2. 3-point percentage & attempts
The Suns weren’t a bad 3-point shooting team last season, finishing seventh at 37.4 percent per game. A perfectly fine number, especially given they ranked below league average (17th) at 32.6 attempts a night.
Put simply, both of those numbers are going to go up, because they have to. The Suns went out this offseason and got Yuta Watanabe, a player who shot a sizzling 44.4 percent from deep with the Brooklyn Nets last season. He did this while playing alongside Durant for much of the campaign as well.
Similarly, Gordon has in the past hit a ton of important 3-pointers for the Houston Rockets, and he is going to be even more open in 2023-24 than he was at any point playing alongside James Harden. A player who remains with the Philadelphia 76ers, and who the Suns should be avoiding at all costs.
Even the enigmatic Bol Bol has shown he is capable of hitting over 40 percent of his 3-pointers in a given month (December 2022), giving the Suns firepower from deep in places many didn’t even expect them to this summer. All of this has been designed because the role players here are going to get all of the space in the world next to Booker, Durant and Beal.
It would not be a surprise to see Ayton, who has taken 0.3 attempts from long-range over the course of his five year career, also get in on the act. The Suns are betting that their ability to overwhelm opponents offensively, while doing what they can on the defensive end, is what is going to take them over the top. Shooting the lights out from beyond the arc is a big part of that.