Do you care about life beyond the arc?

Or more importantly, does Porter care about life beyond the arc?

I'm waiting for reliable numbers on opponent 3Pt FG%.  Suns are not bad here, but depends also on opponents 3FG prowess and the samples are small.

Okay, the Suns really really suck here, 26th in the league allowing almost 41% from 3 on almost 19 attempts per game (23rd in the league).  The Trailblazers are the worst in the league, allowing 47.4% but this is only on 13 attempts.  

Putting the % and the attempts together, really only the Sacto Queens (44% allowed on 18 attempts) are worse downtown defenders.  And yes, the 3 is now a weapon used against us.  The Suns actually shoot 0.5% worse than their opponents while taking 2.6 fewer shots.  Have you ever imagined the 3 going against this team? 

The team is carrying huge risk to get bombed outside and a few good teams have really made us pay, while a few mediocre teams have given us a really good scare for a half or so.

The apparent plan is to trade bombs for high percentage inside shots.

The questions really are:

[1] You have to give up something, isn't this an acceptable option given the dearth of long range shooting quality in the NBA?

[2] Even if the Suns get bombed out a few games, won't the risks drop in the POs?

Let's briefly tackle [1].   No. 

Slightly less briefly, the answer is, no, it's not acceptable.  Whatever happened to the winning Spurs strategy of closing up the middle, running shooters off the 3-point line and allowing long 2-point jump shots on the move? 

This leads to item number [2].  No. Daring some bad teams to shoot the long ball probably works.  Perhaps you lose a few unlucky games.  However, it's not clear that a playoff caliber team is going to flinch, get cold and shoot blanks from outside just because it's the playoffs. 

If the plan is to simply deny the inside, but yield like a prom queen at the charity semi-circle, either by express coaching instruction or by the inability of the players to execute whatever strategy articulated, we are in for a rocky year.