Orlando Magic’s open three issues are a clear area for growth

Basketball is often made more complicated than it needs to be.

Advanced metrics can help provide further insight into where exactly a team is going wrong, but sometimes there is a more clearly identifiable problem.

It is not hard to see where the Orlando Magic are going wrong on offense. The team lacks the kind of self-shot creators needed to compete with the better teams in the league and does not have enough reliable shooters.

The Magic are 28th in the league shooting 43.4-percent from the floor and 27th in the league in 3-point field goal percentage at 33.0-percent.

The Magic have one of the worst offenses in the league. And it all traces back to this struggle to shoot. The point is to put the ball in the basket after all, right?

This includes when it comes to wide-open looks.

The Orlando Magic may have picked up recently but the team’s inability to make open shots at a high enough rate must be addressed if significant improvement is going to be made.

According to NBA.com, the Magic rank eighth-worst in the league for field goal percentage from shots where the nearest defender is 6-plus feet away at 40.2 percent. That is despite the 13th highest frequency among all teams in the league in taking these shots.

The problem is most notable from three-point range, where the Magic are shooting just 36.3-percent from threes where the nearest defender is 6+ feet away. That’s the seventh-worst in the league, despite the Magic ranking 16th in the NBA for frequency on these shots.

Orlando do not fare much better when the nearest defender is between 4 feet and 6 feet away either, which the NBA classes as being ‘open’. The Magic have the third-worst field goal percentage from these looks at 40.1 percent and the second worst for threes at 30.7 percent.

The Magic have a much lower frequency for the number of field goals taken from open looks compared to wide open looks compared with other teams — the eighth lowest — but the three-point field goal percentage for open looks again does not correlate to the frequency of those shots — which the Magic rank 14th for.

There are two possible conclusions to draw from these figures.

Either the Magic are good at getting open looks from three, or opposition teams are content with leaving players open because they are confident that they will not make shots from outside at a high enough rate to cause real problems.

In truth, it is probably more a case of the latter than the former.

The Magic are a young team with young guards, who are well known for struggling with their shooting percentages earlier on in their careers.

That is particularly true of Jalen Suggs, who came into the league with a lot of hype around him but has really struggled for consistency in the early stages of his career and is shooting a woeful 21.6-percent from three in his rookie season (including Sunday’s 0-for-7 performance).

From wide open threes that figure is 23.1-percent and from open threes it is 24.3-percent. Yikes.

The team’s other starting guard, Cole Anthony, started the year shooting the lights out but has since dipped significantly and is now making just 33.7-percent of his three-pointers. From wide open threes Anthony is making them at a more respectable rate of 36.4-percent but for open threes that number is 32.7-percent.

A lack of dependable shooting in the backcourt has been costly, but it is not solely their fault. The Magic have had problems with knocking down open shots in the frontcourt too.

When it comes to wide open threes, the rest of the starting lineup is relatively competent. Franz Wagner knocks down 39.6-percent of his wide open attempts from beyond the arc, while Wendell Carter and Mo Bamba shoot 36.8-percent 38.6-percent respectively.

But for open threes, those numbers dip somewhat. Wagner — for all his brilliance this season — only makes 29.5-percent of his attempts when the defender is 4-6 feet away and Bamba makes 34.3-percent. For Carter, that number is just 16.3 percent.

The bleak outlook is that none of the Magic’s starting five make open threes at a rate better than 35-percent.

These problems continue down the rotation.

Chuma Okeke — whose effectiveness depends a lot on shooting the three well — has made just 31-percent of his wide open threes and 30.7-percent of his open ones. Terrence Ross and Moe Wagner make wide open threes at a rate of 36.6-percent and 35.1-percent but for open threes that falls to 27.0-percent and 32.2-percent.

The Magic’s best two shooters from three this season have been Gary Harris and R.J. Hampton. The former stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to wide open threes — shooting at a rate of 45.0-percent — and 36.0-percent for open threes.

Hampton’s 37.7-percent rate for wide open threes is not drastically better than the rest of his teammates but his ability to hit open threes (34.9-percent) and tight threes when the defender is 2-4 feet away (33.3-percent) has seen him become a solid three-point shooter.

The brutal reality is that the Magic depend on the three a lot to score, taking the 13th most in the league per game at 36.2, but are not a very good three-point shooting team, owning the third worst three-point shooting percentage in the NBA at 32.9 percent.

Orlando’s inability to hit open threes is a big part of that. Right now, when this team is only in its infancy and young players are still getting adjusted to the league, it is not as much of an issue. But this is an obvious, and hopefully easier, avenue for improvement compared with some of the team’s other issues.

Not everyone on the team has to be able to shoot the three well if they can contribute a lot in other areas but if the coaching team is to persist with this current offensive system, it will require a lot of internal improvement from the team’s younger core.

There is reason to hope things will get better given just how young this team is. Knocking down open threes is a case of repetitive practise in the gym and game situations to establish gradual improvement over time.

But at some point the front office will probably have to add some more capable shooters too. A lot is still unknown about the direction this team will go in but an improvement in making open shots is a must.