Sep 29, 2014; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Phoenix Suns forward Markieff Morris poses for a portrait during media day at the US Airways Center. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
With the Opening Night just around the corner, Nylon Calculus is going to be previewing the upcoming season by taking you through some of the most important numbers to know, numbers that help tell stories about players, teams and league-wide trends.
34 is the number of three-pointers Markieff Morris made last season.
In his three-year career, Morris’ season high for three-pointers made is 45. His career high for three-point percentage is 34.7 percent. In short, he could charitably be described as a middling and infrequent three-point shooter.
That characterization is not a knock on Morris. He has steadily improved over the course of his career. He’s a productive player and was a legitimate Sixth Man of the Year candidate last season. The Phoenix Suns will be looking to improve on their surprising 48-win campaign last year and Morris will be an important part of the puzzle. However, his place in that puzzle may be changing, requiring a lot more three-point activity than he’s ever engaged in.
The difference this season is the absence of Channing Frye, who was a huge part of the Suns’ success last season. Frye played 2,312 minutes in Phoenix’s front-court rotation, attempting 432 three-pointers, of which he made 37.0 percent. The team’s offense was better by 7.9 points per 100 possessions with Frye on the floor last year, scoring 110.4 points per 100 possessions, a mark which would have led the league by a full point. This offensive bump was much deeper than his own shooting. Even when we remove his own shot attempts, the rest of the Suns had a TS% of 57.6 percent when Frye was on the floor, compared to just 53.8 percent when he was on the bench. Here is the TS% breakdown for a few individual players.
The effect of good shooters spacing the defense, making things easier on their teammates, has been increasingly well documented numerically. Work by Justin Willard at GotBuckets found that the effect is even bigger when the shooting comes from a big man:
"According to the regression model, three-point shooting is twice as valuable from a center compared to a point guard and roughly two-thirds more valuable for big men than perimeter players, again reinforcing the results from the other methods."
Frye’s outside shooting had a huge effect on the overall effectiveness of the Suns’ offense last season. The Suns will be looking to replace much of that spacing and outside shooting that Frye provided and a lot of that responsibility will fall to Morris. The Suns have signed Anthony Tolliver this summer, who’s 6’8″ and made 41.3 percent of his threes for Charlotte last season. But Morris is a much more versatile player than Tolliver and if he can expand his range, the Suns can get spacing along with all the other offensive positives he provides.
It will be a challenge though. You can see from his shot chart how little of Morris’ offensive involvement occurred beyond the three-point line last season.
The cluster of accurate three-point shooting from straight away is intriguing, but it’s rather stunning that Morris had essentially no activity in the corners — just 13 corner three-point attempts all season long. His mid-range jumpers were clustered around the low block and many came from post-ups. Spotting up around the wings and corners will be a big change in location for Morris.
It is unlikely that he transforms into a three-point shooter of Frye’s caliber in a single season. But if the Suns are going to keep take another leap this they’ll need Morris to at least replicate some of the spacing he provides, meaning he’ll need to make a lot more than 34 three-pointers this season.