One team is shooting worse than any in recent history. One player is shooting like an analytics fiend. And a three-time MVP is shooting better than anyone realizes.
Let’s open up the notebook to run through three NBA trends that have caught my eye with the second part of the season underway:
The true 3-point leader
Nikola Jokić’s most recent 3-point attempt was pure of heart.
Jokić had tipped a missed shot above the basket once, twice and into his giant paws for a defensive board. A few seconds remained in Thursday evening’s third quarter, when Jokić’s Denver Nuggets led the Charlotte Hornets by three and could have used a few more points.
The only guarantee was that they’d have a fair chance at them.
After one dribble, Jokić stepped twice, squared from the opposite arc and hurled a 50-foot Hail Mary that began at his chest and ended with a loud spank off the top of the glass. The shot gave the three-time MVP a single-game career high for 3-point attempts: 14. He hit six of them, one short of his best-ever.
But maybe the final shot, the frantic one that assaulted the backboard, shouldn’t have counted.
Jokić is one of the rare players who doesn’t care about his numbers on oft-hopeless prayers like these. We’ve all noticed it: To maintain his percentages, a player will hold onto the basketball through the end of a quarter, pretending to go into his shooting motion just before the buzzer sounds but releasing some 73-foot heave only once the shot can no longer count.
There’s an easy way for the NBA to solve this and increase the frequency of miraculous buzzer-beaters without taking away from the sport: Just don’t include those full-court heaves on a player’s 3-point record, even if they come just before the buzzer, similar to how a shot isn’t a field-goal attempt if the shooter gets fouled.
For the sake of argument, let’s say the NBA were to make that rule change, counting only natural 3-pointers and not those poisonous full-courters on a player’s stat sheet. In that case, there would be a new league leader in percentage.
Why not add one more bit of trivia to Jokić’s resume?
The just-turned 30-year-old technically sits fourth in the NBA in 3-point accuracy (44.9 percent), three slots behind Memphis Grizzlies marksman Luke Kennard (47.6 percent). But remember, Jokić’s full-court shots occur often — and they arrive with a certificate of authenticity.
Remove heaves from his record, and he’s shooting 48.6 percent from deep, tops in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum. Kennard slots down to second place.
For all the talk of Jokić as an advanced-stats darling, which he remains, the old-school numbers make a tremendous case for MVP No. 4. He’s top three in the league in points, rebounds and assists per game. He’s averaging a career-high in points and assists and is three-tenths of a point away from becoming the third player in history to average a 30-point triple-double. He is reaching territories that didn’t seem possible even during his gaudiest seasons of the past.
And on top of it all, he is the NBA’s true 3-point percentage leader.
Toumani midrange jumper(s)
The threat of the buzzer is messing with history — and not just because it is hurting Jokić’s chance at a 3-point title. There is a lesser (but cooler) bit of trivia that’s now vanished in Portland.
Just before the All-Star break, with only a few seconds remaining in a third-quarter possession against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Toumani Camara received the basketball in the right corner. He dribbled once to his left, circling his Portland Trail Blazers teammate Deandre Ayton, and pulled up from just inside the 3-point arc for an errant jump shot. The Blazers lost, snapping a season-long six-game winning streak — and it wasn’t because of a desperation jumper. But that shot, whether it went in or not, was bigger than just a blip.
Depending on your perspective, Camara’s Blazers are in the midst of either ruining the tank or justifying the conglomeration of veterans and young talent they clutched onto beyond the trade deadline.
The past month has yielded 2023 No. 3 pick Scoot Henderson’s best ball. The 24-year-old forward Deni Avdija is making what may not be the leap but is at least some kind of leap, chucking up 3s with more confidence than ever, attacking the basket and leading an offense that’s actually meshing. Camara is stifling opponents at an All-Defense level. The Blazers are on a four-game skid but had won 10 of 11 before that.
Much is going right in Portland, except for those advocating for the tank — oh, and also for any geeks who realized Camara put the kibosh on a chance at history when the basketball rolled off his fingertips.
That shot was Camara’s first non-paint 2-point jumper of the season. Even after taking it, he’s tracking for the most cookie-cutter shot profile the NBA has ever seen.
Toumani Camara celebrates a made 3 against the Suns earlier this month. (Soobum Im / Imagn Images)
No player in history has taken more than 138 3s in a season without tossing up at least one midrange jumper, a record Gary Clark established in his legacy-setting 2018-19 campaign. Clark must have celebrated that Camara jumper the same way the 1972 Miami Dolphins reacted to Eli Manning defeating Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
But Clark was a 3-point specialist. All he did was hang around the arc. Camara will get to the basket, too.
He has already taken more than 200 3-pointers. He still leads the league in corner 3s and above-the-break 3s among the 120 players who have taken no more than one midrange range shot. He’s second to the Detroit Pistons’ Jalen Duren, a rim-diving center, in paint attempts among that same crew.
Modern-day analytics is not about eliminating the midrange indiscriminately. Kevin Durant pulling up from 17 feet, for example, is still a good shot. But Camara is trimming the pork, and he’s doing it to an extreme no one this side of Clark has.
Making history
The Orlando Magic’s return from the All-Star break sounded like a reproduction of “Stomp.” They played all the hits Thursday against the Atlanta Hawks — clank, smack, plunk, bang — until bench guard Cole Anthony finally swished in their first jump shot of the game more than 18 minutes after tip-off.
Orlando won, but inside victory was the same trait that’s bitten it all season.
The Magic can’t make a jumper — sometimes (as was the case for a quarter and a half Thursday) literally.
Following a 6-of-25 performance from deep against Atlanta, Orlando is hitting just 30.5 percent of its 3-point attempts this season, nearly three full percentage points worse than the second-to-last Washington Wizards, a team racing like a wino to the cellar. The last team to shoot this poorly for a full season was the 2012-13 Minnesota Timberwolves, who also hit 30.5 percent from 3.
Once again, Orlando is bound for the basement in offense. It hasn’t finished above the bottom nine in points per possession since 2012, when prime-aged Dwight Howard was still in town. This time, it’s 29th.
The Magic ventured into free agency this past summer hoping to bring in shooting. They signed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, but the bug has now bitten him. He’s only a shade above 30 percent from deep. No one in the current rotation is shooting even league average from 3-point land. The team, more than ever, needs a point guard, and it’s struggled since the returns of its two stars, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner.
No matter how hard the defense bashes opponents every night, Orlando can’t reach its potential until it straightens out its jumpers.
Second Spectrum has a statistic, abbreviated as “qsq,” that measures how well an average player would shoot, given the location of the shot, the type of shot and the nearby defenders. The real-life Magic are shooting five percentage points worse than their qsq on 3-pointers, the largest differential since Second Spectrum began tracking the stat in 2013-14.
That’s long enough to include those tanking Oklahoma City Thunder squads, the Process Philadelphia 76ers, the post-Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce Brooklyn Nets and some dreadful New York Knicks groups. None of them undershot their expected 3-point percentage to this degree.
The Magic employ an exciting young core, a rugged culture and a coach who knows how to use the pieces. But this is 2025, not 2013, like the last time a team missed nearly 70 percent of its 3s. Each season, the NBA presses the 3-point button with a tad more enthusiasm. The greatest example? Orlando is taking twice as many deep balls as the 2012-13 Wolves did.
The Magic can’t climb up the Eastern Conference standings until more of them hit the net.
(Photo of Nikola Jokić: Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
