Golden State Warriors: Kelly Oubre is the worst 3-point shooter in the NBA

Kelly Oubre Jr. is not truly a terrible 3-point shooter, although fans of the Golden State Warriors may not agree. His career prior to this season suggests he is something around or just under average from long-range. Last season he shot 35.2 percent from deep on 5.5 attempts per game.

This season, however, the basket has shrunk for him. He has hit just 19 of his 87 attempts from 3-point range, 21.8 percent. That is bad enough on the surface, a mountain of missed opportunities and possessions without points. Yet the volume is high enough, and the accuracy so low, that his negative impact on the Warriors is mountainous.

Kelly Oubre is bad at a high volume with the Golden State Warriors

No player with anywhere near 87 attempts is shooting as poorly as Oubre. The former Kansas Jayhawk has missed 68 3-pointers. Among all players who have missed at least 65 such shots, Oubre is shooting the worst at 21.8 percent. The next closest player is Luka Doncic at 28.4 percent.

To look at it another way, 53 players have attempted at least 85 shots from deep. Of those players not named Kelly Oubre, only Doncic and Lonzo Ball (29.1 percent) are below 30 percent from deep. Oubre ranks 53rd, all alone in a bracket all to himself. Even expanding the list to a lower volume doesn’t find many players close to Oubre. Of all players with at least 50 attempts this season, RJ Barrett is the next-worst at 25 percent.

While this isn’t in the purview of Oubre’s proposed title as the most damaging 3-point shooter in the league, he isn’t killing it from 2-point range either, despite his high number of dunks. That means his effective field goal percentage is 40.3 percent, second-to-last in the league behind rookie Anthony Edwards.

Bad shooting leads to bad team results

Missing 3-point shots is bad enough, as each miss means 0 points that possession. 68 times this season Oubre has ended a possession that way, and only 19 times has it produced points; in other words the Warriors average 0.655 points per possession when Oubre shoots a 3-pointer. The current league average for 3-pointers is 36.5 percent, which means the average NBA shooter would score 1.095 points per possession.

That difference is painful for an NBA team, especially one like the Golden State Warriors who are not elite across the board and can’t sustain excellence when a player is bringing them down like that. The Warriors have the game’s best shooter in Stephen Curry, shooting 39.2 percent from deep on an insane 11.1 attempts per game. Second-option Andrew Wiggins is hitting 40.7 percent of his 5.1 attempts per game. Damion Lee, Kent Bazemore and Mychal Mulder are all hitting at least 40 percent from 3-point range.

More from Golden State Warriors

• Grade the Trade: Warriors become title-favs in proposed deal with Raptors
• 5 NBA players everyone should be keeping a close eye on in 2023-24
• New detail about title-costing mistake reopens old wounds for Warriors
• 5 NBA players facing do-or-die 2023–2024 seasons
• 7 Harsh realities of the Golden State Warriors offseason

Yet the Warriors as a team are hitting just 35.2 percent, 21st in the league. That is not solely Oubre’s fault, but he is a major factor in pulling them down. The Warriors’ preferred starting lineup has three non-spacers on it right now because Oubre has been so cold. That prompted head coach Steve Kerr to change things up, moving rookie center James Wiseman into a bench unit with more spacing. Oubre should have been helping to open up space inside for Wiseman, but instead was making it too crowded to operate.

Teams are not respecting his shot now, clogging the paint and daring Oubre to shoot. He is doing so less frequently; after averaging 5.7 3-point attempts per game through his first 13 contests, over the last four he is averaging just 3.3 attempts. This means his misses are less damaging, but it also means he is losing the respect of defenders even faster.

Overall that has meant Oubre is a palpable negative on offense thus far this season. His offensive rating is just 90 points per 100 possession, second-worst on the team behind the injured Marquese Chriss, and his on-court net rating is a team-worst -19. Despite logging 477 minutes this season, his volume-based “value over replacement player” is still negative, suggesting a street free agent would have provided more value.

In light of Oubre’s value as a defender, his offensive rebounding and his rim-pressure in transition, for him to be such a negative overall speaks to how poorly he has shot this year. His 3-point impact is not simply a statistical novelty; it is severely damaging his ability to be a positive player, and the Warriors’ ability to be a winning team.

The record of Oubre’s career suggests he will improve, and if you adjust the lens properly he has done that. He got off to an inexplicably cold 1-25 start, and has shot 18-for-62 since, a more respectably poor 29 percent. Yet if Oubre wants to carve out a long-term role for himself on this team, he will need to start hitting shots, and soon.

Until he does, the Golden State Warriors are being held back from their goals, and Oubre is defining himself as the worst 3-point shooter in the NBA.