What’s a good shot these days?
The coaching solution to the 3-point bonanza
BY DAVID THORPE
In 1985, an average NBA team attempted three 3-pointers per game. This season, every team averages 30-or-more attempts, and one team averages more than 50. A typical game features a whopping 76 combined 3-point attempts.
In the 1990s, the NBA was a slugfest. It barely mattered if a player could fly like Jordan; there were so many hands, hip checks, and headshots waiting in the paint that we seldom saw what the world’s best athletes could really do. Then, things changed—a little bit of the rules, and a lot of strategy. Analytics taught us that attempting more 3s, which old-school coaches swore would lead to doom, in fact led to more wins. Then James Harden and Stephen Curry stretched the bounds of what’s possible, and now …
This is not your daddy’s NBA. Players are shooting more 3s than ever, and it’s doing two things: It’s creating the best offenses of all time, and it’s making commentators and fans so angry that they are talking about changing the rules. All over TV and social media, people are complaining that the game is no longer fun because everyone’s so 3-happy.
Each time I hear about how the deluge of chucking ruining the NBA, I think about my hometown NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I was 11 when my parents got season tickets to the Bucs’ inaugural season. They were awful. Yet, by 1979, we were division champs just one game from the Super Bowl, and I was hooked. I attended eight games a year with my dad for almost two decades.
Most of those seasons, the Bucs faithful had the same complaint: Everyone was sick of the “three yards and a cloud of dust” mentality. It was boring. Everyone clamored for more downfield passing and aerial attacks. The game was bogged down, defenses stacked bodies near the line of scrimmage, and the offense needed space and open field to show off the incredible things the players could do.
The strategy is the same for basketball—spreading out the defense opens up better chances inside for lower-risk, solid-reward plays. So why is the contemporary uptick in 3-point attempts catching strays for the NBA’s dwindling TV ratings?
Just before Christmas, I called Henry Abbott and told him the number of 3s wasn’t the problem. After all, the Lakers-Warriors game on Christmas Day, which garnered more viewers than any regular-season NBA game in the past five years, featured 87 3-point attempts.
The real problem is the quality of 3s being taken. That’s where our game has to come up with a tighter plan. If teams are taking good 3s, everyone will love it.
But what, exactly, is a good 3?
In the clip above, retired player Channing Frye disagrees with current Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton on one of the core questions from the history of basketball coaching: What’s a good shot?
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