After 3 weeks of practice and preseason exhibitions, the Portland Trail Blazers are just a day away from officially tipping off their 2026-27 NBA season.
The Blazers finished preseason with an impressive 3-1 record. Building strong camaraderie among teammates while giving the fanbase a lot to be excited for prior to the regular season.
As Micah Nori and his staff focused on implementing their style and approach this season, a persistent stream of questions about roster construction was one of the main topics fans and reporters discussed.
From the defensive liabilities of a small backcourt to how they'll spread the offensive touches, the Blazers were trying to solve the same issues the media kept raising.
One question, however, dominated last season and the offseason, but was mentioned far less during training camp.
How will the Trail Blazers improve their 3-point shooting?
Across three preseason games against NBA competition, the Blazers made 42 three-pointers on 128 attempts, totaling a rather low 32.8 percent from beyond the arc.
Though it's a small sample size, the initial feeling is that the Blazers still have a ways to go with their shooting. Damian Lillard can only do so much to help that.
General Manager Joe Cronin mentioned on media day that shooting still isn’t a strength
of the Blazers, and the team will be reliant on the “ internal development of our shooters. “
For some players, internal development means adding something new to their game or taking a leap from below average to above it.
For Vit Krejčí, it might simply mean rediscovering what made him valuable in the first place.
Vit Krejčí Needs to Improve for Portland
Krejčí was acquired from Atlanta before the February trade deadline with the hope that he could become Portland’s very own three-point sniper.
Before he arrived, Krejči shot 42 percent from beyond the arc on five attempts per game. However, after swapping his Hawks jersey for a Blazers one, that percentage plummeted to 30 percent on just about the same volume.
Tribute the struggles to adapting to a new environment; the Blazers organization and fanbase hoped last season was an outlier, and the career 39 percent three-point shooter could get in and around that number this season.
In his three preseason games against NBA competition, Krejčí converted just 2 of his 13 attempts from beyond the arc.
For a team in dire need of reliable shooters to space the floor for the likes of Ja Morant and Deni Avdija to operate, the shooting numbers displayed by Krejci so far have been unacceptable.
With most shooters, you can give them the benefit of the doubt; jumpers come and go, and sometimes they just need to keep shooting and trusting their ability to get back on track.
The bigger issue is that without his three-point shot, Krejčí struggles to impact the game.
He isn’t an elite playmaker or going to make an impact crashing the boards, and he’s not an above-average defender. There isn’t a skill outside of shooting that he can fall back on, and we have seen that in preseason.
The 25-year-old from the Czech Republic still, however, has the organization's belief. Coming into training camp, there were rumblings that his roster spot wasn't set in stone.
On a non-guaranteed contract, it was plausible he was auditioning to stay on the Blazers' regular-season roster, let alone the rotation.
This past week, the front office waived forward Jeremy Sochan, officially locking Krejčí into a roster spot. Sochan, funnily enough, shot 80 percent from three across the same three preseason games.
Nobody is asking Krejčí to shoot 45% from beyond the arc, but the barely hot and mostly cold streaks need to improve. If Krejčí gets off to a good start and finds some consistency, I can easily see him carving out minutes on a Blazers team that needs three-point shooting.
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