With under eight minutes remaining and his team holding a six-point lead, Ryan Dunn stood in the corner as his teammates ran a play drawn up by a multiple-time Coach of the Year. Dunn snuck towards the elbow, setting a screen before finding himself all alone at the top of the key. The 6-foot-8 forward took the handoff from his veteran big man and pulled the trigger. Fans erupted as Dunn nailed his third three-pointer of the night, his name booming over the public address system while the orange accents on his jersey glittered in the bright arena lights.
But those orange accents complemented the predominantly purple uniform of the Phoenix Suns, not the navy blue one of Virginia men’s basketball. The Coach of the Year and veteran big man were Mike Budenholzer and Jusuf Nurkić, not Tony Bennett and Jordan Minor. The game took place not inside Charlottesville’s John Paul Jones Arena, but at Phoenix’s Footprint Center, where Dunn now plays his home games after being selected 28th overall by the Suns in the 2024 NBA Draft.
Dunn scored 13 points and went 3-for-6 from long range in Phoenix’s win that night, Oct. 26, against the Dallas Mavericks. After nine regular season games, he is third among NBA rookies with 1.4 made three-pointers per game. During the preseason, he made 13 three-pointers in 30 attempts, which included one 20-point outing that featured six made shots from beyond the arc.
The player outlined above sounds nothing like the forward that spent two years donning a Virginia uniform. That is not to say that Dunn was bad as a Cavalier — but he was not a shooter by any stretch.
In 65 games with Virginia, Dunn made 12 three-point field goals. He has notched 13 already with the Suns, and 26 if you count this year’s NBA preseason. It has been a 180-degree turn for the rookie in a matter of months, perhaps because he was held back by the slow offensive system he had to fit into at Virginia.
Dunn by the numbers
Dunn did not magically discover his talent for three-point shooting when he landed in Phoenix — he shot 44 percent from deep at Long Island Lutheran during his sophomore and junior years of high school, and he is shooting nearly 40 percent in the NBA. In between, he completely lost his shooting touch with the Cavaliers.
He attempted a mere 51 shots from behind the arc as a Cavalier. Not once in his college career did he shoot more than four three-pointers in a game, and only 16 times did he hoist up more than one. Yet, in every single NBA contest, both preseason and regular season, Dunn has attempted multiple shots from long range. That includes one game of nine attempts and a remarkable preseason contest that saw him shoot 11 three-pointers.
But volume was not his only problem — the rookie’s three-point percentage has also shot up since he entered the NBA. In his two seasons as a Cavalier, Dunn shot an abysmal 23.5 percent from long range. That number actually went down between his first and second years, falling from 31.3 percent in 2022-23 to just 20 percent the following season.
As a Sun, Dunn is shooting 36.1 percent from three in the regular season, during which he has shot better than 40 percent in almost half of his contests. His overall percentage jumps to 39.4 if you include his stellar preseason appearances.
It is rare to see an NBA rookie’s three-point efficiency increase from what it was in college. The NBA three-point line is farther from the basket than the college line, so there tends to be a learning curve for young players — even the best three-point shooters — when adjusting to the deeper shot.
But Dunn, who could hardly make a three-pointer in college and saw his draft stock drop in part because of his shooting struggles, has had no problem making the switch. It is nothing short of stunning, and leaves a big question to be answered.
What is behind Dunn’s improvement?
Dunn is not the first player to leave Virginia and immediately undergo a substantial improvement from beyond the arc. Former Virginia guard Casey Morsell made just 15 of 85 three-pointers as a freshman in 2019-20, good for 17.6 percent. Though he shot an improved 26.3 percent in his second season, his 25 three-pointers in two seasons came at an overall 20.3 percent mark, cementing his standing as an underwhelming three-point shooter.
Following his sophomore year, Morsell transferred to NC State, where his numbers took a Dunn-like turn. In the two years following his departure, Morsell shot 39 percent from three, making 113 of 290 attempts. The latter of those years, he finished ninth in the ACC with 78 made three-pointers and shot at a 41.1 percent clip.
His numbers took a dip in his third and final year at NC State, but his success after leaving Virginia speaks to a potential misutilization in Charlottesville.
Regarding a possible cause for Dunn and Morsell’s turnarounds, first and foremost, Virginia’s offense plays slow. The Cavaliers ranked fourth-slowest in pace of play during Dunn’s freshman season in 2022-23 and dead last in 2023-24. Because the Cavalier offense logs fewer possessions per game, Dunn simply had less opportunities to score.
Dunn also relies on his speed and athleticism to make noise offensively. He never looked entirely comfortable with the ball in his hands in Virginia’s methodically-paced offensive system, and that was exacerbated when he was on the perimeter.
Last season, he attempted 19 three-pointers in the team’s first eight games but shot just 21 percent. For the rest of the season, that part of his game was repressed — he hoisted up only 16 across his final 26 appearances, including 15 games in which he did not attempt any. Such a stark downtick suggests Dunn either lost confidence, received a nudge from the coaching staff to take a step back or both.
Since he made the move from Charlottesville to Phoenix, Dunn’s confidence level has been like night and day. His coaches have worked with him on his three-point shot and his teammates have instilled belief in his long-range abilities.
Dunn’s confidence has been praised by both Suns guard Tyus Jones and his trainer, Andre Brown. In an interview with The New York Times, Brown emphasized that Dunn’s three-point improvement has not been as much about “a basketball tweak” as it has been about working on the mental side of his game.
And that is where the problem may lie, as it relates to Virginia. The program has enjoyed bundles of success with its unhurried style and defensive focus, but room has to be made for players like Dunn to work through offensive struggles. In his case, he left Charlottesville seemingly in need of a massive overhaul on his shot, but the fix appeared plenty attainable.
This is not to say that Virginia’s system failed him — he was a three-star prospect before getting to Charlottesville and ended up as a first-round pick in the NBA Draft. But it is a system that seemingly masked his three-point talent, and that of Morsell, for what it’s worth.
Though the Cavaliers have picked up the pace to start the 2024-25 season, most of the system appears to be withstanding the transition from Bennett to Coach Ron Sanchez. Dunn serves as a reminder that it must be repeatedly evaluated. The Cavaliers can not let more three-point shooters go to waste.
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