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How the Portland Trail Blazers can improve their offense next season

By Hassan Ladiwala

Jun 1, 2021; Denver, Colorado, USA; Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard (0) leaves the court after a double overtime loss to Denver Nuggets during game five in the first round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs. at Ball Arena. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 1, 2021; Denver, Colorado, USA; Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard (0) leaves the court after a double overtime loss to Denver Nuggets during game five in the first round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs. at Ball Arena. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports /
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CJ McCollum, Nikola Jokic, Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
CJ McCollum, Nikola Jokic, Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images) /

Spot-up shooting and its role in the Portland Trail Blazers offense

Take spot-up shooting for example. With the 3-point shot becoming more and more important amongst the NBA’s role players, spot-up shooting accounts for a large portion of most teams’ offenses and is an excellent barometer to see how good of shooters a team’s role players are. I say role players because elite scorers like Damian Lillard aren’t typically granted the luxury of taking spot up jump shots as opposing defenses stay glued to the them whether they have the ball or not.

Stephen Curry spotted up on 9 percent of his shot attempts last season and knocked them in at a 50 percent clip (69 percent effective field goal percentage), Damian Lillard only spotted up on five percent of his shot attempts last season and knocked them in at a 49 percent clip (71 percent EFG). Compare those numbers to an average shooter like Robert Covington who spotted up on 51 percent of his shot attempts and hit them at a 37 percent clip (53 percent EFG) just to underscore the extent to which defenses will go to prevent elite shooters from spotting up.

As you can see from the chart, the Blazers only took spot-up shots on 19 percent of their offensive possessions last season—the lowest frequency in the league—yet they converted them at the fourth highest rate (1.11 points per possession). In 2019-20, the team took spot-up shots on just 17 percent of their possessions—again the lowest frequency in the league—and converted them at the second highest rate (1.06 PPP). For reference, last season teams scored between 0.90 (Cleveland Cavaliers) and 1.24 (Los Angeles Clippers) points per spot-up possession.

The Clippers were a huge outlier at 1.24 PPP, with the second most efficient team scoring 1.12 points per spot-up possession. The year before that, teams scored between 0.92 (Atlanta Hawks) and 1.08 (Clippers/Utah Jazz) points per spot-up possession, so efficiencies of 1.11 PPP and 1.06 PPP on these attempts are really good. Yet the Blazers have made spot-up shooting a smaller and smaller part of their offense over the years. The chart below shows how the Blazers have descended in the spot-up shot possessions category over the last six years (as far back as nba.com’s tracking data goes), just as the rest of the league started to embrace it. The numbers in the rectangles are the team’s PPP on spot-up plays for that season.

If you like this chart you can find both player and team breakdowns here:  Special thanks to data scientist, Burak Can Koc for developing this app and allowing me to use these charts in the article.

I found the Blazers declining number of spot-up shooting attempts to be extremely puzzling. The Blazers have been one of the best 3-point shooting team in the league over the past few years, but why aren’t they using their shooters in the same way that other teams are?