Where have all the three-pointers gone? A tale of the Wolves’ inefficiency

There’s a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg situation going on at 600 First Avenue North.

Nobody expected the Wolves to rank among the NBA’s best shooting teams. Knowing Flip Saunders’ background, a dearth of three-point shots was a certainty. But to the extent that the lowly Wolves find themselves wallowing in…I’m not sure the unsuspecting public quite saw this coming.

Less threes relative to the rest of the NBA sounded about right, but less threes to the tune of Saunders’ miserable Washington Wizards squads of only a few years ago or to what would have been far below average even back in the late 1990s and early 2000s has been a bit shocking, to say the least.

By now I’m sure you’ve guessed that the Wolves attempt the fewest three-point shots of any team in the league. You’re correct, and it’s not particularly close.

As noted in the table, only 17.5% of Minnesota’s field goal attempts are beyond the arc. The next closest is Memphis at 18.4%, and Sacramento is the only other team beneath 20%, coming in at 19.9%. (That, of course, will change rapidly under new head coach George Karl.) Fourth in least three-point attempts? Saunders’ protege Randy Wittman and the Washington Wizards.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Houston Rockets, with a staggering 39.8% of their field goal attempts from three-point land. Not coincidentally, the top-six teams in three-point attempt rate are slam-dunks for the playoffs, and eight of the top-ten will likely play in the postseason, with the Phoenix Suns still over the .500-mark and in the hunt for a playoff spot. Philadelphia is the only outlier.

Getting back to the question of the chicken or the egg…some might argue that the Wolves’ don’t shoot threes because they don’t have long-range marksmen. Well, sure, they don’t have as many three-point shooters as some other (more successful) teams, but this point is also two-fold. One, Saunders built the roster, so that could very well be by design.

Secondly, it isn’t like the Wolves have a team full of Mark Madsens. Kevin Martin (38.5%), Gary Neal (38%), and Chase Budinger (35.5%) have all shot much better than league-average on three-pointers throughout their careers. Mo Williams is a 38.2% career three-point shooter and he played 41 games for Saunders. Even starters like Andrew Wiggins and Ricky Rubio are hovering just below a league-average mark in their young careers, and shooting threes at a 32-33% clip is much, much better than shooting 40% from 19 feet.

Even the Los Angeles Lakers are shooting 22% of their attempts from beyond the arc. Their coach infamously stated that he liked only shooting ten threes in a game, and wanted to stay between 10 and 15 three-point attempts per game on the season. Sorry, Coach Scott, but your crew is actually forcing up nearly 19 three-pointers per game. Bunch o’ chuckers.

Maybe not so coincidentally, the only Saunders-coached teams that shot more than a modest 20% of their shots from three-point range were his three Detroit Pistons squads from 2005-2008 — his best three teams ever. They all reached the Eastern Conference Finals and lost.

To recap: the Wolves shoot the least three-pointers per field goal attempt in the NBA, despite having a few better-than-league-average long-range shooters. They also have a coach (and executive) with a track record of avoiding three-point attempts over 17 seasons as a head coach in the league.

The amount of three-pointers that the Wolves are shooting per field goal attempt is less than what the league average was way back in 1995-1996, which was Saunders’ first season as a head coach. League average was 20%, and in the 2014-15 season, only three teams shoot less threes than that, and one is Saunders’ Wolves.

The personnel needs to change a bit, but the coaching and the play sets need to change more. Running set after set with multiple options in the mid-range isn’t going to beat teams like the Rockets that either shoot from beyond the arc, at the rim, or at the charity stripe.

The Wolves are already well behind the best teams in the NBA and have been for a decade. The question is, how far behind will they fall, and when will they reverse course?