AUBURN HILLS – It won’t be lost on any NBA team – or come as anything approaching a surprise, really – that three of the final four teams standing ranked among the top five in 3-point volume.
San Antonio, the first eliminated, was the outlier, just as the Spurs have been the NBA anomaly for their ability to remain a title contender spanning two decades. The Spurs took 23.5 3-point attempts per game this season to finish 25th in the league – one spot ahead of the Pistons, whoo attempted 23.4.
But the Spurs finished No. 1 in accuracy at 39.1 percent. As Stan Van Gundy said this season – with the Pistons languishing in the bottom five of the league in both categories – you can’t be both a low-volume, low-percentage team from the 3-point arc and expect anything approaching success in today’s NBA. When Van Gundy took Orlando to the NBA Finals just eight years ago, the Magic finished No. 2 in the NBA by a whisker in 3-point volume at 26 attempts per game. Today’s average NBA team shoots 27 a game.
That’s the time warp of the NBA today. In less than a decade, what was pioneering is now below average. The “Moneyball” NBA that has found the value of the 3-point shot and attacked the pursuit of proficient 3-point shooters with great vigor.
And we’re going to just maybe get another hint of that trend line in next month’s draft.
It’s a draft heavy in point guards early – five of the first 10 picks, probably – and then loaded with a bunch of very young, not nearly developed big men. The 3-point expansion has occurred in harmony with an even greater share of the offense being carried by point guards. Those with the ability to exploit the cracks exposed by a defense stressed by the need to cover a greater amount of space become more precious.
But it’s a draft short on shooters, which means teams looking for one will jump on them as aggressively as the Chicago Bears, in need of a quarterback, in trading up to get one-year starter Mitch Trubisky with the NFL’s second overall pick last month.
A generation ago, all those near 7-footers in this year’s draft – some with notable athleticism, others with a developable shooting skill in their tool kit – would have been highly coveted commodities.
Now? Well, we’ll see. But unless they can move their feet defensively, run the floor, rebound, block shots – basically, do everything that athletic 6-foot-7 wing players can do – there just isn’t the same level of enthusiasm for collecting and clinging to big men these days.
If you can get a 7-footer that can’t be exploited defensively by smaller players and has the ability to use that size to his advantage at the offensive end – think Anthony Davis or Karl-Anthony Towns, perhaps – then, yeah, they’ll be No. 1 overall picks and earn max contracts at the first opportunity. Big men with deficiencies of one sort or another are less desirable. Most big men these days are situational players.
The Pistons, ideally, would come away with either a knock-down 3-point shooter with the 12th pick – keeping in mind that rookies very rarely come into the NBA as knock-down 3-point shooters – or a perimeter player who can make plays off the dribble.
Big men – those without little-man skills, at least – have become the baseball equivalent of one-dimensional sluggers. The guy who finished tied for the National League lead in home runs last season with 41, Chris Carter, hit the free-agent market last winter. He didn’t sign until Feb. 16 – with pitchers and catchers already in camp – and settled for a one-year deal at the bargain rate of $3.5 million.
Tampa Bay, meanwhile, signed modest-hitting centerfielder Kevin Kiermaier to a six-year, $53 million deal in spring training coming off of a season in which he hit .246 with modest power. But he steals bases and is considered the best defensive outfielder in baseball. Speed and defense are to baseball as 3-point shooting and creating offense off the dribble are to the NBA.
We might see that trend become even more pronounced on draft night in four weeks. We might see it influence the Pistons, too.