If the three-point shot is both the present and future of the NBA, the last season’s performance beyond the arc by the Charlotte Hornets must have meant they were stuck in the past.

The Hornets finished a disappointing 14-15 campaign ranked dead last in three-point field goal percentage (31.8) while also finishing just 24th in attempts per game. You don’t have to point to much more than those two numbers in order to find the culprit behind Charlotte’s dreadful 97.6 offensive rating, a number so bad only two of the league’s three worst teams -- New York and Philadelphia -- finished below them. Given such a disappointing offensive display, the goal this offseason for Hornets G.M. Rich Cho was fairly straightforward: add as much shooting as possible.

Through trades and the draft, Cho has turned a roster devoid of shooting into one that has the potential to overflow with it. Newcomers, Spencer Hawes and Nicolas Batum are coming off disappointing seasons, but have shown the ability in their careers to be consistent threats from the perimeter. The team’s lottery pick in this June’s draft, Frank Kaminsky, is shooting 40 percent from deep (6-of-15) in his first pro action at the Orlando Summer League. But Kaminksy’s three-point proficiency hasn’t even stood out in central Florida this week because another Hornet, guard Troy Daniels, who has also shown an improved off-the-bounce attack, has hit an absurd 55 percent of his 20 attempts from beyond the arc. Throw in holdover Marvin Williams (and even Jeremy Lamb, if you’re being generous), who finished last year at 35.8 percent, and Hornets aren’t likely to repeat their woeful showing from beyond the arc.

With Cho’s work seemingly done, the onus now falls on Charlotte head coach Steve Clifford to figure out where and how these new perimeter marksmen can fit alongside the rest of his rotation, primarily his offensive bellcow, Al Jefferson. For years the veteran big man has been one of the league’s most potent post players, teaching nightly lessons on how to score from the low block. At age 31, it’s clear now what Jefferson does (and doesn’t do) for a team. It’s far murkier what his stable of sidekicks can do with him.

Partly due to a lack of options, Clifford settled on a starting frontcourt of Jefferson and 2012 lottery pick, Cody Zeller last season. But while Zeller is still in search of a standout skill, his jack-of-all trades routine complemented Jefferson rather well on both ends.

Capable of both rolling and popping out of pick-and-rolls, Zeller, who finished last year shooting 35.3 percent on shots from 16-24 feet, could read Jefferson’s spot on the floor and react accordingly. If Jefferson was lurking for a post up near the rim, Zeller could screen and hang high up on the floor. If Jefferson had ambled outside the paint, Zeller showed off his agility and straight line speed on dives to the rim, though his finishing in the restricted area -- nearly three precent below league average -- remains a work in progress. On the other end of the floor, Zeller isn’t nearly the type capable of masking the flaws of those around him, but he’s serviceable enough and particularly helpful at taking the frontcourt assignments from Jefferson that require a pick-and-roll defender to do more than just hang back near the paint.

In their 883 minutes together last year, Zeller and Jefferson outscored by opponents to the tune of -2.1 points per 48 minutes, according to NBA.com data. That’s hardly the mark of an unstoppable duo and may open the possibility of one of the new faces in Charlotte usurping Zeller’s role. The problem is both Kaminsky or Hawes provide serious dilemmas given their defensive deficiencies.

To even be in consideration for the starter’s role, Hawes would first have to rediscover his shooting stroke from the previous two seasons, where he shot 35.6 and 41.6 percent beyond the arc. The rarity of having a ‘stretch 5’ like Hawes would allow the Hornets to add some spacing to Jefferson’s post up attacks, while hoping Hawes’ sheer size helps produce better defensive numbers than when Marvin Williams, who has always seemed to be overmatched at power forward during extended minutes, was deployed to do the same thing last season. And Hawes would not only bring just size, but also enough skill in the post to take advantage of team’s trying to hide smaller, more offensively potent players on perimeter-oriented bigs without the chops to bang down low -- like Golden State did to Cleveland in the Finals. Those positives aside, Hawes’ lack of mobility combined with Jefferson’s statuesque approach to defense would be tough for Clifford’s simple, but effective defensive scheme (which will dig into more in a second) to overcome.

Kaminsky moves slightly better and has the potential to be a much more versatile offensive threat than Hawes down the road (and maybe right now, at least when it comes to attacking closing defenders off the bounce from the perimeter), but isn’t exactly going to remind people of a peak Kevin Garnett on defense. While Kaminsky may do a better job of keeping up with more mobile frontcourt opponents than Hawes would, you saw glimpses in his Summer League minutes where the rookie big man struggled with the physicality of the professional game -- and that’s while going up against mostly fellow rookies.

But the need for one of these two, particularly Kaminsky, to prove capable of starting next Jefferson would provide some much needed balance to the Hornets lineups. With Kemba Walker and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist joining Jefferson and Batum as starters, Clifford could badly use a true three-point threat in the frontcourt (which isn’t Zeller yet) in order to give Walker and Jefferson more room to create offense. On top of that, Jeremy Lin, the team’s newly signed supersub who thrives in pick-and-rolls, could use a ballscreen partner capable of sucking in help defenders by rolling quickly to the rim, something Kaminsky and Hawes are suited for (or even willing to do).   

In order to achieve such offensive harmony by hiding the defensive shortcomings of his stable of big men not named Zeller, Clifford will need to rely on two things: his conservative defensive scheme and Charlotte’s new, oversized wing rotation.  

Perhaps more than any team in the league, Clifford’s pick-and-roll defense shifts more responsibility to the on-ball defender than the big man guarding the screener. Take a look at how Jefferson and Zeller guard the pick-and-rolls they are involved in during a game against the Lakers last year:

On the first pick-and-roll, Jefferson stays deep in the paint while the screen actually occurs outside the three-point line. And after that action is cut off, the ball is swung so Zeller’s man, Carlos Boozer, sets a second screen while Zeller hangs back and makes sure Boozer doesn’t receive a return pass.

The idea behind such a tactic is basically to eliminate the roll man by sticking right with him -- as Zeller did with Boozer -- and thus taking away the need for help defenders to come rushing off shooters on the weakside in order to stop easy rolls to the rim. Charlotte doesn’t defend every pick-and-roll this way, but when they do, these situations put a tremendous amount of pressure on the on-ball defender to either “blow up” the screen by getting in between the screener and the ballhandler or quickly recover and cut off any path to the basket. They also require defenders on the strongside to get involved and help curb the ballhandler’s drive, forcing them to make a “non-penetrating” pass (basically pass that doesn’t lead to easy open 3’s or shots deep in the paint) like Gerald Henderson does in the above clip.

This is where having a 6-foot-8 shooting guard, like Batum, and a destroyer of worlds, like Kidd-Gilchrist, can really help Charlotte play their ideal frontcourt pairings. Not very wing defenders are capable of defeating pick-and-rolls without much help from their big men like Kidd-Gilchrist, who is cementing his status as an elite wing defender despite entering just his fourth season. Batum has always been something of a paper tiger on defense, as most metrics don’t match up with his physical tools, but the French wing, especially when basically being the defacto shooting guard, brings great length and mobility to help defense responsibilities. That means opponents successfully accomplishing things like those relatively simple non-penetrating passes become a lot dicier when Batum, or Kidd-Gilchrist for that matter, is involved.

Unlike last year, you can scan the Charlotte roster now and find shooters at every position from point guard to center. But just having more perimeter threats is only half the battle. For the Hornets to really capitalize on their offseason makeover, they need to successfully merge their new marksmen with the rest of the hive.