–24 feet. This seemed like a good range to work with because it was, even at 16 feet, a pretty significant distance away from the basket. The list is topped off with the same names you more or less could’ve guessed (on a per game basis):
- DeMar DeRozan
- Carmelo Anthony
- Andrew Wiggins
- Paul George
- LaMarcus Aldridge
- Anthony Davis
- Dirk Nowitzki
- Blake Griffin
- John Wall
- Harrison Barnes
Note: The Gap Between DeMar’s attempts and second place is the same as the distance between second place and twelfth place. DeMar Derozen takes (and makes) a lot of deep threes.
Then, I set off on my Morey-D’Antoni approved quest for efficiency.
First I found how much points per game the players were scoring from deep 2s. This was done by simply multiplying their attempts by their FG%, and then multiplying by 2.
Then I found how many points they would’ve scored if I converted these 2PAs and took their 3 point percentage, but multiplied by 3 instead of two. The numbers came out to about the same. Most players numbers changed from 0–1. But every single last player’s numbers went up (well except for Robin Lopez, who shot 0% from 3. Sorry Robin. Stick to the midrange.) Justice Winslow went net neutral, but if he cant manage to shoot at above a 20% clip from deep next season, maybe we’ll see some improvement. Even DeMar DeRozan, a paltry 27% three-point shooter, was able to improve. But it wasn’t DeRozan who improved the most.
No, it was our beautiful LaMarcus Aldridge, king of the fadeaway, arch nemesis of Shea Serrano, and amazingly, a 41% Three Point Shooter. Wow. In fact, the three Spurs on this list cost their team about a three pointer a game using my model. As their net rating jumps up by 3 points, they suddenly jump to within .2 points of the Golden State, and the gap between the two looks a lot smaller.
Look, I know this is not how basketball is played. Players shoot deep 2s. They can’t just magically take a few steps back every time they want to shoot one. We can’t discount the footwork of DeMar. But looking past that, there is a point behind this. If teams continue to shift their play styles to the three point line, good things will happen. A lot of the guys on this list are young. Keep in mind I didn’t not alter any percentages on this list. But if someone like DeRozan could take a step back, or maybe like 3 steps back (I’m sorry) and work on improving their range — it could have huge ramifications for his team.
Here are the results.
Here is a link to the full spreadsheet and stats for all interested:
