Do you remember the 1999 NBA playoffs?
What about the 2019 playoffs?
This chart shows every spot a player made a shot for both of them.
In the 1999 playoffs, the Orlando Magic attempted
29% of their overall shots behind the 3-point line.
The most out of any team for that playoff season.
In the 2019 playoffs, the Houston Rockets shot 51% behind the line.
3-point shots have taken over the NBA in a way
that’s totally changing how professional basketball works.
The NBA introduced the 3-point line in 1979
as a way to boost points and reduce congestion under the net.
DAVID BERRI: The problem you have is that there is no player in the NBA
at that point who, can shoot a 3-pointer on a consistent basis.
None.
David Berri is a sports statistician, who is all about the numbers.
BERRI: Either you can measure it or you can't measure it.
BERRI: And if you're not measuring it, then you're just making it up.
In the 1970s, basketball teams were used to focusing on 2-point goals.
Layups, dunks, and some mid-range shots.
Shooting from far out was an unnecessary risk without reward.
BERRI: If you were Steph Curry in 1978 and you started launching 25 foot shots
your coach would bench you.
BERRI: The shot from 5 feet away is 2 points.
The game we play is throw the ball down to the guy who's 7 feet tall
and let him shoot a 3-footer.
3-point shots were hard — players weren’t used to making them.
And after Chris Ford of the Celtics sank the first official 3-pointer in the NBA...
not much changed.
According to the stats website Basketball-reference.com, in the whole 79-80 season
all teams in the league attempted almost 7,500 total shots
only 227 of those were 3-point attempts.
And they only scored 64 of them.
It wasn’t until the 86-87 season
that the league made over 100 successful 3-pointers across one season.
In the ’90s, the NBA tinkered with the arc of the line, moving it closer to the net
in an attempt to make scoring more points easier.
Players like Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr took advantage of it
but it didn't produce the intended effect.
The league moved it back just a few years later.
By the 1999-2000, 20 years after the line was introduced
the entire league attempted just over 1,000 3s out of almost 7,000 shots.
Fast-forward to the 2018-2019 and that number is over 2,600.
That’s an increase of 150%.
That shift has to do with one big statistic:
BERRI: 33% from 3 is as good as 50% from 2.
In other words, if you can make one-third of your shots from the 3-point line
it’s as good as making half your shots closer to the net.
DATOR: As the NBA has skewed more towards analytics
It became a factor of like, we should just be shooting 3s.
Like 2s don't matter nearly as much anymore.
James Dator is a sports journalist at SB Nation, who’s written features on the 3-point line.
DATOR: Volume shooting from 3 ends up netting you a better result than going from 2
assuming that you have the shooters to be able to support it.
Daryl Morey, a longtime basketball exec who’s obsessed with statistics
if often credited with figuring this out.
In 2014, he instructed the D-League Rio Grande Valley Vipers
to cut out long 2-point shots and shoot more 3s.
At the time, NBA teams were averaging just over 20 3-point attempts per game.
The Vipers started shooting almost 50.
And Morey’s strategy worked.
They ranked first in the league in offense
and it was clear that they were going to transform the game.
DATOR: What happens if you get 5 of those guys and put them on your roster at once?
DATOR: Suddenly, instead of having all these Swiss Army knives on a court,
you've got a bunch of scalpels, but they're all doing what you want them to do
which is like, let's hit more shots from 3.
Soon, the NBA latched on and 3-point shooting skyrocketed.
As did 3-point successes.
In that 2019 playoff season, the Houston Rockets
became the first team to shoot more 3s than 2s.
This tool that started out as a tough shot to make more points
is now standard practice.
DATOR: Oh, there's a very real chance this is completely breaking the game of basketball.
The fear is...
do we lose that kind of magic and that element of
here are two teams approaching the game of basketball with very different approaches
and let's see what happens when these styles clash
versus two teams that it just becomes a
who's able to shoot more 3s and who's able to hit more 3s
and that's kind of it.
This becomes a problem when your team can’t hit enough 3s.
Even Morey, who started the 3-point revolution, has run into this issue.
DATOR: Now he's managing a team in the 76ers where they don't have those 3-point shooters.
DATOR: So now it’s suddenly like, well, you know, we can’t compete
because our best players are interior players.
And even when you do have 3-point shooters, there’s another problem.
DATOR: We could get to that point, that it's just boring
because everyone's trying to do the same thing.
There are a few options to fix these issues.
The NBA could move the 3-point line back, to make it harder.
But that might not help forever.
The players are simply going to learn how to shoot that longer distance.
And very soon you will find yourself back in exactly the same position.
But now they're going to be shooting 26-footers.
Damien “Logo” Lillard already does this.
In this clip from the 2021 All-Star game,
you can see him shoot so far back from the line
he’s actually closer to the half-court logo.
They could move the 3-point line closer which would decentivize deep 3s
and encourage a tighter knit game like there was in the past.
They could raise the rim, making all shots harder to sink.
Or there could be more drastic changes.
DATOR: There are some wild suggestions like
limiting the amount of 3s a team can attempt in a quarter
and then kind of like having a lightning round at the end of the game where
suddenly you can just shoot as many as you want for full points.
The NBA has no official plans to change rules at the moment.
And even though there's a lot of commentary about the 3-point line.
The statistics ultimately tell another story:
BERRI: I have lots of data on gate revenue.
BERRI: So I simply looked at what drives gate revenue.
BERRI: Do teams that shoot more 3s have more or less demand.
And the answer is it has no effect at all.
Fans don't care.
BERRI: The vast majority of your fans are watching because they're emotionally attached
to the team.
That's what's important.