Don't Knock the Magic Triples

Much of the year, Orlando's reliance on the three-point shot earned scorn from observers, who (en masse) dubbed the style as likely to fail in the playoffs. As recently as Game 5, Dwight Howard himself questioned the strategy to keep taking threes with a lead -- it was seen as a risky move. You live by the three, you die by the three ...

... or so they said. The Magic took more threes than anyone but the run-and-gun Knicks this season, but still finished with the sixth-best shooting percentage from deep. The threes weren't tics of the inside-out offense Stan Van Gundy employed, waiting to be turned off when the circumstances warranted. The threes made up Orlando's offensive identity. Without shooting them, the Magic die.

Sunday's Game 7 win is a great example of how the threes work for Orlando.

The whole premise of the inside-out offense with shooters playing the 1-4 positions relies on Howard drawing attention, which creates space on the perimeter for shooters. The shot is rarely a straight kick-out from Howard to a shooter -- the Magic are great at swinging the ball to exploit slow rotations. Boston does not rotate slowly -- the Celtics defense rarely gives up open catch-and-shoot threes.

Orlando took 10 open catch-and-shoot threes Sunday night. That made up half their three-point attempts. The Magic hit seven of those.

The open catch-and-shoot three is one of the most efficient shots in basketball, and Orlando gets them off constantly. This year, Van Gundy added some layers to the offense, using Jameer Nelson and Hedo Turkoglu penetration to help create defensive movement from the opponents. We saw this in spades in Game 7 (though obviously not from Nelson). Paul Pierce couldn't knock Hedo out of his comfort zone; with Kevin Garnett out, the Boston defense had to collapse more than the coaches would like. That left shooters like Rafer Alston (2-4 on catch-and-shoot), Mickael Pietrus (3-3) and J.J. Redick (1-2) wide open. Further, Hedo benefitted from the penetration of Alston and Rashard Lewis to hit all four catch-and-shoot threes he took.

Boston ended up as the best three-point shooting team this year by percentage, though the Celtics took relatively few in comparison to other teams (some 800 fewer than Orlando). But the lack of inside presence and meaningful penetration left Boston with few open three-point opportunities. Of Boston's 14 non-garbage time three-point attempts, only six could be considered open. That's half as many as Orlando got. Orlando hit more open threes than Boston attempted. That's huge! And it reaffirms that a three-based offense -- provided your shooters get open threes off the pass, not Golden State-style off-the-dribble pull-ups -- can work at the highest levels of the NBA, against the best defenses.

For what it's worth looking forward, Cleveland forced opponents to shoot 33.3% from three this season, the league's best mark by a substantial amount. Cleveland didn't limit three-point attempts as well as Boston (or Orlando, for that matter), but the Cavaliers obviously worked to make things uncomfortable for opposing shooters.

And by the way, Orlando shot 39.3% from three against Cleveland in three games this season, which is better than their overall 2008-09 mark. In four games last season, Orlando shot better than 40% from three against the Cavs. This should be a helluva series.