Devonte’ Graham, Davis Bertans, and the Evolution of Floor Spacing

Fifteen years ago, the average NBA team had 10% fewer possessions per game and shot about half as many 3s.  The shift toward what’s commonly known as the Pace & Space era has been gradual, though the cumulative effect is obvious.  If you watched a game from the 90s or 00s followed by a game from today, you’d notice that teams play faster and shoot a lot more 3s now, and the players are much less tightly packed around the paint since posting up on the block has largely been replaced by spotting up on the perimeter.

Compared to this incremental shift, there’s a much more rapid trend taking place that’s getting very little attention.  Let’s call it “Deep Space” – the exponential rise in shots several feet BEYOND the 3-point line.  Whereas overall 3-point attempts have merely doubled in the past fifteen years, the deep 3s that are becoming routine were essentially non-existent less than a decade ago.  Deep 3s have quadrupled since 2016 and increased ten-fold since 2012.

I’ll define deep 3s as jumpers taken 4+ feet beyond the 3-point line.  Excluding the corners, where a deep 3 is impossible, the NBA 3-point line is 23 feet, 9 inches from the hoop.  That places a deep 3 at 28+ feet.  To exclude heaves outside the context of conventional offense, I’ll limit deep 3s to shots in the range of 28-40 feet.

As noted above, until recently such shots effectively were not part of the game.  In the 2011-12 season, no one made more than 6 deep 3s, and Kobe led the league in attempts with just 21.  The previous season was no different: the league leader (Kyle Lowry) made 6 deep 3s, and Kobe was the only player to attempt more than 20. 

Within the next few years, two outliers emerged: Steph Curry and Damian Lillard.  Curry is of course unsurprising, as he is by most accounts the greatest long-distance shooter ever.  In 2014-15, Curry shot 27/64 (42.2%) on deep 3s.  In 2015-16, he made 47 of 91 (51.6%).  Lillard ranked second each year in both makes and attempts, shooting 13/46 and then 16/52.  No one else made more than 10 deep 3s or attempted as many as 30 in either year.

Skip ahead to this season, in which Devonte’ Graham and Davis Bertans are emblematic of a broader change in the game.  Each player is on pace to make 40-50 deep 3s on 100+ attempts.  And unlike Curry and Lillard, these are not established All-Stars or top draft picks who you might expect to have free reign over an NBA offense.  Graham is a second-year pro who struggled as a rookie after being selected 34^th in the draft, while Bertans is a spot-up shooter who comes off the bench. 

It is significant that each player has a green light to shoot from 28+ feet . . . and perhaps even more significant that their teams are substantially benefiting from it.  The Hornets offense is 12 points better per 100 possessions with Graham on the floor – the difference between the league’s 10^th best offense and far and away its worst.  Similarly, the Wizards score 10 more points per 100 possessions with Bertans on the court than without him, the difference between the league’s best offense and a below average one.

This raises two questions in my mind, which I’ll attempt to answer: (1) how does extreme long-distance shooting help an offense beyond what a typical 3-point shooter provides, and (2) why is this massive surge in deep 3s happening now?  The league as a whole made 149 deep 3s in the 2011-12 season.  Eight years later, it’s on pace for 1500+.  I expect that number to continue to climb over the next several years, which ultimately may be recognized as the Deep Space era.

The Benefits of Deep Threes

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Devonte’ Graham is an undersized guard who hasn’t shown much ability to finish in the lane or around the rim.  In fact, he ranks dead last (160^th out of 160) in 2-point fg% among players with 5+ attempts per game.  So how can Graham possibly have such a positive effect on Charlotte’s offense?  I think it mostly boils down to the tremendous spacing he provides by being a threat from 30 feet out, which affords Graham and his teammates better passing, cutting, and driving lanes and more uncontested shots all over the floor.  The Hornets as a team have a 52% effective field goal percentage with Graham on the court, compared to just 47% without him.

Against ordinary shooters, defenses tend to follow established protocols that work reasonably well in denying open 3s.  For example, the game plan may dictate that a defender customarily stays close to a shooter in the near corner, helps off of a shooter above the break on the strong side, and rotates off of a shooter on the weak side.  When executing such a scheme, defenders will usually be able to rotate or recover well enough to contest a 3, provided that the shooter is positioned just outside the arc.

But defenders are not conditioned to close out on shooters a step or two farther back.  Just look at the closeouts on Graham in the video below.  D’Angelo Russell, Ky Bowman, and Marquese Chriss are primarily defending the arc, not the shooter.  Their standard closeouts don’t bother Graham’s shot, which he’s able to step into and take in rhythm from well behind the line.  Thus, Graham’s defender is forced to choose between helping off of him while likely conceding an open look if the ball swings back around to him, or staying close and disrupting the team’s usual help defense.

When Graham’s defender resolves to guard him out there, it opens up opportunities for everyone.  Somewhat paradoxically, adding an outside shooting specialist like Graham can have a greater positive effect on a team’s 2-point shooting efficiency than its 3-point efficiency.  That’s because, even off the ball, the shooter’s extreme gravity limits help in the paint.  When defenders respect a deep shooter’s ability and stay close to him, there’s typically one less defender capable of containing dribble penetration, picking up cutters, denying an entry pass, or protecting the rim.  Here, for example, the Hornets execute an easy entry pass to PJ Washington for an uncontested dunk, largely because Graham’s defender is so preoccupied with him 30 feet from the hoop that there’s no help.

The threat of the deep 3 also makes Graham a more effective creator with the ball in his hands.  As a pick-and-roll ball-handler, Graham can take advantage of defenders overplaying him 30 feet from the hoop, placing the team defense in a precarious spot.  A defender who goes over the screen that far from the hoop is effectively out of the play, at least temporarily, as long as Graham keeps his dribble.  The roll man defender is likewise in an uncomfortable position, defending more space and standing farther from the rim than usual, limiting his ability to wall off the paint.  That has a cascade effect on the defense, as it often causes another defender to collapse on Graham, leaving someone wide open.  In the clips below, watch how PJ Washington gets an uncontested 3 and then a free rim run for a dunk in the pick-and-roll because defenders respect the deep 3 threat, giving Graham a driving lane and forcing help defenders to collapse.

Big men who shoot deep 3s present a slightly different set of problems for the defense and amplify the benefits described above, as shown in the Davis Bertans clips below.  Such shooters are especially difficult to cover, as big defenders habitually sink toward the paint and are not as adept at defending the perimeter.  Their shots are also harder to contest on closeouts, given their higher release point and plane of vision. 

For example, here Devonte’ Graham and PJ Washington get a taste of their own medicine, so to speak, as Davis Bertans pulls up from 30 feet as the trailer in transition.  His usual defender, PJ, hurries back to protect the rim, leaving the undersized Graham in a mismatch on Bertans.  Graham recognizes the threat but can’t do anything about it.  With a 9-inch height advantage, Bertans drains a clean look. 

Big defenders are also more prone to shading their bodies toward the paint as an extra line of defense against dribble penetration, but when they do, they’re out of position to recover on a shooter a few feet beyond the arc.  Here, Al Horford gets caught focusing his gaze and directing his body toward Ish Smith, and as a result he can’t get back to effectively contest Bertans.

The same principles apply when the big man is used as a screener in a pick-and-pop scenario.  If his defender hedges or stunts toward the ball-handler, a big man like Bertans can take an extra step back away from the screen to prevent his man or a rotating help defender from contesting his shot.

And when defenders close out aggressively to try to make up that extra space, Bertans can attack the rim with minimal resistance, generating an easy bucket for himself or a teammate. 

That last clip offers an excellent example of how a deep-3 shooting big man can improve a team’s ability to score around the rim.  His primary defender, Jaren Jackson Jr., is also one of Memphis’s best rim protectors.  With Bertans standing a few feet behind the line, JJJ is in a difficult spot.   He can’t cover Bertans AND protect the rim.  Trying to do both, he accomplishes neither.  His closeout on Bertans is out of control, and Bertans slips by him, forcing another defender to collapse and allowing Bertans to drop the ball off to Ish Smith for an open layup.

Of course, Graham and Bertans aren’t the only ones capitalizing on a green light to take deep 3s.  This past weekend D’Angelo Russell made 6 deep 3s in a single game – as many as any player made in the entire 2011 or 2012 season.  Duncan Robinson, who went undrafted and didn’t even get a Division I scholarship offer out of high school, has flourished as a starter in Miami by spacing the floor from well behind the arc and draining enough deep 3s to keep defenders’ attention.

Why Deep Threes Have Grown Exponentially (and why this trend should continue)

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There are two fundamental reasons why deep 3s are suddenly much more prevalent.  The first is at the player level, and the second is at the coaching/management level. 

Over the past few years, players who were teenagers in the Steph Curry MVP years have been entering the league.  They were developing their skills and playing styles at a time when the league’s top player was taking and making deep 3s.  Many of these players were patterning their games after him, at least in some measure, whether consciously or not.  They were practicing deep 3s regularly, whereas players in prior years treated deep 3s as a novelty that might win them a bet or a game of HORSE, not an NBA game. 

Check out this year’s deep 3 leaderboard:

Half of the top 10 are rookies or second-year players.  Another two – Russell and Porzingis – were still teenagers when Curry won his first MVP.  Unlike the shooters who came before them, they don’t have an ingrained sense that a 3-pointer in game action should be taken directly behind the line.  As those who grew up watching MVP Curry become a larger share of the player pool, expect the number of players shooting deep 3s to continue rising.

At the coaching and management level, I think the deliberate strategy of shooting deep 3s can be traced back to the 2017 Rockets and last year’s Bucks, two teams whose improved spacing helped them vault from the middle of the pack toward the top of the league.   I noted earlier that in 2015 and 2016, no one other than Curry and Lillard attempted as many as 30 deep 3s.  In 2017, Curry and Lillard remained #1 and #2 in deep 3 attempts, but numbers 3, 4, and 5 on that list were all Rockets: Ryan Anderson (57 attempts), Eric Gordon (39), and James Harden (38). 

Anderson and Gordon were unique in that they were purely spot-up shooters positioned well beyond the arc, as opposed to shot creators getting deep 3s off the dribble.  Of the deep 3s they made that season, 30 out of 31 were assisted.  With the added spacing that the threat of their deep 3s provided, the Rockets offense improved by 6 points per 100 possessions, up to #2 in the league, and the Harden/Gordon/Anderson trio was +11 per 100 possessions.  Houston’s 2-point fg% increased from 51% to 55%, narrowly trailing the Warriors and a few percentage points above anyone else.

In Milwaukee, last season the Bucks had a clear objective of maximizing their spacing around Giannis.  Brook Lopez shot 38/102 on deep 3s, ranking 4^th in the league in makes and 5^th in attempts, while Pat Connaughton, Eric Bledsoe, and Khris Middleton each ranked among the top 50 in deep 3 attempts as well.  Moreover, the Bucks traded for Nikola Mirotic, who finished in the top 20 in deep 3s made and attempted despite missing nearly half the season due to injury.  Though the team’s 3-point fg% remained unchanged from the prior year, they led the league in 2-point shooting efficiency.  The Bucks offense improved by 4 points per 100 possessions compared to 2018, and the team catapulted from the 7 seed to the best record in the NBA.  At the time of the Mirotic trade, Milwaukee’s GM Jon Horst publicly divulged his team’s strategic emphasis on deep 3s:

I’m probably at risk of sharing a competitive advantage, but it’s absolutely something unique to our lingo, our analysis. We analyze four-point shooters, that’s what we call them. To be a four-point shooter, you have to shoot above the break, right? To shoot from 30-plus feet, you’re not shooting that in the corner or the sides. So, you’re shooting above the break.

In our style of play with Giannis and Eric and Khris in particular and all the work they can do in the middle of the floor in one-on-one scenarios, being able to shoot above the break is a real benefit to our team. The further away their defenders and their offensive abilities are from where Giannis and Khris and Eric are working in the interior, the more space those three guys have to do what they do.

Now that the secret’s out, more teams are running sets to either generate a deep 3 or use that threat to open up the court.  In Washington, Bertans has already shot twice as many deep 3s as last year on 100 fewer 3-point attempts.  But this season’s biggest beneficiary of the deep 3 strategy is clearly the Dallas Mavericks, the only team with 2 players among the top 10 shooters listed above.  Combining a young roster led by Doncic and Porzingis with an emphasis on spacing via deep 3s, the Mavericks boast the league’s #1 offense – after ranking 20^th a season ago.  Doncic is shooting about 50% more deep 3s than he did as a rookie, while Porzingis has already exceeded his career highs in deep 3s made and attempted. 

Over the past week, Dallas’s use of Porzingis as a deep spot-up shooter and floor spacer rather than as an interior scorer has been a major topic of conversation, with some prominent commentators arguing that the Mavericks are wasting his abilities and size advantage.  They point to Porzingis’s mediocre individual stats, mostly down from his time with the Knicks, as evidence in that regard.  Yet Rick Carlisle was ready for the criticism, and he astutely explained that Porzingis has much more value TO THE TEAM on the perimeter:

The post-up just isn’t a good play anymore. It just isn’t a good play. It’s not a good play for a 7-3 guy. It’s a low-value situation. Our numbers are very substantial that when he spaces beyond the 3-point line, you know, we’re a historically good offensive team. And when any of our guys go in there, our effectiveness is diminished exponentially. . .  We’ve got to realize that this game has changed. It’s changed. It’s just a fact. And he’s a guy when he spaces beyond the arc, above the break, is a historically great all-time 3-point shooter with unbelievable efficiency.

His perspective is certainly borne out by the numbers, as well as the film.  This set, for example, is absolutely devastating.  Porzingis establishes contact with Blake Griffin, then circles back around a Dwight Powell screen to run a pick-and-pop action with Doncic 30 feet from the hoop.  As Griffin and Andre Drummond both step out toward Porzingis, Doncic drives to the rim aided by another Powell pick, with only Luke Kennard left in his path. 

While Doncic’s stepback 3s make the highlight reels, generating easy finishes like this is the main contributor to his growth this season.  His 3-point fg% is actually down, but inside the arc he’s improved from 50% to 61%, with more of his attempts coming around the rim where he’s converting 76% of the time.  When Doncic and Porzingis share the court with the Dallas’s other most prolific 3-point shooter, Tim Hardaway, the Mavs are outscoring opponents by 14 points per 100 possessions.

Following the overwhelming success of Curry’s Warriors and the teams most enthusiastically adopting the deep 3 strategy, I expect that more and more teams will pursue it going forward.