The Portland Trail Blazers are the second-worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA. If it weren't for the Sacramento Kings, a team that might actually be designed to miss 3-pointers, the Blazers would hold the worst mark in the league for longball percentage.
That's not stopping them from hoisting them up, though. Portland ranks No. 3 in 3s attempted per game, behind just the Celtics (No. 9 in 3PT%) and Warriors (No. 14).
Individually, the numbers don't make sense, either. Scoot Henderson is a career 33 percent 3-point shooter who (theoretically) is a high-level finisher at the rim. Why are over half of his shot attempts 3-pointers? Meanwhile, Toumani Camara, Shaedon Sharpe, Jrue Holiday and Deni Avdija are all around league-average percentage-wise, but are shooting far more often than league average.
The problem is, none of those guys are horrible shooters, so it's hard to fault any of them individually. But when seven players are shooting more than five 3-pointers a game and none of them are even close to hitting 40 percent of the time, it gets a little frustrating.
It's not just an extended slump for this group, either. This is about how well each of these guys has shot for their careers (with the exception of Vit Kejci).
Blazers might need to keep playing the volume shooting game
Is there a way to fix this? Maybe not. Because the other — and perhaps biggest — problem is, well, the Blazers aren't great from inside the arc, either. They're No. 29 in the league in field goal percentage from 10-14 feet, No. 28 in percentage from 5-9 feet, and No. 24 in shooting from 15 to 19 feet. There aren't many spots on the court the Blazers shoot even league average from the floor.
I understand how important the 3-point shot is in the modern NBA. Obviously, the Blazers can't abandon it altogether and it seems counterproductive to ask them to move in toward the hoop more when they're not good there, either, and making a shot counts for fewer points.
Plus, the Blazers have the best offensive rebounder in the league in Donovan Clingan; he cleans up so many of the team's misses that it's almost turned into a strategy to miss shots. That's not a reliable approach to modern basketball, of course, but with shooting struggles everywhere, the "best" route forward is probably still to keep chucking 3-pointers, hope enough of them go in, and hope the team's great offensive rebounding continues, too. It's not the most promising strategy, I must concede.