Heading into this year’s trade deadline—Thursday at 3:00 ET—I can’t help but notice that most contenders are looking for the same thing: someone who’ll knock down open 3s and play solid defense, aka a 3&D guy. Point guards are plentiful; rim-running rebounders are rampant; shot creators are not in short supply. Yet no one can seem to find enough players who can both shoot 3s and defend. . . . No one but the Celtics.
Boston’s rotation is basically Kyrie Irving, Aron Baynes, and an enormous collection of 3&D players. Last year it was Isaiah Thomas, Amir Johnson, and a substantially different collection of 3&D guys. Sensing a pattern?
I did too, so I searched Basketball Reference for effective 3&D players over the past 4 seasons. I searched for players whose 3s account for at least 30% of their total field goal attempts, with at least 1 Point Per Shot on such attempts (33.3%+ from 3), Usage below 22% (to exclude shot creators), and a positive DBPM (need to get the D in there somehow). To eliminate small samples, I further limited the search to players who qualified for the 3P% leaderboard. My search likely leaves out a few players with a reasonable argument to fitting the 3&D mold, though it should cover the vast majority of the good ones.
Here’s what I found: since 2014-15 and including this year so far, there have been 75 player seasons meeting the above 3&D criteria, by 46 different players. All but a handful of teams have had 0-2 players of this type. The Celtics, on the other hand, have 9 of those 75 player seasons, by 7 different players.
Now for the conundrum. Does the fact that 3&D players are so desirable and relatively scarce mean that teams should be willing to spend a lot to acquire them? This is obviously a key question facing contenders at the trade deadline, but it also factors into free agent spending and draft evaluation.
To answer this question, I’m going to ask a couple more.
First, is individual 3&D performance more a function of the player or the team?
This is particularly significant with respect to trading and free agency. The question boils down to how much of 3&D performance is context-driven versus how much we can expect to translate to new environments, i.e. on a new team.
From what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to think that 3&D performance is highly contextual. For one, look at how the 3&D players who’ve left Boston have fared. Jae Crowder was essentially the model 3&D wing in Boston, whereas in Cleveland he’s been borderline unplayable. Avery Bradley didn’t quite qualify as a 3&D guy under my criteria, based on his defense, though he’s also suffered from leaving the Celtics. In his case it isn’t actually a dip in his outside shooting but rather a collapse everywhere else. Kelly Olynyk has maintained his performance in Miami, though Miami is another positive outlier in its prevalence of 3&D players, along with some combination of Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Toronto (particularly this year), and Washington. What these teams mostly have in common is an offensive scheme heavily featuring sets designed to generate catch-and-shoot 3s at predictable locations and times, using precise off-ball screening or pick-and-pops.
Spot-up shooters are much more creatures of habit than shot creators, so I’d expect that predictability as to where and when they’ll get open shots would generally increase their effectiveness. Players like Luol Deng and DeMarre Carroll have gotten big contracts following successful 3&D seasons with 3&D-rich teams, Miami and Atlanta, only to quickly fall out of favor elsewhere. Mid-season trades decrease predictability of catch-and-shoot opportunities even more, as new players lack familiarity with certain sets and also lack a certain understanding of teammate tendencies that comes from repetition. All of which leads me to believe that trading for a 3&D guy at this point in the season is unlikely to be worthwhile.
There’s also the defensive end, which warrants some discussion. In today’s NBA, defense is very much a team pursuit rather than an individual one. Being an elite or even decent defensive team requires a great deal of coordination among defenders, so it’s not surprising that players like Crowder and Bradley would also fall off defensively in a new environment. Most of the teams with a plethora of 3&D players typically have strong team defense, and with respect to the most notable exception, the Rockets, their most effective 3&D players (Beverley and Ariza) were always known for their defense first.
On that note, here’s our next and final important question: what types of prospects and young pros become effective 3&D guys?
To address that question, I present the list of 46 players identified in my earlier search: Al-Farouq Aminu, OG Anunoby, Trevor Ariza, Harrison Barnes, Matt Barnes, Nic Batum, Kent Bazemore, Patrick Beverley, Jaylen Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, DeMarre Carroll, Vince Carter, Robert Covington, Jae Crowder, Luol Deng, Jared Dudley, Manu Ginobili, Danny Green, Draymond Green, George Hill, Solomon Hill, Al Horford, Serge Ibaka, Joe Ingles, Tyler Johnson, Wesley Johnson, Kyle Korver, Courtney Lee, Wes Matthews, Khris Middleton, Nikola Mirotic, Marcus Morris, Dirk Nowitzki (only this year—his usage was way too high previously), Kelly Olynyk, Chandler Parsons, Patrick Patterson, Otto Porter, Josh Richardson, Terry Rozier, Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, Garrett Temple, PJ Tucker, Denzel Valentine, Fred VanVleet, and Marvin Williams.
Ignoring any quibbles with who should or shouldn’t be classified as 3&D, what really jumps out to me is how few of these players were standout shooters in college. Many of them weren’t even average shooters—behind the arc or at the free throw line—while some barely attempted 3s not only in college but also in their earlier NBA experience. Mostly they’re good defenders who developed into good outside shooters over time.
So in my mind this suggests that NBA front offices shouldn’t value spot-up shooting ability very highly in the draft. Spot-up shooters are made, not born. Focus on guys with advanced shot creation ability or elite physical tools, and if you have the right kind of system you shouldn’t have a problem developing a 3&D player or two. Potentially undervalued prospects later in the draft are those with mediocre shooting but good length and strength for their position, mobility, defensive effort, and a desire to spend a tremendous amount of their time on the practice court, working with coaches to become a good shooter. Those are the guys who tend to become the best 3&D players.
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