Inspired by a statistic TNT showed last night, TrueHoop reader Ari did a little legwork and came up with a list of teams that most loved shooting three-pointers last season. It's not about total number of three-pointers shot, it's about what percentage of a teams total shots attempted that were from downtown.

It's amazing: with some exceptions, good teams shot a lot of threes, and bad teams not so many.

Sacramento shot a lot without being all that good. And Utah and Chicago hardly shot any and were powerhouses. But by and large, those teams that shoot a lot of threes are better than those teams that aren't.  

Statistics are from the 2006-2007 season. Teams that won at least 50% of their games are in bold.

Houston Rockets  29.02%
Phoenix Suns 28.71%
Golden State Warriors 27.91%
New Jersey Nets 26.22%
Los Angeles Lakers 25.83%
San Antonio Spurs 24.61%
Miami Heat 24.51%
Washington Wizards 23.68%
Sacramento Kings 23.21%
Toronto Raptors 22.43%
Milwaukee Bucks 21.98%
Seattle SuperSonics 21.91%
Dallas Mavericks 21.76%
New York Knicks 21.55%
Denver Nuggets 21.20%
Indiana Pacers 21.12%
Memphis Grizzlies 21.12%
Cleveland Cavaliers 21.06%
Detroit Pistons 20.10%
Boston Celtics 19.95%
Charlotte Bobcats 19.26%
Portland Trail Blazers 19.23%
New Orleans Hornets 18.80%
Chicago Bulls 18.57%
Minnesota Timberwolves 16.77%
Utah Jazz 16.35%
Atlanta Hawks 16.34%
Orlando Magic 15.75%
Los Angeles Clippers 14.27%
Philadelphia 76ers 12.79%

I can hear George Karl talking to Allen Iverson right now: No, Allen, that doesn't mean the key to improvement is jacking more threes.

I can also hear Bryan Colangelo saying see, that's why I gave all that money to Jason Kapono. 

Wonder what underlies this trend. It's a real chicken-and-egg thing. Do good teams have the ability to get guys open? Do they make the three-pointer a bigger part of their game plan? Do they shoot more threes because they have good three-point shooters? Are open threes a sign of a post-presence who is getting doubled (Yao Ming) and/or a team with good ball movement (Phoenix)? Or are threes just so valuable that it's smart to shoot a lot of them? Is it some combination of all of the above and more?