Marcio Lassiter may still be without a three-point shooting crown but the SMB sniper is closing in to a much-prestigious throne as he continues to move up in the all-time three-point list.
The 36-year-old gunner has been climbing up fast in the leaderboard this season, barging into the Top 5 in Game 2 of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals last February before moving further up to the No.4 spot in the ongoing Philippine Cup eliminations just a week ago.
As of April 28, Lassiter is at 1,205 three-point shot makes, closing the gap between him and current No. 3 LA Tenorio who has 1,218 triples and counting – a number that the SMB shooter could very well surpass given how well he’s been shooting the past few games.
According to PBA chief statistician Fidel Mangonon III, Lassiter is currently leading the league in three-point percentage and three-point makes per game. He is making 3.2 triples per game at an impressive clip of 56.9 percent.
With such a prolific shooting performance, a pressing question begins to surface: Is Lassiter poised to surpass Jimmy Alapag and claim the title of all-time three-point king before the season ends?
Let’s dig a little deeper.
As it stands, Alapag sits at the top of the food chain with a total of 1,250 triples followed by Allan Caidic with 1,242. And then there’s Tenorio and Lassiter composing the Top 4.
That means the SMB gunner is 14 triples away to surpass Tenorio, 38 to overtake Caidic and 46 to unseat Alapag.
According to Mangonon, given Lassiter’s three-point makes per game, he will need five games to leapfrog Tenorio in the list, 11 to beat Caidic and 15 more to take the crown from Alapag.
SMB still has two games left in the eliminations and is already assured a spot in the playoffs where it can play a total of 16 more games if every series it plays go the distance – more than enough for Lassiter to surpass Alapag if his three-point shooting never cools down.
However, given the Beermen’s dominance so far, it’s likely that the series in the playoffs won’t go in full games which also means lesser opportunity for Lassiter to close the gap.
At the very least, SMB can play nine more games in the playoffs if it goes on to sweep the postseason – leaving Lassiter four games short of the needed number of contests to reach the Alapag’s mark, of course. given his shooting from deep remains the same.
Still, it’s on Lassiter if he can sustain the hot-shooting or not; or if he can even further increase his number of triples per game.
Whether he could make it this season or not remains to be seen, but given how the veteran gunner is proving that he’s one of the greatest shooters, if not the best, the league has ever seen, reaching the mark is only a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’.
We better just wait and see.
