Welcome to the modern NBA: Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton should shoot 3’s

Phoenix Suns second-year center Deandre Ayton recently stated that he is going to shoot 3’s this coming season. For those who question this philosophy, wake up: this is 2019 and he should shoot as many as he’d like.

Before 2018, the Phoenix Suns had never had the first overall pick.

Before Deandre Ayton, the Phoenix Suns had never had a franchise center.

And before 2019, the Phoenix Suns had never had a franchise center who could shoot the 3.

Sure, Channing Frye played center and he shot – and made – a ton of 3-pointers in his career with the Suns, so it’s not like franchise has never had a stretch-five before.

But Frye wasn’t a franchise player. He was pretty good for a couple of years, but he was never going to be built around the way Phoenix is building around Ayton.

Having been selected first overall over Luka Doncic, Ayton has an expectation to be a star that was levied upon Frye.

With that heightened expectation, Ayton will not only be asked, but will push himself, to become one of the most dominant centers in the league.

Yet, while he and others compared himself to Shaquille O’Neal prior to his draft selection (and no one  would be upset in anyway if he actually did end up being dominant in that  way), this is 2019, not  1993, and it goes without being said that this is not the same NBA that Shaq was playing in in his own second year.

Consider this for irony: in 1993-94, the Houston Rockets led the league in 3-point attempts at 1,285. Coincidentally the Magic were second at 1,137 and the Phoenix Suns third with 1,042.

Shaq attempted a whopping 2, making zero.

Last season, the Houston Rockets once again led the league in 3-point attempts.

This time they shot 3,721.

They made, 1,323 – 186 more then the franchise attempted back in 1993-94.

Oh, and the San Antonio Spurs shot the fewest number of 3’s last season, attempting 2,071 (yet leading the league in percentage at 39.2%).

But while the Houston Rockets do not have a traditional center shooting 3’s, the Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, and Philadelphia 76ers do, each to varying results, and each a worthy comparison for the Suns’ own young and rising star.

Joel Embiid opened his rookie year nailing 36.7% of his 3-point attempts, before dropping to 30.8% and 30.0% the last two seasons.

While I do not watch enough 76ers basketball to generally figure out what the problem is, his attempting 4.1 per game (as he did in 2018-19) while only making 30.0%, is not something I am sure the franchise is too excited about.

Then again, Ben Simmons cannot hit an outside shot either, so maybe it is more than just the players themselves.

The Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic sports a career-average 34.5% from beyond the arc in his four seasons, and while he made 39.6% of his outside shots two seasons ago, something happened to him last season as well when his average dropped to a paltry 30.7%, a rate that again (on 3.4 attempts per game), his own franchise cannot be too excited about.

For those two players in particular, though, while they have not been able to maintain a spectacular shooting percentage, the fact that they are both attempting those shots and have been able to make them at a legitimate clip, they will now and forever require a defender to follow them outside, opening up the lane and the paint for drivers to slash through without the fear of too many big bodies getting the way.

So while their respective teams would actually prefer them to make  their shots if they are going to take them – based on the two team’s regular season records last season, obviously something  is going well with each team’s offense regardless of their center’s current shooting struggles.