Don’t Panic: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Pacers three-point conundrum

What started as a fluke game against Miami has turned into a poor three-point shooting stretch that can’t be ignored for the Indiana Pacers. Will it become a trend during the latter half of the season? How much will it affect the team going forward?

Well, thanks a lot, Ben Renz. His look at some of the Pacers’ best (and worst) shooting performances of all time after the team’s 1-18 three-point outing against the Miami Heat included a knock-on-wood statement, and Ben forgot to knock-on-wood.

“But most importantly, the Indiana Pacers are very unlikely to repeat last week’s one-for-18 performance – or anything resembling it – anytime soon. Thank goodness.”

Fast forward to this past weekend. While the Pacers technically never dropped below 5.6% from deep as they did two weeks ago, their west coast road trip wrapped itself up with a 26.9% performance against the Portland Trail Blazers, a dismal 8% showing against the Lakers and a 21.1% figure against the Spurs.

Of course, this sometimes inexplicable team found a way to beat only the San Antonio Spurs of the three teams during their poor shooting stretch. But that’s beside the point.

The point is, one of the assumed reasons for their surprising success this year is their accuracy from behind the arc. They’ve maintained a spot somewhere in the top five in the category throughout most of the season, though their position has dropped steadily given their recent contests. Now entering the second half of the season, the Pacers can’t lose important and winnable games like they did against Miami, Portland, and the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Wins like the Spurs victory Sunday night aren’t coming around that often – the only other time the Pacers shot 30% or worse from deep in a winning effort this season was the season opener against the Nets. Long story short, that isn’t sustainable.

Is this going to be a long-term issue? In a sense, it already is. That is sort of a good thing, as long as the regression levels off. In fact, the three-point shot may not even be quite as important to this team’s success as one might think given this past week.

Victor Oladipo is inching dangerously close to sub-40% from deep after having an absurd 45+% to start the year. Bojan Bogdanovic, who was rocking around the 40% mark for much of the year, has sunk to 37%.

This regression has naturally taken place over the last two months, though Bogdanovic seems to be facing the steepest slump out of anyone on the team right now. Good shooting nights and stretches of great shooting nights have become more of an exception rather than the rule it was during the first month and a half of Pacers action.

But to be fair, it’s not like the Pacers are falling to rock bottom. All five starters are serviceable three-point shooters, with Oladipo, Bogdanovic and Darren Collison (typically) being dead-eye marksmen. The bench lacks much power from deep outside of Cory Joseph and T.J. Leaf (when he gets minutes), though that problem will be slightly amended with the upcoming return of Glenn Robinson III.

Obviously, though, the Pacers have still found ways to get wins in the last two months, so shooting woes haven’t hampered their success too much. Why is that, though?

For starters, despite their great percentage, the Pacers aren’t really putting up that many three-point shots, to begin with. The deep ball accounts for 30.4% of their shots, which is fifth fewest in the league.

The Pacers also are definitely not fans of shooting bad threes either. They boast the second-lowest frequency of highly-contested three-point shots (closest defender 0-2 feet) and the lowest frequency of contested shots (closest defender 2-4 feet).

Less reliance on the three-ball would, in theory, mitigate struggles that come when a team isn’t having the best shooting night. Obviously, this doesn’t apply when you’re shooting as poorly as the Pacers did against Miami and Los Angeles, but it may be the answer to why the team is able to survive without Oladipo making every other three.

To further prove this theory, let’s look at some splits. The Pacers shot an earth-scorching 41.8% from deep in the month of November. That isn’t a number that could ever be expected to carry out through an entire season, but it’s still quite a stretch. The Pacers put up a record of 8-7 in that month.

In December, the Pacers shot around 36.4% from deep. Quite a difference, as 36.4% sits at about league average in terms of three-point shooting. The Pacers record in December? 7-8.

And now in January, the Pacers are shooting a meh 32.7% from beyond the arc. But, as we all know, they’re not hurting too bad for it, as their current record in the new year sits at 6-4. A few of those wins came on exceptional shooting nights as well, proving at least that the team hasn’t entirely forgotten how to shoot. The squad can and will still pull out some nice wins when they’re clicking from deep.

Here’s what matters: this team can be a little streaky at times, which is something that Pacers fans should be used to by now. But looking at larger trends, it seems as though an overall regression in the three-point shooting hasn’t hurt the team as much as it would, say, Houston or Golden State.

The past few bad shooting outings have been a slump. The numbers you saw in December are the trend. The team will statistically balance out to around 35-36% from deep in January in their final few games of the month. To summarize this exercise in two words: don’t worry.

Yeah, when the Pacers can’t hit anything, they will not win many basketball games. But the falling three-point percentages from the team and from individual players isn’t something to lose too much sleep over. Seeing Oladipo light it up on any given night is always fun, but this team doesn’t necessarily need that to happen to pick up victories.

Hopefully, this will all blow over after a couple of good shooting nights. It’s unfortunate that so many notably awful performances stacked up in a short period of time, but it shouldn’t be too much cause for concern for the team going forward.

Next: Pacers Trade Deadline: Mr. Pritchard, Tread Lightly

Not to cause another jinx here, but numbers like 1-18 and 2-25 won’t be popping up on the Pacers three-point shooting column much at all for the remainder of the season. And on any night better than total catastrophe from behind the line, this team is built to have a fighting chance.