There is an interesting correlation between the teams thriving from deep and the overall standings
Stats review: The power of the three-ball
Stats
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Round 7 of the BKT EuroCup featured one of the top individual shooting performances in recent history as Anthony Brown went 8 for 10 from beyond the arc en route to a 39-point night during Turk Telekom Ankara’s victory over U-BT Cluj-Napoca. It is worth noting that the average EuroCup team is knocking down 8.6 three-point attempts per game so far this season, and also that teams are attempting just over 25 threes per game for the fourth consecutive season and converting 34.2% of their attempts from beyond the arc.
The latter mark is a point of interest moving forward – it’s currently the lowest since the 2011-12 campaign. The intrigue is not so much where the number is now – it is not uncommon for the league to pick up steam in several areas as the year moves on – but rather which teams have been able to capitalize before the regression to the mean. The graph above depicts the league landscape in three-point attempts per game and three-point percentage so far this season.
As it stands, there are three teams shooting at or just below 40% from beyond the arc and all of them hail from Group A: Bahcesehir College Istanbul, Besiktas Fibabanka Istanbul, and ratiopharm Ulm. There’s a gap between that trio and the next team at the 37% mark – a key reason they rank first, second, and sixth in overall offensive efficiency on the year respectively.
Valencia Basket is the most notable team on that second tier of shooting accuracy given the volume of three-pointers they have attempted. Not only are they firing up 33.2 attempts per game from beyond the arc, but with 26 of those attempts coming in catch-and-shoot situations, the size of their lead over the rest of the field is not built on ambitious pull-ups, but rather, pace and balance.
The most notable outlier on the other end of the spectrum is likely Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv, which has managed to notch four wins despite being one of the three teams shooting under 30% from three-point land this season. 7Bet-Lietkabelis Panevezys warrants a mention as well as they have shot the ball quite well domestically so far this season, making them perhaps the most obvious candidate to rise as the season moves on.
While a blazing start from beyond the arc has not been a defining factor in the standings early on, it has certainly been a differentiator for this season’s top two offensive teams. Big-time shot-making performances like Anthony Brown's feel a little bit more important right now. With Valencia testing the upper end of the spectrum in terms of volume, it will be interesting to see which teams rise and fall through the year and how that ultimately shapes the standings.