Beyond the Box Score: Thunder Will Need to Amplify Shooting in Rebuild
It has become apparent in recent years that Oklahoma City will need to fix its shooting woes before ‘arriving,’ as Sam Presti would put it.
Good 3-point shooting teams have dominated the league as of late. Last season nine of the top ten 3-point shooting teams made the playoffs, the exception being all-time shooter Steph Curry and the Warriors missing out narrowly due to the play-in game.
The top two last season, the Clippers and Nets, both made deep runs, and the champion Bucks were fourth.
Oklahoma City ranked second to last, shooting .339 percent only ahead of the Cavaliers at .336.
Even more than last year, extended shooting has directly attributed to championship basketball. The dynasty of the Golden State Warriors kicked off the trend, starting with Curry and Klay Thompson before eventually adding Kevin Durant, one of the most prolific shooters in the sports.
The Raptors, 2019 champions, ranked sixth overall.
One outlier to the shooting streak was the 2020 Lakers squad, but finding ways to add players the caliber of LeBron James and Anthony Davis is easier said than done.
Not every single player on the Thunder squad will need to shoot well, but they’ll certainly need more firepower.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Ty Jerome easily lead the team in this category, as the only remaining players to shoot over 40 percent on more than four attempts.
Muscala is a solid stretch shooter, hitting 37 percent of his 5.3 attempts.
Some of Luguentz Dort, Theo Maledon, Darius Bazley and Aleksej Pokusevski, who are all sub 35 percent shooters, will need to improve before the Thunder are back to competing.
Want to join the discussion? Click here to become a member of the message board community today!
Like SI Thunder on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest Thunder news.
