Oklahoma City’s trip to Portland turned into a familiar kind of problem for the Thunder: not enough threes, not enough margin for error.
The Thunder opened their back-to-back with a 123-103 loss to the Trail Blazers on Tuesday night, and the shot profile told the story. Portland controlled the game in the areas that mattered most, winning the turnover battle and nearly matching Oklahoma City on the glass. That left the Thunder needing to make up ground somewhere else, and they simply didn’t have the volume from deep to do it.
Portland was far more aggressive from 3-point range and far more productive, going 19-of-50 from beyond the arc. Oklahoma City finished just 8-of-22. That kind of gap is hard to survive on any night, and when one team is launching well over half its shots from three while the other is barely getting a quarter of its attempts from outside, the math gets ugly fast.
The numbers around Oklahoma City’s shot diet are starting to stand out. After taking a season-low 22 threes in Portland, the Thunder now rank 29th in the league in 3-point attempt rate, with only 34.7% of their shots coming from deep. The league average is 43%, while Portland sits second at 50.3%.
Taking more threes doesn’t guarantee wins, but it does make it a lot easier to keep pace when the other team is getting hot. For Oklahoma City, that’s become a recurring issue. The Thunder have long leaned toward a lower-volume approach from deep, but it’s more noticeable this season with the injuries they’re dealing with.
Without Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City is missing some of the extra firepower that can stretch a defense and open up chances to get rolling from outside. Instead, the Thunder are limiting their own chances to catch fire from three.
The broader trend is hard to ignore. The league average is 37.8 3-point attempts per game, and Oklahoma City has cleared that number only once in 11 games this season. Some of that ties to pace, since the Thunder rank in the bottom quarter of the league there, but the 3-point volume issue shows up in every direction.
And with three of their more willing 3-point shooters gone from the offseason, this is not a simple fix. Still, it’s a problem Oklahoma City has to solve if it wants to stop losing that battle so often.
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Just Gave Thunder Fans A New Look At Him
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The playlist is set to be refreshed monthly, which makes it more than a one-off novelty and more like an ongoing look at the guards musical leanings. Gilgeous-Alexander also opened up about his influences and the way he approaches music before games, adding another layer to the profile of a player whose style and personality continue to stand out in Oklahoma City. [Read more 🡒]