Marc Gasol is shooting 3-pointers for the first time in his career

For the entirety of his NBA career, Marc Gasol has been a bruiser. One of the largest, strongest men in the NBA, Gasol is notorious for his ability to take the ball down in the post, brutalize some of the NBA’s best defenders with size and skill, and put up points with impressive efficiency. That’s the primary visual but Gasol also offers variety as an offensive scorer.

While known for his physicality, he has long been comfortable stepping out to the the elbows in order to stretch the defense out a bit. Now, at 32-years old, Gasol’s game is evolving rapidly in a direction very few people saw coming. That range is stretching and, for the first time in his entire career Marc Gasol is shooting 3-pointers. Not just every once in awhile. He’s doing this a lot.

After last night’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Gasol is averaging an even four 3-pointers game. Before this season, Gasol’s career high in attempts for an entire season was 17. In the first week of November, Gasol has already eclipsed that total at 24 and it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop shooting them anytime soon. This is an incredible change in the game of a player that would have seemed to be well past the point of radically altering their style. When bigs choose to add the 3-point shot to their game it’s usually a slow, steady increase in attempts as they get used to having it in their repertoire.

Take Al Horford for example. Like Gasol, he was once known purely for playing around the basket while pick-and-popping out to the mid-range in order to stretch out defenses. Over the past few seasons, reports came out that Horford was beginning to work on adding a 3-point game to his arsenal, and the Atlanta Hawks began to design plays every once in awhile to get Horford a 3-point attempt from the corner. Finally, after a year or two of tweaking they unleashed Horford on the world with 256 attempts last season.

There were never really any reports of Gasol working on an outside game, with the closest to that being David Fizdale telling Sports Illustrated before the season that he planned to unleash Gasol as a 3-point shooter this season. That interviews was mostly treated as just pre-season talk. Coaches say a lot of things that don’t end up happening, and even if Fizdale was going to implement an outside attack for Gasol, it seemed like one of those slow burn ideas.

Yet, here we are with Gasol willingly launching away from deep, and not just those easy shots in the corner. These attempts are coming from the wings and behind the arc, with many of them being the result of extending that pick-and-pop game that Gasol has destroyed teams with for years. That might be the scariest part of this change in Gasol’s game. He doesn’t have to play any differently to get these attempts off. The Grizzlies aren’t having him spot up behind the arc waiting for kick-outs or using him as some kind of emergency shot clock chucker. These attempts are within the offense, and they’re not taking Gasol away from what he already does well. He can still crash towards the rim and post up his man if he chooses to. The 3-point shot is now just another weapon for him to use.

Of course, weapons are only useful when they work and right now Gasol is making the shots he takes — he’s shooting 37.5 percent from deep which is right around where most teams want their consistent 3-point shooters to be. What’s actually interesting about Gasol right now is that he’s a better 3-point shooter than 2-point shooter. On shots inside the arc this season Gasol is shooting less than 40 percent which is weird for a player that for his entire career has been very good from in there. However, this is likely unrelated to his new willingness to shoot 3-pointers. Take a look at his shot chart.

marc-gasol-shot-chart-november-6 /

Gasol is shooting less than 50 percent near the rim, which is what’s destroying his shooting percentages right now. If that bounces back and his outside shooting holds steady, Gasol’s new style could make him one of the most dangerous offensive big men in the league.

It doesn’t look like he’s planning on slowing down anytime soon so, for now, we wait and see what’s real and what is the mirage of small sample size.

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