Another game, another bushel of 3-pointers for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In their latest victory over the Orlando Magic, their first trip to central Florida since the two teams met in the playoffs last year, the Cavaliers hit another 19 3-pointers, showing off the superpower that has propelled them to the league’s best record.
Last season the Cavaliers were a good 3-point shooting team; this year they have taken things to the next level, and it may just be the change that brings a second championship to The Land.
The Cavaliers are bombing away from 3
The Cavaliers are having an all-time shooting season. They are putting up 41.1 3-point attempts per game, a whopping number that ranks fourth in the league behind the modern offenses of Golden State and Boston and the desperation of the Chicago Bulls.
Yet what Cleveland is doing with that level of shot volume is unique and destructive. The Celtics lead the league in 3-point attempts with 48.4 per game, a truly insane number. Yet they are hitting just 36.8 percent of them. At some point, if you continue to increase your 3-point volume, you pass the line where your good shooters take good shots and your shaky shooters take great shots; instead, you start adding bad, low-percentage looks to the mix, and it ends up with a 3-point percentage that is merely average.
That still works to the Celtics’ favor, and they have the NBA’s fourth-best offense. Nothing is broken in Boston. But they are sacrificing efficiency to get to elite volume.
The same goes for Chicago (37 percent from deep) and Golden State (36 percent). Of the next eight teams in 3-point volume after the Cavaliers, all but one are shooting 36.2 percent of less from deep; the lone exception is the Minnesota Timberwolves at just 37.5 percent.
The Cavaliers, on the other hand, are hitting a whopping 39.4 percent from deep, leading the league by a mile. The second-best team in 3-point accuracy at only 38.4 percent is the Milwaukee Bucks and they rank 15th in attempts. No one is even close to what the Cavaliers are doing by combining 3-point volume and accuracy.
It marks a significant change for the team as well. Under head coach Kenny Atkinson they have managed to significantly increase their 3-point volume and accuracy, designing an offensive attack that puts good shooters in position to take good shots. That is harder than it looks given the strength of NBA defenses but Cleveland has found a way to achieve that goal and thrive.
Last season they took 36.8 attempts per game from deep; that number is up to 41.1 per game. They shot 36.7 percent on those attempts, ranking 15th in the league; this year that number is 39.4, first in the NBA. Last season 42.2 percent of their shots came from deep, and now it’s 45.4 percent.
The Cavaliers are perfecting what Boston used to win
The Boston Celtics pushed the envelope last season when it came to 3-pointers. After a series of NBA champions won without prioritizing the 3-ball, the Celtics paved their path to a title by specifically empowering every player on the roster to bomb away from deep.
As discussed above, at some point increased volume will equal decreased efficiency, but last year’s Celtics never found that line. They destroyed opponents en route to the latest Boston championship.
Now the Cavaliers are taking that same path and adding a layer of gold. They are doing so despite starting a non-shooting center and a shaky-shooting All-Star at power forward. They are doing so despite essentially returning the same roster as last season. Adding a high-volume shooter in De’Andre Hunter will (and has) help, but their transformation began before the season and their success has been palpable from the jump.
The transformation is working. The Cavaliers lead the league in offense by a large amount over second-place Denver despite not having an MVP-level offensive engine, and they have the league’s best record and are well ahead of the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference standings.
Will they take the lesson from the Celtics, perfect it, and then beat them at their own game? That question won’t be answered until the playoffs, but as each victory comes and the shots keep falling, belief in what the Cavaliers can accomplish will only grow stronger.
