What a Time to Be a 5: Why NBA Bigs Are Launching More Threes Than Ever

Joel Embiid entered the NBA with the tools to rule the paint.

The arachnoid frame, with room to pack on mass. The footwork of a ballet dancer. The gliding strides of a gazelle. The soft touch on his shot. The hunger to improve, having only recently picked up basketball as a teenager in his native Cameroon.

But after missing what would’ve been his rookie season with the Philadelphia 76ers not once but twice on account of a tricky foot injury—and adding height and muscle to his body during that interminable wait—Embiid wanted more. He wanted to own the league inside and out.

This past summer, in preparation for his pro debut, Embiid enlisted the help of NBA skills trainer Drew Hanlen to sharpen his shot.

They hopped from gym to gym around Los Angeles, watching film of Hakeem Olajuwon and working the Dream Shake into Embiid’s repertoire. But by and large, Hanlen had Embiid, at 7’2” and a chiseled 250 pounds, study the game’s greatest scoring wings—Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony, among other subjects—to become a face-up force with three-point range.

“A lot of big guys lack natural touch, so it’s harder for them to shoot from further distance,” Hanlen told Bleacher Report. “He had natural touch when he came to me and we started working, so it was easy to make little mechanical tweaks to improve his numbers.”

Look around the league, and you’ll find giants like Embiid venturing out into what was once the domain of their smaller, quicker counterparts in greater numbers than ever. They’ve co-opted the three-point shot—a tool intended, in part, to dull their advantages in size and strength—as another weapon to assert their hardwood hegemony.

 

The Arc of History

Any list of the best bigs in basketball today is littered with guys who can beat you from way outside.

Anthony Davis went from taking 27 threes during his first three seasons combined to attempting 108 in 61 contests last season and 65 through 31 games in 2016-17. DeMarcus Cousins, a low-post bully of the highest order, takes 4.7 threes per game—up from 3.2 last season and 0.1 the season before that. In his first 27 games this season, Brook Lopez nearly quintupled his total three-point output from his first eight campaigns.

Perhaps no center’s success from beyond the arc has surprised more than Marc Gasol’s. The Memphis Grizzlies’ man in the middle is now stepping out 3.5 times per game and knocking down threes at a 42.6 percent clip—a top-15 mark.

And he’s doing it with the range of a 7-foot Stephen Curry. According to NBA Savant, Gasol has hit 45.5 percent (5-of-11) of his shots from 27 feet and beyond, compared to 34.3 percent (23-of-67) for Curry.

“It’s definitely becoming a big part of what he’s doing,” said Portland Trail Blazers big man Meyers Leonard, who got burned by Gasol at the FedEx Forum in early December.

According to B/R Insights, players whose primary or secondary position is center have shot the ball nearly as well from three (35.4 percent) as those playing guard (35.9 percent). They’re also on pace to zoom past last season’s marks for three-point attempts and makes among 5-men, which were the highest in at least a decade.

“I think that’s where the game is going,” Indiana Pacers head coach Nate McMillan said. “Teams are encouraging their players to shoot the three, encouraging everybody to shoot the three.”

In some respects, having centers shoot threes can tilt the tables in one team’s favor more than, say, asking guards and wings to take more shots from deep. If a big is hanging around the perimeter, he’s probably pulling the opponent’s rim protector away from the paint and opening up the floor for his own teammates to attack.

“It doesn’t even have to be behind the three[-point line],” Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “Just a 5 that’s picking and popping now. Being behind the three puts an extreme amount of pressure on the defense.”

 

Young Guns

Myles Turner had the makings of a pick-and-pop phenom from the get-go for the Indiana Pacers. As a rookie, he canned shots inside the arc at clips close to or above the league average.

Turner had tested his range as a freshman at the University of Texas, hitting 17 of 62 threes (27.4 percent) while playing predominantly power forward. The Pacers pulled him in a bit, to the point where he finished 3-of-14 on long-range looks in 2015-16 between both big-man spots.

After a summer spent sharpening his three-point shot—Turner estimates that he launched 800-1,000 shots per day during the offseason—he’s taking (1.6 per game) and making them (37.3 percent) at higher rates than he did in college.

“I’ve always played in the post, but I’ve always worked on my shot,” Turner said. “When I was in high school, AAU and all that kind of stuff, I always took outside shots because it’s what came naturally to me. I put a lot …

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