“He’s Learning to Shoot the Corner Three”

The corner three is the new 20 pounds. It used to be[1. And who are we kidding, often still is.] a major offseason storyline that a player is “in the best shape of his life.” A player is ready for a breakout season, having dropped that 15 extra pounds, or gotten stronger by adding 20 pounds of rip.[2. PLACE AT THE TABLE!] Only now, with the NBA pendulum having swung in favor of pace and especially spacing, adding a reliable three point shot is the new hotness.

Of course, nobody is expected to go from elbow range to actual, 23-foot 9-inch, three point distance overnight. Or even over one offseason. But the short line in the corners? Anyone can make that. So of course,the rumblings begin about all the rising stars who have expanded their games by adding in more corner threes for this coming year. Except they probably won’t. At least not if they are going to become stars.

Many of those most often mentioned in this kind of speculation can be ruled out almost immediately. Anthony Davis, LaMarcus Aldridge and (again) Blake Griffin aren’t going to suddenly start shooting tons of corner threes, because big guys (especially high usage bigs) don’t shoot a lot of corner threes. This is more for reasons of court geometry rather than anything else. Why would a big guy end up in the corner in the first place in a well-thought out offensive scheme? Standing way out there he’s not a threat to grab offensive rebounds. Screening ability would be wasted, because there is no one else in the corner to screen for.

For similar reasons, point guards aren’t big corner three shooters either. It’s hard to see the whole floor and set up open teammates from those areas of the court. Plus, some of the same defensive floor balance issues that come with point guards missing at the rim probably apply to a situation where a PG is spotting up on the baseline. So, the corner three is left to the wing player.

For comparison’s sake, point guards took just over 30% of above-the-break threes last year, with that extra 10% coming wholly from the share taken by wings.

And it’s not just any wings who are shooting all the corner threes, it’s the role-player types. Most likely, this is for several reasons. Partially a team’s best ball-handlers probably shouldn’t spend much time in the corners, away from the action. More important is the nature of the corner three itself. All told, around 95% of made corner threes were assisted last year. It strongly tends to be a wide open shot, the result from good offensive execution elsewhere. Said execution is unlikely if a team’s most creative players are, spotted up as far away from the action as practicable.

Taking usage as a proxy for offensive involvement, there is a small but discernible negative correlation between usage rate and corner three rate[3. Defined as corner threes attempted per 100 possessions to keep the correlations on the same scale.]:

It’s a little bit all over the map, but if we dial in a little more and focus specifically on playmaking wings, the ones often thought of as true difference making stars, the picture clears up slightly. The following chart compares assist usage rather than shooting usage with corner three rates to pick out the players who don’t just finish plays, but create them for others:

The pattern is a little more recognizable, even with the naked eye. Statistically, the correlation is almost 2.5 times as strong. But most interestingly, consider the names on the right half of the the chart. With Paul George missing the season, that’s kind of the entire list of playmaking wings in the NBA last season[1. Dragic shows up on the chart mainly because he is classified as having played mainly the 2 in Phoenix in my data, but his presence or absence doesn’t meaningfully chance the analysis.]. On the other hand, it’s probably no mistake last season was both the first year Paul Pierce almost wholly surrendered ball-handling duties and also the first year in over a decade he took an appreciable number of corner threes.

In practical terms, the corner three might even be a dividing line between “three & D” players and guys who, at least offensively, are something more than that. Again, why waste ball-handling and creativity from the wing spot by having them stand next to photographers during offensive possessions? With that choice in mind, it seems unlikely that dynamic young wings like Giannis Antetokounmpo will start shooting corner threes with abandon, unless Milwaukee is moving away from taking advantage of his range of ball-handling and passing skills. On the flipside, the addition of Elfrid Payton alongside him probably helped Victor Oladipo to more than double his corner three attempts from his rookie to soph season.

All of this goes to say, when the hype train arrives at the station of your favorite young player, promising a bounty of sweet, short, corner three pointers, the proper response is probably “I hope not. For his sake.”