Walton puts Sacramento on path to become a top 3-point shooting team
The late Cotton Fitzsimmons coached the Kings back in Kansas City when the NBA introduced the 3-point shot in 1979. Those Kings didn’t exactly light it up from outside. They only made 25 3-pointers all season, shooting 21.9% on an unenthusiastic 1.4 attempts per game from that faraway land.
Today’s NBA is different. James Harden makes 3s while doing the Running Man, Stephen Curry hits them from the hallway and most modern NBA offenses have weaponized the 3-point shot. The Houston Rockets set a record with 26 3point goals in a single game last season, more than Cotton’s Kings made from October of 1979 to March of 1980.
Forty years have passed. Three-point shooting has changed.
“Not only has it changed,” Sacramento Kings coach Luke Walton said. “It’s changed the game.”
• Basketball has evolved, and, now, as they prepared for Wednesday’s season opener against the Phoenix Suns, so have these Kings. During a team dinner before training camp began, Walton shared some team goals with his players as they prepared for their first season together. He said he wants them to average 35 3-point attempts per game, a number that puts them on a path to become one of the top 3-point shooting teams in the league.
“As you join a new team, you look at what their strengths were,” Walton said. “Threepoint shooting was a strength for them, so we not only want to shoot a lot of 3s, but we have a number we’re trying to hit that we feel will give us an advantage to win games.”
The Kings were fourth in the NBA in 3-point shooting at 37.8% last season under former coach Dave Joerger, but they were 20th in 3-point attempts, averaging 29.9 per game. If they had attempted 35 3-pointers per game at the same rate last season, they would have been sixth in the NBA with 2,870 3-point attempts and fourth with 1,085 3point goals behind only the Rockets, Milwaukee Bucks and Golden State Warriors.
“Just seeing the numbers that we had, up there in percentage but not up there in attempts, we feel like we should shoot more 3s,” Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox said.
The Kings have one of the game’s great 3-point shooters in guard Buddy Hield, who just agreed to a four-year, $86 million contract extension with the team. Hield shot 42.7% on 7.9 attempts per game last season, breaking the team’s single-season record for 3-point goals and becoming the first player in league history to make 600 3pointers over his first three seasons.
Hield was asked during training camp how he felt about Walton’s plan to shoot more 3s.
“You already know how I feel about that,” Hield said.
“There’s no question. Whenever he wants me to shoot, I’ll shoot.”
• Harrison Barnes (.408), Nemanja Bjelica (.401), Fox (.371), Yogi Ferrell (.362) and Bogdan Bogdanovic (.360) are all dangerous 3-point shooters as well. Marvin Bagley III struggled early in the season but shot 39% from long distance after the AllStar break.
The Kings added to their stable of bombers over the summer when they replaced center Willie Cauley-Stein with Dewayne Dedmon, who signed a three-year, $40 million contract. Dedmon took 358 3-point shots over the past two seasons with the Atlanta Hawks, shooting 38.2% in 2018-19. Cauley-Stein only made four 3-pointers four seasons with the Kings.
“We really value shooting around here and (Dedmon) is a 5 man who can shoot the ball,” Walton said.
Dedmon will stretch defenses even further in Sacramento’s run-and-gun offense, providing additional spacing for Fox to penetrate and Bagley to operate in the post. Joerger opted to start Bjelica instead of Bagley last season because he wanted a big man who could spread the floor next to Cauley-Stein. With Dedmon starting at center now, Bagley can be unleashed.
“(Dedmon) is somebody that can shoot, spread it out, space the floor for attacking and getting to the rack to create some stuff for my team,” Bagley said. “It’s great to have a guy like Dewayne to play alongside.”