During Friday’s airing of “The Firm of Harris and Marang,” 105.1 The Fan’s Danny Marang stated that this iteration of the Portland Trail Blazers “doesn’t make sense.” Following a 9-3 start – the best since the 2022-23 season – Blazers fans are irate at the sentiment. Is there credence to Marang’s claim, or does his statement reflect yet another piece of punditry provocation?
Marang states that, though he doesn’t dislike the makeup of this year’s Blazers roster, he doesn’t believe it “makes sense.”
To this end, he claims that the Blazers’ early-season success is predicated upon making three-pointers from volatile locations. Moreover, he says that — beyond the statistics — the eye test shows him a “bubble ready to pop.” So, do the Blazers make sense? Have they simply been lucky in the early-goings of the season? Or, are they deploying a sustainably good offensive gameplan?
The Volatility of Threes
Marang implies that the Blazers’ winning record is due to unsustainable success from the three-point arc. The Blazers are league-average or below in shooting frequency from nearly every spot on the floor. However, they take the second-most non-corner threes (35.6% of their total shots), and second-most total threes (46.6% of their total shots) of any team in the league.
Statistics tell us that the corner three is the most valuable shot on the floor, as it is the closest possible distance by which you can score three points. League-average corner three-point percentage is 3.5% to 4% greater than the accuracy of all non-corner three-point shots. This means that a team that takes more corner threes will, on-balance, be more consistent in scoring than teams shooting predominantly non-corner threes. Both teams will have games in which they shoot exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly. The difference being that the team that shoots the more consistent shot diet will have less games in which they are expected to shoot poorly, i.e. the team will have less variance. If that team is good and has less variance, they can be expected to win more games. However, can a team possess enough talent to overcome that variance?
Volume Over Quality
The 2023-2024 NBA champion Boston Celtics employed the most caricatured offensive scheme of the three-point era, attempting more three-point shots than any other team in NBA history to that point. Much like your Portland Trail Blazers, the Celtics did not much consider the on-paper quality of their three-point shots, only the volume. This resulted in a league-leading 43.7% of their total shots coming from the three point arc. Of those three-point shots, 77% of them were non-corner threes, also league-leading. In the 2025 season, the Blazers are taking 46.6% of their shots from the three-point line, good for 2nd in the NBA. Of those shots, 76% are non-corner threes. In fact, across the board, the Trail Blazers are nearly identical to the 23-24 Boston Celtics with regards to shot frequency (including a dastardly low rim frequency). Given that, again, the Celtics won the NBA Championship that season, this shot diet can be effective, if – by definition – it is “volatile.”
The reason this works is because, with enough talent, volume is inherently more important than the quality of the three-point shot (to a reasonable extent). If you are a good three-point shooting team, the importance of the location of the three-point shot becomes negligible to the amount of threes attempted. This philosophy did not work for the 2025-2026 Blazers, as they were horrible at shooting threes. This season, though, the Blazers possess talent sufficient enough to justify this shot diet. The vast majority of non-corner threes are coming courtesy of Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, and Toumani Camara. That personnel is more than capable to shoot those shots and shoot them on volume.
Maybe the Blazers are Just… Good
The Blazers currently reside at 10th in the league for three-point percentage, at 37.2%. They are also second in the league in effective field goal percentage, which is a good indicator of the efficiency of a given shot diet. Twelve games is not a big sample size. However, enough time has passed to know that, more often than not, the Blazers are deploying enough offensive competence to win games. The determining factor for the Blazers’ long-term success – as alluded to by Marang’s cohost Patrick Harris – is if the Blazers make these three-point shots. So, to win, “ball must go in hoop.” Optimistically, the Blazers are good at “ball go in hoop.” In a word, the Blazers have a good offense built upon a good offensive philosophy that is afforded to them by the quality of three-point shooters on their team.
The Blazers’ offensive gameplan is not too volatile for sustained success. Recent NBA history proves this. Their execution is ultimately what will hold them back. The bar to execute well enough to make a deep playoff run is very high, maybe higher than the Blazers are capable of rising to. That said, they certainly “make sense.” By both the eye test and the stats, they have a plan that — if executed to a degree that the Blazers have demonstrated they are capable of — will win them games.
