With a surplus of efficient midrange shooters, expect the Spurs’ offense to look a little bit different this season.
When everybody else zigs, sometimes the smart move is to zag.
The Spurs were at the forefront of understanding and utilizing the efficiency of the 3-point shot, particularly from the corner. The math is simple (3 > 2!), but it took years for teams to fully understand how to use it, and then for players to start adding the shot to their game. Now it’s more or less a necessity in every young player’s arsenal.
There the Spurs were, though, scheming for and launching corner 3s years before it was cool. Bruce Bowen built his career on it (and, well, that defense thing, too). The Spurs most iconic (and copied) play (hammer) is a misdirection specifically designed for a wide-open corner 3 on the weak side. The Spurs buried the Miami Heat under a barrage of ball movement and wide open 3s in 2014.
The evolution of the 3-point shot has completely changed the game in the last decade. The number of 3s taken each season keeps going up. Steph Curry became the MVP of the league by having virtually unlimited range. The Houston Rockets take efficiency to the extreme, angling only for 3-pointers and shots at the rim. The axiom once was “3-point shooting teams can’t win championships”; now I don’t see any other way.
But as NBA offenses become homogenized, defenses will start to catch up. And the efficiency of the 3-point shot might start to wane a little bit. The counter-move? A return to the midrange shot.
Hear me out. I’m sure you’ve read many places (including here) that the midrange shot is the worst shot in basketball, so inefficient that defenses scheme for other teams to shoot it. This is true. But there’s another way to look at this: mid-range efficiency is the new market inefficiency of the NBA.
It’s still not a highly efficient shot, granted. But as defenses key in more and more on 3-point shooting, you have to imagine the number of wide-open 3-point looks will decrease. What’s a better shot: a contested 3, or a wide-open 2? If a contested 3 is made at, say, 30% (excluding the likes of Curry), a wide-open 2 would only have to be hit at 45% to be equal in efficiency. That’s still a high number, but not out of the realm of possibility.
And you know who shoots a good percentage from the mid-range? LaMarcus Aldridge. You know who else? David West. You know who greatly improved that part of his game last season? Kawhi Leonard. Tony and Tim ain’t half bad, either. Even the 3-point shooters are in on it: Green and Mills both have nice dribble pull up games, a necessity for shooters being run off the line by opposing defenses.
The nature of defenses is to protect the rim and protect the 3-point line. A good offense will pull gravity in both directions, attacking the rim and forcing the defense to honor the 3-point shot. This stretching in two different directions can render a defense thin in the middle, leaving the weakest and most vulnerable spot right in that midrange.
In a way, it also works to turn defensive tendencies into weaknesses. If you’re going to scheme to leave the midrange open, the logical counterpunch is to become a really good midrange shooting team. Defenses are so well-trained these days that they’ll instinctively leave the midrange wide open.
It still requires smart and disciplined offense. We still need Parker attacking and collapsing the defense. We still need the crisp and quick ball movement to get defenses scrambling. The 3-point shot still needs to be a threat. Shots at the rim still need to be found. But the end result of breaking down the defense might more and more be a wide-open midrange shot from somebody who can make them. It’s the most reliably open shot. If it’s what defenses are willing to give, then the smart teams will get really good at taking them.
(Of course the counter to the counter is that if the defenses start guarding against the midrange shot, then the rim and the 3-point line immediately open up again.)
I’m not saying this will be the goal of the Spurs’ offense, nor that it will completely change. We’ll still see the offense we know and love; the “beautiful game” isn’t going anywhere. Plus, I think we’ll see Aldridge’s range increase out to the 3-point line and Kawhi’s 3-point percentage come up from last season. But I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Spurs acquired two really solid mid-range shooters and have been developing a couple of others over the years.
The entire league is zigging in the same direction, so you might see the Spurs start zagging. It may seem crazy. But so did those corner 3s 13 years ago.
