Toronto Raptors Power Forwards are Firing Away From the Corners

2015-16 is feeling like the year where many bigs who have excelled at shooting mid-range jumpers throughout their career are finally extending their range beyond the three-point line. DeMarcus Cousins, Al Horford, Kris Humphries, Anthony Davis and Luis Scola are encouraged to take threes within their respective teams schemes– and even Chris Bosh, who has been incrementally shooting more from beyond the arc as his Miami career has progressed, is shooting three-pointers at a career-high rate.

Overall, the number of 6’10” or taller players shooting three-pointers has exploded in the past few seasons, and this year the NBA is once again going to hit record highs.

20 out of 30 teams already have a player that is generally considered to be a “traditional big” by rebounding and size that has taken over 50 threes this season, and nearly every other  remaining team at frequently plays smaller line-ups that have a three-point shooting threat playing the nominal power forward role.

When you look at where bigs shoot their three-pointers from, there are a few outliers. Generally, most shooting power forwards and centers take only about 17 percent of their shots from the corners. This is largely to be expected as the simplest way to get a three is for a big is in pick-and-pop action. Other common setups for bigs shooting threes are off-the-ball screens for cutters, or trailing the fast break in transition, both of which tend to leave the big man nearer the top of the floor than the corners.

Rarely do bigs just space to the corner, mainly because they’re often hanging around the elbows to set screens. This season, there has been one team notable to exception to this, which is the Toronto Raptors.

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Data from silkhonkasalo.silk.co

Patterson and Scola are ranked in the top-3 on the percentage of three-point attempts that come from the corner, and both spend an unusual amount of time in the corners considering their position. Ibaka, who leads the list, will functionally always pop to the foul line when screening on the wings and from the top of the key, which limits his attempts above the break.

Scola, gets the bulk of his three-pointers from the left corner screening for DeRozan and spacing to the corner, but he will run to the corners transition, not the wing or the top of the key for the trailing three-pointer as do many shooting bigs.

The Raptors run a lot of down screens to get DeRozan on the move with the ball, and those are the situations where the big after screening spreads to the corner, leading to an unorthodox three-point distribution for the Raptors’ power forwards. Patterson has the range, unlike Scola, to take three-pointers from everywhere, but even his distribution gets skewed because of those sets. By comparison the bigs on most teams simply don’t end up in the corner from the course of the regular offense as often as they do for the Raptors. For example, Cousins has taken just two attempts from the corner with 109 total attempts, and Jared Sullinger has just one on 65 shots.