{"id":764712,"date":"2022-11-02T12:12:47","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T16:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=764712"},"modified":"2022-11-03T10:58:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T14:58:13","slug":"how-cleveland-transformed-into-a-record-setting-three-point-shooting-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/how-cleveland-transformed-into-a-record-setting-three-point-shooting-team\/","title":{"rendered":"How Cleveland Transformed Into A Record-Setting Three-Point Shooting Team"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Cleveland Cavaliers came into the 2022-23 campaign with the intention of joining the League-wide three-point shooting revolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the first six games of the young season, Cleveland ranks first in three-point accuracy and fourth in made triples per game. Nearly 40 percent of Cleveland&#8217;s total points have come from beyond the arc, ranking them around other analytically driven teams like Boston, Utah, and Indiana. The Cavs are also the fifth-most accurate team from the corner and second-best at hitting threes from above-the-break<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Cleveland continues to thrive from beyond the arc, they&#8217;ve nearly erased mid-range jumpers from their shot profile. As of Tuesday, Cleveland is shooting mid-range shoots five percent of the time, tied for 25th in the NBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"FOJNOUF4LRAQZPX556RVI4R6OM\">&#8220;It&#8217;s all about our spacing,&#8221; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Dean+Wade\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Dean+Wade\" target=\"_blank\">Dean Wade<\/a> told <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/cavs\/2022\/11\/cleveland-cavaliers-have-finally-joined-the-3-point-revolution.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/cavs\/2022\/11\/cleveland-cavaliers-have-finally-joined-the-3-point-revolution.html\" target=\"_blank\">cleveland.com<\/a>. &#8220;Our spacing is unbelievable. There are so many open shots, and it&#8217;s obviously a lot easier to hit shots when you&#8217;re open. We just let the ballhandler make plays and find open windows. Our confidence is super high. Everyone put in a lot of work this summer. The coaches believe in us. That raises our confidence too.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">*sound on*<br><br>let&#8217;s \ud83d\udc4f go \ud83d\udc4f cavs \ud83d\udc4f <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sWZTkhIqCK\">pic.twitter.com\/sWZTkhIqCK<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cavs\/status\/1586875224699461632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 31, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>The surge in three-point shooting came after the Cavs added the dynamic scoring <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Donovan+Mitchell\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Donovan+Mitchell\" target=\"_blank\">Donovan Mitchell<\/a> over the summer. The three-time All-Star has averaged 7.7 long-range attempts over his career. Last season, he shot a career-high 9.8 three-point shots (654) per game while making them (232) 35.5 percent of the time. Spida is shooting 9.2 threes per game this season on a career-best 45.5 percent clip.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"2TJCNG6RY5E63FRKFMECKMG4NQ\">Last season, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Kevin+Love\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Kevin+Love\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kevin Love<\/a> led Cleveland in both categories, taking 477 and drilling 187.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"6YQTWMNMTFADVNYFUQWRBLNRM4\">Mitchell&#8217;s sharpshooting has unlocked another level that has transformed Cleveland&#8217;s offense into a dynamic, spaced-out, drive-and-kick-heavy offense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"ECLNTWRABNE2LDRB6ST6UCOA54\">&#8220;Watch the way the game is being played and how teams are defending and what you can do to attack it. If you&#8217;ve got the right people who can get in the paint, then you can find those shots,&#8221; Coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. &#8220;I knew we&#8217;d be able to get open ones. Then it&#8217;s just a trust in the guys who have put in the time to make them. At the end of the day, that&#8217;s what it comes down to.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cleveland is thriving despite the absence of <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Darius+Garland\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Darius+Garland\" target=\"_blank\">Darius Garland<\/a>, who&#8217;s missed the last six games due to an eye injury. Because of Mitchell&#8217;s flamethrowing, Caris LeVert&#8217;s drive-and-kick game, and Garland&#8217;s shifty, probing dribble-drive attacks, multiple Cavs have had career-best starts to the season. Their backcourt has also created a lot of &#8220;wide-open&#8221; shots for Cleveland to cash in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dean Wade is shooting an insane 62.5 percent from beyond the arc, hitting 80 percent of the &#8220;wide-open&#8221; looks he gets. Love is lighting up the rim at a 47.2 percent rate from deep; he&#8217;s already got four games where he&#8217;s hit multiple triples in one night, including eight in Sunday&#8217;s win against New York. Out of the 36 threes Love has attempted, only four have come with a defender within four feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cedi Osman is shooting 36.7 percent from deep, with 29 of his 30 being open or &#8220;wide-open,&#8221; and LeVert is hitting triples at 48.5 percent. He&#8217;s had just two of his 31 attempts get contested. Mitchell is Cleveland&#8217;s most heavily guarded shooter, but only 20 of his 55 attempts were contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"TLZDHBOYDVEDHDH57LRTZTPLDU\">&#8220;It&#8217;s just what the defense gives us and the type of 3s that we get,&#8221; Bickerstaff explained. &#8220;Can you create the open look and make the right pass? The way our guys have been shooting the 3, it&#8217;s hard to tell them not to take open shots, no matter the number of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"zxx\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Fa4snPIaJu\">pic.twitter.com\/Fa4snPIaJu<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cavs\/status\/1586872192293343233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 31, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter if the Cavs get harder closely from outside; they are knocking down 41 percent of their heavily contested three-pointers, the third-best in the NBA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the beginning of training camp until now, Cleveland has been confident they could be more than capable of adopting a new identity as a three-point shooting team. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Evan+Mobley\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?s=Evan+Mobley\" target=\"_blank\">Evan Mobley<\/a> said he &#8220;didn&#8217;t know how good it could have been.&#8221; Wade remembered how during Cleveland&#8217;s third practice, the Cavs &#8220;didn&#8217;t miss a shot in like four days.&#8221; He went on to remark that &#8220;the amount of shooters we have on this team is crazy. So many different teams.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"TPIALSG2OFFV3GTCWLGDPMESXA\">&#8220;We&#8217;re creating open shots, and we&#8217;ve got the right guys taking those shots,&#8221; Bickerstaff said. &#8220;I hope we took lessons from last year. You go back and look at the numbers; we created open shots at a high level. We didn&#8217;t make them.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cleveland will continue their long-distance revolution when they host Boston on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Cleveland Cavaliers came into the 2022-23 campaign with the intention of joining the League-wide three-point shooting revolution. Through the first six games of the young season, Cleveland ranks first in three-point accuracy and fourth in made triples per game. Nearly 40 percent of Cleveland&#8217;s total points have come from beyond the arc, ranking them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":447,"featured_media":764720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62698,18,63826,62493],"tags":[13006,62661,9617,13185,330],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-764712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cleveland-cavaliers","category-nba","category-news","category-newswire","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-dean-wade","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-j-b-bickerstaff","tag-kevin-love"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764712"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":764796,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764712\/revisions\/764796"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764712"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=764712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}