After shooting 29.1% from 3-point range last season, Marshall spent the offseason rebuilding his jumper and set the bar high for himself this upcoming season.
Naji Marshall does almost everything well. He scores inside, rebounds, defends multiple positions and makes the kind of connective plays that do not always show up in a box score. The one hole in his game is obvious, and it is the reason defenses were comfortable leaving him alone beyond the arc last season.
He shot 29.1% from 3-point range. That number shaped how teams guarded him and how much room the Mavericks offense had to work with.
He spent the offseason attacking it, and at media day Friday, he named the target he has in mind.
"45% or better," Marshall said. "High expectations. Set the bar high."
Nobody should expect him to get there. Forty-five percent from 3-point range would have led the NBA among high-volume shooters last season, and the leap from 29.1% would be roughly 16 percentage points. Players simply do not improve that dramatically in a single summer.
But the number is less important than what it reveals about how he approached his work. Marshall said he focused on "nothing but net" 3-pointers, meaning clean makes rather than shots that rattle in. That is a mechanical standard, the kind of detail a player chases when he is rebuilding a stroke rather than tinkering with one.
The precedent exists, too. Marshall shot 38.7% from deep in his final season with New Orleans, which is considerably better than league average. Recovering that form would be transformative, and it would not require anything close to the 45% he is chasing.
What makes the shot so significant is how complete the rest of his game already is. Marshall set career highs last season with 15.2 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists while shooting 51% from the field, production that earned him a three-year, $52.2 million extension in August. He finishes through contact, defends multiple positions and functions as a secondary creator without needing the offense run through him.
He is one reliable jumper away from being genuinely difficult to game-plan against.
When asked where the team needs to improve collectively, Marshall pointed to ball movement, defensive communication and making better use of the length Dallas assembled this offseason. That final item is the one the front office built toward all summer, and converting size into an actual defensive advantage depends almost entirely on the communication he described.
