Joel Embiid entered the NBA with the tools to rule the paint.
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 of work into my shot as well.”
Kristaps Porzingis can go a step further: He’s been dancing around the arc for as long as he’s played the game. It wasn’t until he was “15 or 16” that he started to play inside.
“A lot of tall kids might want to shoot more from outside than inside now, seeing the way I play and the way Dirk [Nowitzki] played, who affected me,” Porzingis said.
Few tall kids grow up to be 7’3” like the New York Knicks’ young star. Fewer still move around the floor and shoot as effortlessly as he does.
“I’d give him the green light to shoot it,” said Los Angeles Lakers coach Luke Walton, before watching New York’s Unicorn drain 3-of-4 from deep during a 118-112 Knicks win.
Porzingis, who’s hit 40.3 percent of his 5.3 threes per game, is the new posterchild for young bigs coming into the league ready to launch. Not far from the front of that pack is Karl-Anthony Towns, last season’s unanimous Rookie of the Year, a 33.6 percent shooter on 3.8 tries. And there are so many more like them, from Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Phoenix’s Dragan Bender to Charlotte’s Frank Kaminsky and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“I think it’s probably the way kids grow up nowadays,” Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek said. “They’ve seen this league transform with bigs shooting threes, so these guys are 12, 13 years old, they’re 6’5” and they’re out there shooting threes. It’s not surprising. At 7’3”, it might be a little bit surprising, but Manute Bol used to shoot threes. He was 7’7”.”
Stepping Back
In Portland’s practice gym, you’ll find a bell on the wall. If you take five shots from five different spots and hit at least 20 of them (80 percent), you get to ring it.
“That was always like a goal of mine,” Leonard said. “I would always get really close.”
Some 18s here, some 19s there, with the occasional 20 mixed in. Eventually, Leonard was ringing the bell regularly. He started showing off his stroke in practice and added three-pointers to his pregame routine. By the end of his third season, he was a fixture in the Trail Blazers’ rotation, taking two treys per game.
Now, Leonard’s so comfortable on the perimeter that he takes jump shots from three-point range, rather than the flat-footed set shots that other centers tend to deploy.
“All the guys in the NBA are strong enough to get the ball to the rim,” Leonard said.
For most bigs, it’s a matter of making mechanical adjustments, testing out tweaks frequently enough to etch them into their muscle memory and building confidence from beyond the arc.
Marreese Speights was never shy to let it fly from inside the line—hence the “Mo Buckets” moniker. It wasn’t until Steve Kerr and his Golden State Warriors staff encouraged him to take another step back last season that his long twos turned into threes.
“I’ve always been able to shoot,” Speights said, “but I never shot it in games because I never wanted to get subbed out of games.”
That fear disappeared with the Warriors’ support—and with a bit more arc on his shot. His confidence from that distance is one of the main reasons the Los Angeles Clippers were so pleased to snag Speights from Golden State this summer, and why he quickly became a staple of Doc Rivers’ stellar second unit.
“He’d rather me shoot it than turn it over,” Speights said, “so I shoot it.”
How To Be Big
Not all bigs gets that kind of encouragement to shoot. If you’re one of the bigger kids rising through the basketball ranks, chances are, coaches have told you to stay inside, where your size and strength can be put to better use.
“When I was coming up, the big man was taught to be in the paint, rebound and score in the paint,” Pacers center Al Jefferson said. “Now, it shows you how much skills these young guys coming up with them now. They’re able to dribble the ball like guards and shoot the three. So I think it just shows how much better that we got as players.”
Jefferson insists he has no interest in venturing out beyond 15-17 feet, where he’s been lethal for most of his pro career. Nor do the Pacers seem inclined to push his limits.
“I’m an antique,” he said. “You don’t see much of what I do no more. I think that makes me who I am. I don’t think coach want me to shoot threes.”
“Coach, can I shoot threes?” Jefferson asked McMillan, who chuckled at the question. “See?”
Even if he did, Jefferson would have to cope with the same physical challenges that make big men feel as comfortable inside as they often are uncomfortable outside.
“I feel like it’s more of a disadvantage when you’re higher up and you’re shooting more flat than anything,” Turner said. “That’s why a lot of big guys struggle to shoot free throws and whatnot, I believe.”
To Hanlen, it has less to do with height than hand size.
“The hardest thing is big guys have bigger hands, so their hand placement is completely different,” he said. “They usually have to have their hands closer together. And also, that means they have to release the ball differently because otherwise, their non-shooting hand would block their shooting hand’s path for a clear shot.”
Stay In Your Lane
Some NBA giants aren't ready, willing or able to join the league’s three-point revolution.
Rudy Gobert doesn’t mind competing with Utah Jazz teammate Trey Lyles in three-point contests behind closed doors. But when it comes to games, he knows where his bread is best buttered.
“I’m working on my mid-range a lot, but right now, I think the main thing for me is helping my team winning,” Gobert said. “I’m not going to do things I haven’t mastered yet. I just do things to help my teammates like set good screens and go to the rim and put pressure on the rim. I think when I do that, it’s the way that helps my team the most.”
Joakim Noah hasn’t shot threes since high school and hasn’t straightened out his crooked stroke, even after playing next to stretchy bigs like Pau Gasol and Nikola Mirotic in Chicago and Porzingis in New York.
“At this point, it is what it is,” he said. “Everybody has a role to play.”
The New Orleans Hornets tried to convince David West to swap out some of his patented 18-footers for threes, to no avail. The Indiana Pacers made a similar pitch, only to see it fall on deaf ears.
“I just never could get, not necessarily confident enough,” West said, “but I never felt like that would be an effective way for me to play.”
Zaza Pachulia, West’s Golden State teammate, gave it some thought while playing with Nowitzki and for Rick Carlisle in Dallas last season. He didn’t follow through, but after making his first official three over the summer with the Georgian national team, Pachulia has some hope.
“I’m just following the game plan,” he said, “but it’s something good to think about for the future. I’m glad you reminded me.”
Just Keep Shooting
Shooting threes in live action isn’t for everybody. Nor is it in every team’s best interest to consistently pull its centers away from the hoop. If a big is best at using his size to bully opponents inside, having him step outside can be a disservice to his own squad—especially if he’s not particularly proficient from the perimeter.
“There’s some centers that, if they want to shoot threes, I’m all for it,” Walton said. “If they want to stay out there and not be in the paint scoring on us and getting rebounds, I encourage them to do that.”
Walton wasn’t willing to name names, though there was one that popped up elsewhere in L.A.
“Guys like Marc Gasol shooting threes, he ain’t down low because he’s a killer down low,” Speights said. “So it’s sometimes good for the opposing team.”
Still, there’s nothing wrong with a big guy giving it a try, at least in an empty gym. Practicing threes can benefit a frontcourt player’s game in other ways, even if his full range never sees the light of day.
“David Lee in workouts shoots about 80 percent from NBA three, but he hasn’t made a traditional NBA three-pointer in his career,” Hanlen revealed. “He’s made like last-second shots, but the reason we work on and perfect his three-point shot is just so that his ability to knock down mid-range jump shots is a lot easier.”
No matter how tall or small you may be, it can’t hurt to work on your three-point shot. In today’s shooting-obsessed NBA, you never know when or how it might come in handy.
“I encourage everybody to be a better shooter because it helps your game, obviously,” Rivers said. “I wish someone had encouraged me [to do] that.”
All stats accurate as of games played Dec. 26 and via NBA.com and Basketball Reference unless otherwise noted. All quotes obtained firsthand.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and listen to his Hollywood Hoops podcast with B/R Lakers lead writer Eric Pincus.
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