Following the Portland Trail Blazers' first-round playoff exit at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs, Joe Cronin pointed to shooting as the top offseason priority. Portland's general manager said that although Damian Lillard's return will help, the series against the Spurs showed that the Blazers' offense played too many possessions in the mud. It was an area that still needed to be addressed this summer.
More recently, at Blazers Media Day on Monday, Cronin was asked about the large disconnect between their three-point percentage and attempts.
“TBD. It’s still I don’t think a strength of ours," Cronin responded. "Obviously, Dame will improve our shooting, spacing, etc. immensely. There’s some outside additions that we made that will help in that category. Vit Krejci at last year's trade deadline. Micah Potter is a real shooter. Branden Carlson’s a good shooter. I think the thing we’re going to count on the most though is the internal development of our shooters. They’re taking good steps. They still have steps to take as shooters. I don’t expect it to be a strength of ours, but I’m not overly concerned with it.”
Blazers didn't address shooting enough this summer
Under interim head coach Tiago Splitter, the Blazers attempted 42.2 threes per game last season, ranking third in the league behind only the Golden State Warriors and the Charlotte Hornets.
A counterproductive playstyle, given they connected on just 34.3 percent of those attempts, finishing 28th in percentage ahead of only the NBA bottom feeders, the Brooklyn Nets and Sacramento Kings.
Shooting has been the Achilles heel throughout this rebuild, as Portland has frequently ranked in the bottom five in the league in three-point efficiency. Generally speaking, under the modern NBA, it makes analytical sense to launch among the league's best. But for some reason, the Blazers still fail to understand that formula only works if you can actually consistently make the attempts.
This was one of my favorite questions asked by Cronin because it calls out the disconnect to what he pinpointed as the top offseason priority and the moves that largely ignored that, or in the case of the Ja Morant deal, even further compounded those issues.
Dame's return will certainly help, as his 3-Point Contest trophy last season was already proof he still has it from beyond the arc after the brutal torn Achilles. Krejci should bounce back from his shooting slump to end the season with Portland, and Cronin's right: Potter is a great shooter.
Maybe Lillard's return will be enough of a boost. But the concern is that's still only a temporary solution for someone who has a closing window at 36. Meanwhile, the margin moves for role players like Krejci and Potter won't offset this flaw in Portland's building blocks, since they likely won't even play enough minutes to make a substantial shift.
This has been the glaring problem in the Blazers' offense for multiple seasons now, and the solution was somehow to trade for a 30 percent three-point shooter in Morant? At least Cronin isn't gaslighting fans into believing this is a good shooting team, since even his optimistic view is that this is a "TDB" situation where the best-case scenario is that it's no longer a weakness.
Still, after identifying the problem last season in the first true playoff test for this young core, you'd have assumed the Blazers would've done more.
Add us as a preferred source on Google