EMPIRE OF THE SUNS

Phoenix Suns have concerted effort to meet NBA trend of taking more 3s

Oct 2, 2024, 8:30 PM

Devin Booker #1 of the Phoenix Suns shoots against the Sacramento Kings during the second half of a...

Devin Booker #1 of the Phoenix Suns shoots against the Sacramento Kings during the second half of an NBA basketball game at Golden 1 Center on April 12, 2024 in Sacramento, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

PHOENIX — As the saying goes, adapt or die.

The Phoenix Suns, uh, did not adapt last season.

Despite having a roster built around tremendous spacing and shooting talent, Phoenix was 25th in 3-point attempts per game. While it somewhat did come down to intention, its offensive flow was so flat that the natural elements of ball movement to lead to open 3s was the main root of the issue.

The rest of the league is slowly adapting, and those that were ahead of the curve are currently being rewarded for it.

Boston won a championship partially due to its five-out makeup. It wasn’t perfect, as stagnant rhythm offensively through terribly uninspired drive-and-kick sleepwalking occurred, but if just three or four of those roughly dozen barrages of a few 3s in just two or three minutes went in, it was effectively a tidal wave of momentum back in its favor.

The Oklahoma City Thunder had the foresight a few years out to target large, versatile ball-handlers, stressing that skill set offensively with a physical build defensively to cover multiple positions. They go 11 deep in the rotation and 10 of those guys are effective shooters. The outlier is new arrival Isaiah Hartenstein, who very well could turn into No. 11 after he didn’t get the chance to show it in New York. The Thunder are already teasing it.

“The game has been moving in that direction — the more skill, playing with more space, pace, all those things,” Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer said.

When Kevin Durant entered the league in 2007, the new big goal was attempting 20 triples a game. In the present day, it’s doubled to 40. Let’s take the opportunity to get his thoughts on that evolution.

“It’s a natural progression of the game,” Durant said. “The game has always grown farther and farther out from the basket. You got players that can shoot the ball as soon as they cross half-court and now in the last 6-7 years you got, instead of two or three 3-point shooters on your team, you got at least six or seven guys that can shoot 3s.”

Now, it isn’t as simple as we’d like to make it out to be. The Celtics and Thunder are also elite defensive teams. Durant, in fact, made that exact point.

“I think 3s are a part of playing great defense,” Durant said. “When you can get out and rebound the basketball and push and create a disadvantage for the defense in transition.”

The win condition of a championship this year is also not based on a 3PA qualifier but if a team has a roster armed with enough shooting talent, that group better be chucking at least 35 a night. Bradley Beal put it well.

“Well, we don’t have a choice,” Beal said of taking 3s in high volume. “But when you see the championship teams, like, they are first, second, third in attempts and makes and percentage. So in order for us to be in that race, we gotta start shooting ’em.”

The music to many ears was Budenholzer directly referencing past failings by those before him.

“With a ton of respect for both Frank (Vogel) and Monty (Williams), we’re gonna try and instill things that we hope are helpful to us being successful and winning in the playoffs and advancing,” he said. “I think there’s things that fit this roster, there’s a style of play that fit this roster and the talent on it, and we can instill and bring to the table and the players embrace it and we become elite and one of the top teams in the league and compete for a championship.”

To Budenholzer’s point, in the last five years, there have been 115 players in the NBA that have attempted at least 1,000 3s over that time, per Stathead. Five of them are on his roster, including Grayson Allen’s second-best 41.9% mark over that time and Durant’s 40.9%. Further down the list are Royce O’Neale (38.2%), Devin Booker (36.1%) and Bradley Beal (36.1%). Booker and Beal are far better shooters than those numbers suggest.

Those players should be five of Budenholzer’s seven leaders in minutes per game. One of the other two is Tyus Jones, a 38% 3-point shooter over the last half-decade. The last name is Jusuf Nurkic, who is going to start letting ’em rip again like he did two seasons ago.

The Suns have the horses and had ’em last year to really let it fly. There was no excuse before and there remains the lack of one now.

Budenholzer’s decorated track record of making this happen is promising.

“He preaches a lot of 3s, and I know that’s something we want to get more up and was a weak point of our team last year and the attempts that we got up,” Allen, who played for Budenholzer in Milwaukee, said. “We have a lot of great shooters, we just need to finally get more attempts up. I think his personality and coaching style fits the team really well.”

One of the Big 3 has to jack ’em more, preferably the whole trio.

When going on a per-36-minute basis, the top-three marks on the squad in 3PA/G were Eric Gordon, O’Neale and Allen. To magnify this, when looking at the 66 non-centers who averaged at least 18 PPG last year and sorting them by 3PA per 36 minutes, Booker (37th), Durant (44th) and Beal (50th) ranked real low, per Stathead. Notable names they placed behind you wouldn’t exactly consider prolific marksmen include Tyler Herro (12th), Jalen Green (14th), Terry Rozier (21st) and Kyle Kuzma (24th).

Who knows if this year will be different. One of the most bizarre quarters of basketball I have ever watched was the Suns following a terrible loss to the Los Angeles Clippers the night before with a borderline live protest on a basketball court against L.A.’s D-squad, when they attempted 20 of their 27 first-quarter shots from deep. It was a, “Oh you want us to shoot 3s? Then we’ll shoot 3s!” performance.

Moments like that allow doubt to seep in that this season could potentially be no different even though Budenholzer has the stylistic pedigree. Booker, to his credit, said on Monday in response to Budenholzer’s desire for leadership that “we want to follow.” That game and the season’s poor vibes were likely far more about a disconnect between the coaching staff and players as opposed to a fundamental stylistic disagreement.

The trio is notoriously midrange heavy, but for Durant, that is just where the most room is a lot of the times.

“I’m a 3-point shooter. That’s been my role since I first came into the league — I think I just evolved my game to put pressure on defense,” Durant said. “Yeah, if there’s an opportunity for me to shoot a lot of 3s that night I will. But if teams are up into my body and they want me to drive the basketball and be more aggressive to the rim and get free throws or get to my midrange, I’ll do that too.

“What the defense is dictating, I try to play off the defense a bit. I’m not just shooting midrange out of spite to piss people off, you know? I want to do what it takes to win the game and sometimes I gotta put my head down and be aggressive and get to the rim.”

Main points of emphasis from Budenholzer early in camp, as relayed by Jones, include “pace” and “keeping our tempo up.” The practice courts are now marked with five designated spacing zones on the floor beyond the 3-point line: two in the corner, two on the wing and one at the top of the key.

It’s spacing principles players are well familiar with but it is an effort Budenholzer is bringing over from his past stops to help pinpoint the exact spacing. As Booker has noted over the years, there’s a huge difference in just a step or two, especially against the best defenses.

To keep extending our discussion beyond, “JuSt TaKe MoRe ThReEs,” the flow of the offense has a major role to play here as well. Allen took it a step further.

“There’s the movement to generate it and then there’s having just the sense of urgency to shoot the first good one we get. … All the guys on our team have this mindset of creating for someone else but sometimes you just gotta take that first open 3 when you get it,” he said. “We don’t need another drive or a second or third drive then you might not get it or it might end in a turnover. For a lot of us, it’s being a little less unselfish and just taking that first one when you get it.”

Beal said Budenholzer already showed him a handful of clips when he was the player at that exact fault.

To go back to pace and tempo, Jones will help improve that. He typically wants to get going after a miss, with his kick-ahead passes being well-known and referenced by multiple teammates already during camp. Durant brought up how transition helps and Jones’ passing chops will make that process more effective.

Everything seems to be aligned in the right places for the Suns to finally catch up to the league. We’ll see if that proves to be enough for it to come to fruition.

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