Two recent NBA datapoints: At halftime of the Mavericks-Warriors game on Sunday evening, the visiting team led by a score of 81-74. Two days earlier, the Bulls beat the visiting Charlotte Hornets 109-95, in a game where the two teams went a combined 22 for 97 from the three-point line.
These things, a high-scoring and hugely entertaining affair between two of the league’s best and an absolute clankfest of long-distance shooting between two of its worst (non-Wizards division), are not unrelated. There is, out in the general NBA ether, a growing concern that the analytics-driven surge in three-point shooting and the related scoring burst is Hurting The Game, that the barrage from outside is a less fun product to watch and will therefore result in some generally unnamed negative outcome like a ratings decline or, well, something else.
I am not here to defend the entire concept of Too Many Threes; there are some games where yes, there is a bit too much of “run to the three-point line and fire away, run to the other three-point line and fire away” for my taste. But I thought both of those two recent games offered a quick bit of perspective.
First, that Mavs-Warriors halftime score: That score, 81-74, is the exact final score of game 7 of the 2005 NBA Finals, in which the Spurs beat the Pistons. This is, then and in retrospect, considered a sort of down-moment for the league; we had moved past the Jordan years and the Kobe-Shaq Laker threepeat, and LeBron James’s ascendance was still a few years down the road; scoring was down, vibes were bad. That final score — as in, all four quarters, meaning just over three points was scored for every minute of gameplay — was par for the course: the games were a slog. In that 2005 Finals, only once did either team crack 100, a game where Detroit scored 102 and won by 31; in another, the Pistons couldn’t even crack 70.
Second, the Hornets-Bulls snoozer. Okay look, these teams aren’t good; the Hornets in particular are a bit gross, currently sitting at 7-18 and featuring both the NBA leader (LaMelo Ball) and runner up (Brandon Miller) in threes attempted per game. But there are always bad teams, and I would argue that this kind of bad is still miles more fun than what we used to have. The average team so far this year scores 112.9 points per game; in 2004-2005, that number was 97.2 points. The point of basketball is to put the ball through the hoop; is it more fun to watch that happen more or less often?
The biggest change in the game between then and now is clearly the emphasis on the three-pointer: teams shot 15.8 of them per game two decades ago, compared with a remarkable 37.5 per game this year, easily the highest mark in history.
(A quick aside: another major change that gets almost zero discussion is the 2018 move to change shot clock rules, where now an offensive rebound resets the clock to only 14 instead of 24 seconds. This speeds the game up dramatically; team scoring, on a reasonably slow-and-steady incline in the years preceding the rule change, leapt from 106.3 points per game to 111.2 points per game that season. Sure, three-pointers made went up that year as well, but by less than one per game. This was a huge rule change that no one talks about anymore!)
This has led to various suggestions on how to “fix” the issue: eliminate the corner three, the shortest and easiest shot out there; move the line back in general; even limit the number of threes a team can take per game, beyond which any shot is a two-pointer regardless of where it originates from.
These are all radical, in one way or another, though I am not fundamentally opposed to trying some stuff. Yes, just watching teams bomb away can get a bit dull — but I still say it is better than the growing consensus claims. Even the Bulls and Hornets, owners of that game where viewers were treated to 75 missed three-pointers, aren’t such horrible perpetrators as you might think: they rank second and third in the league this year in threes attempted (behind the Evil Empire in this fight, the Boston Celtics, who are attempting more than 51 per game, seven more than the Bulls, and also happen to be defending champions and still one of the three best teams in the league), but they also rank ninth and 17th in three-point percentage. They make a lot of these!
I didn’t set out this NBA season to act as as a sort of pollyanna-ish hopester, though it appears I am embracing the role. There are always ways to make a sports product better, of course, and again, thinking through a decent three-pointer tweak or two seems fine to me. But the NBA is absolutely spoiled with incredible talent right now, and teeming with squads if not championship-ready than certainly playoff-ready and hoping to make some noise. All things being equal, I would rather see a team score points than not; we don’t need to go back to 2005.