Fact or Fiction: The NBA needs more 3-point specialists

Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

[Last week: Is home-court advantage in the NBA’s regular season dead?]

Fact or Fiction: The NBA needs more 3-point specialists

Last week, when we tackled the impact of increased 3-point shooting on home-court advantage, I reached out to Ryan Bernardoni (a.k.a. Dan Gercart 😉), who has been preaching 3-point shooting as a more accurate indicator of who will win a game, and we got into a side conversation: If the team that makes more 3s wins two-thirds of the time, shouldn’t the NBA embrace more 3-point specialists?

Take Milwaukee Bucks wing AJ Green, for example. He is an undrafted free agent out of Northern Iowa, where he shot 38% on seven 3-point attempts per game over four seasons. He had been in Milwaukee’s system the last two years, playing on the periphery of the rotation, shooting 41% from distance on 11 attempts per 36 minutes, when the Bucks have outscored opponents by 1.2 points per 100 possessions.

Yet, to start this season, he was outside the rotation, even receiving a “DNP-coach’s decision” in the campaign’s sixth game, as Milwaukee started 1-5. Playing without Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers fielded Green for a team-high 34 minutes off the bench. Green finished 7-of-9 from 3 and +5 in a game his team lost by two to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the league’s last unbeaten team.

AJ Green is shooting 50% from 3 for the Bucks. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Green has been a mainstay of the rotation ever since, and Milwaukee has won three of its last five games, beating opponents by 2.5 points per 100 possessions in the sharpshooter’s limited minutes off the bench.

Now, 1.2 points per 100 possessions might not sound like much, but over a full season it is the baseline for a playoff team. And for a bench unit, it is even better. If the Bucks can sustain leads for 20 minutes a night with a guy who is making less than 2% of the salary cap, why aren’t more teams doing this?

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/fact-or-fiction-the-nba-needs-more-3-point-specialists-150312298.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-11-15 15:03:00

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