The Milwaukee Bucks have increased their 3-point makes year over year, and that offers cause for encouragement looking ahead.
During the Milwaukee Bucks’ Sunday afternoon win over the Phoenix Suns, legendary play-by-play announcer Jim Paschke made an interesting observation on the Fox Sports Wisconsin broadcast.
Having lost the sharpshooting of Malcolm Brogdon last summer, there was always going to be a sharp focus on how the Bucks would fare from deep this year, particularly given how their shooting had already let them down at key junctures in last season’s playoffs.
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The Bucks’ three most significant summer signings of the offseason, Wesley Matthews, Robin Lopez, and Kyle Korver, were widely viewed as the team’s attempt to replace Brogdon’s production by committee, and when it comes to volume of three-point makes, they’ve certainly lived up to that task.
As Paschke outlined on the broadcast, that trio’s total of 157 made threes to this point in the campaign has already surpassed the total of 143 triples that Brogdon knocked down during the entirety of his 50-40-90 campaign last season.
That’s not overly shocking as it’s well-documented that Brogdon was not the highest usage shooter, at least in Milwaukee, and for many that in its own right was meaningful justification for the Bucks’ decision to move on.
The truth, though, is that the shooting success of Korver, Matthews, and even RoLo, speaks to a modest but not insignificant overall improvement for the Bucks on that front.
Averaging 13.2 made threes per 100 possessions, the Bucks currently rank fifth in the NBA in that department. That number represents a slight uptick from last season where, although the Bucks finished third in the NBA in that category, they averaged only 12.9 made triples per 100 possessions.
Significantly, though, that improvement comes in line with Milwaukee attempting fewer three-pointers per 100 possessions, with last season’s mark of 36.7 now having dropped slightly to 36.5.
That speaks to some of the added variety that has found its way into Milwaukee’s offense this season, whether that’s some more freedom for Khris Middleton to work in the mid-range, or the uptick in pick-and-roll plays the Bucks are running.
As things stand, there’s undoubtedly a larger sense that even with the roster they currently have, the Bucks still have room to shoot a little better from beyond the arc. That may well be the case, but the improvement they’ve already made in their volume of makes, and their percentage, cannot be overlooked.
The Bucks making 36.1 percent of their triples this season as opposed to 35.3 percent last year may not seem like a total game-changer, and it likely isn’t. But in remembering just how close the Bucks came last year before the wheels fell off against Toronto, even slight improvements across the board could yet make all of the difference.