Golden State's deep ball wasn't there when they needed it most last season

Did they shoot too many threes or not enough??? And how can Chris Paul help?

One of the things I’ve been mulling over about the Chris Paul acquisition is just how much he can help the Golden State Warriors stop overdosingon three-point attempts. There were so many times last season that the Dubs heaved up triples with reckless abandon, to the point that sometimes coaches and teammates would throw up their hands in resentment and disappointment by the low quality shots the team was hoisting.

Here’s what Coach Steve Kerr said after that wild attempt from Klay Thompson in Game 4 of a doomed playoff series against the Lakers: “Well, I thought there were a few points in the game where we were trying to do it a little too quickly, where maybe we could’ve penetrated and got a better look, but you have to understand, too, these guys are aggressive, and if they’re open, they want to let it fly," Kerr said. "We don’t want to take that away from them, we want them aggressive, so it’s always a balance."

Balance, eh?

Many have credited the Splash Bros Era for changing the game of basketball and making deep shooting a must for any title contender. But if Golden State was once a pioneer of beyond the arc audaciousness, they looked something more haggard and delusional last season as they lined up at the arc for another hit from downtown.

I checked out the stats. The Warriors led the league in three-point field goal attempts at 43.2 per game. In the Steve Kerr era this team had never crossed the 40 3FGA threshold (their previous highest was 39.4 during their championship run of 2022-2023).

Can you believe during Kerr’s first title run, the team only hurled up 27 3FGA per game? It seemed like they were mad bombers back then. Last season? They went absolutely crazy with the shot jacking. Using the power of Stat Head, I checked how many times the Warriors have shot 40 or more triples in the Kerr era, and the team’s records in those games:

34-32 is not the record Dub Nation wants to see with the team tossing up that many three-pointers.

One thing to note is that is they were second in the league in 3PT% at 38.5%, meaning that this team was hitting with enough consistency that opposing teams couldn’t relax when the bombs went up. That’s the fourth highest deep accuracy the Warriors have had under Kerr as well (they hit a ridiculous 41% from downtown during the 73-win season). And when the Dubs got hot last season, they could positively destroy another team.

So there’s enough to show that the Warriors can definitely still knock down deep shots with the best of em; but the playoffs made it clear they need to diversify their attack more to get back to their championship goals. The Dubs averaged 42.5 3FGA per game during the postseason, knocking them down at a 34% clip. They barely got past Sacramento before flaming out to Los Angeles.

Here’s an excerpt from NBA.com’s postmortem on GSW’s poor shooting in that Laker series:

Klay and Stephen Curry, who for over a decade personified the Warriors’ long-distance shooting strength, transformed into the Gassed Brothers because they had nothing.

There’s really no other issue that competed, really, with the Warriors’ inability to make 3-pointers. Game 6 was merely more of the same for Golden State and especially Curry and Thompson. They shot a combined 6-for-26 from deep Friday. Yes, just six. Curry gets that in a quarter. But not in this elimination game when they needed it the most, and not really for this series. In the last four games, three of them losses, Curry was 14-for-49 on 3s. And Thompson? The series was a nightmare for him. He finished it with a whimper, just eight points on 3-for-19 shooting from the floor, missing 10 of 12 from deep. Thompson shot 34% for the series and, with the exception of Game 2, he was largely missing.

For sure, the Lakers’ defense played a part in this, especially Dennis Schroder, who kept Curry from getting many clean looks and forcing him to launch shots deeper than usual. It was the Laker game plan, and while Curry has seen these tactics his entire career, L.A. just did it better than most when they needed it most. Curry didn’t have many playoff stretches poorer than this. Thompson definitely didn’t. There was no splashing from these two; on the contrary, they were all wet.

Which leads me back to Mr. Paul. Check out this barrage of stats from NBA.com:

The Dubs led the league in 3-point attempts but, at times, struggled to diversify their shot diet. This past season, the Warriors attempted the fourth-fewest mid-range jumpers from 10-14 feet (5.2 attempts) and had the third-worst percentage (40.4 percent). On the other hand, among players with at least 200 mid-range attempts, Paul ranked seventh in percentage (47.7 percent). Paul can be effective in the mid-range while creating even higher quality looks for others from behind the arc.

“Last year our team didn’t have a variety of ways to score. CP3 adds variety to that menu,” Draymond Green said on the Podcast P show.

LET THE DIVERSIFICATION OF THE OFFENSE COMMENCE!