3s aren’t everything

A new paper at the MIT Sloan conference emphasizes drawing fouls

BY HENRY ABBOTT

3-pointers pack a huge analytical punch, but they don’t draw a lot of free throws. A new analysis finds free throws matter a hell of a lot. GREG NELSON/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES

The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference has long been the epicenter of the dorky insight that everyone ridicules at first, but which later changes everything about the league.

The most obvious example of this is 3-pointers. Back when Sloan began, Daryl Morey was an assistant GM for the Rockets. He united with former Harvard point guard Jessica Gelman (and CEO of the influential Kraft Analytics Group) to launch a conference where, in the early years, one thing nearly every analyst agreed on was that NBA teams should shoot more 3s. 

At the time, teams shot 16 per game, and no team ran a lot of plays designed to end in a 3. Three-pointers were like paper plates at a…