Why NBA Teams Love 3-pointers (And Why You Should Too)
Growing up, basketball was always my favorite sport to both play and watch. Unfortunately for me, I was a much better baseball player and ended up having to play that sport in college if I wanted to earn a scholarship. That being said, I continued to play basketball for my high school varsity team, and as a very quantitative person, basketball analytics interested me from an early age.
I figured out early on from doing my own research on basketball-reference.com that the mid-range shot was extremely inefficient. For example, so far during this season the NBA as a whole is shooting 35% from behind the 3-point line and 42% on mid-range shots. That is a difference of 0.21 points per shot (0.35 * 3 = 1.05 for 3s, 0.42 * 2 = 0.84 for mids). While this might not sound like a big difference on a per possession basis, it adds up quickly. Over a standard game with 100 possessions per team, this is a difference of 21 points. While there are some NBA players that can shoot the mid-range jumper at an efficient rate of over 50%, but these players are so few and far between that it is not worth mentioning.
Once I found out this information, I began to model my own game around the 3-point shot, since I did not have the athleticism to score points at the rim on layups and dunks. During my high school career, I did not make a single field goal that was not a 3-pointer (I did make one free throw, however). Kyle Korver was my favorite player. A tall shooter like myself, I watched highlight videos of the Atlanta Hawks All-Star guard all the time back then, especially from his 2014-15 season in which he had the 6th highest single season 3-point shooting percentage at 49.2%. I was not the best player, but I used analytics to maximize my own personal value to the team. Even when I play casual pick-up games with my friends, I focus on shooting 3-pointers. In pick-up games, scores are generally by 1s and 2s instead of by 2s and 3s. This makes the 3-point shot even more valuable, as the difference between shooting from behind the arc and inside the arc is even greater, at 0.28 points per shot (0.35 * 2 = 0.70, 0.42 * 1 = 0.42).
Kyle Korver celebrates after making a shot in 2015. Photo From: Bleacher Report.
It has been really interesting to see the NBA ramp up 3-point attempts in recent years, which has led to a massive increase in overall offense throughout the league. After staying steadily in the mid-teens in 3-point attempts per game, teams started to really lean on the 3-point shot starting around the 2011-12 season. In the time between then and now, teams have nearly doubled their average 3-point field goal attempts per game, going from 18.4 to 35.5 in the current season, which has led to a big jump in overall points scored, going from 96.3 per game to 107.7 in the same time span. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors is the best example of a star player fully embracing this era of deep shooting. He won back to back MVPs off the strength of his incredible long jumpers of which he makes nearly half. Curry just set the record for most 3-pointers made in a career this week. Personally, I like this style of play. However, it has been not very well received by many NBA fans, citing its lack of variation in shot type. NBA hall of famer Charles Barkley said that this push toward 3-point shots has made the league watered down. Luckily, now that NBA coaches and front offices have discovered the value of the 3-point shot, it is not going away unless there is a drastic change in the rules of the game itself.
Steph Curry posing with his back to back MVP awards. Photo From: Time Magazine.
An extreme example of the NBA’s move toward selling out for 3-pointers is during the COVID shortened 2020 season when Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey traded away 6’10 Clint Capela in favor of 6’5 PJ Tucker, since Tucker was the better 3-point shooter in that season. Fans and analysts alike were worried that the Rockets would be much worse on defense without any true center down low. This concern turned out to be true, but the Rockets offense ended up being so much better with Tucker on the floor that the move was a net positive for the Rockets. Houston ended up making a deep playoff run, only finally losing to the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers, led by LeBron James.
6’5 PJ Tucker guarding 6’10 Anthony Davis. Photo From: NBA.com.
One idea that has been floated around for changing the game is adding a 4-point line. This line would ideally be somewhere around half court which is 47 feet away, with the current 3-point line remaining in the same location. At this distance, a player would need to shoot 26% from behind half court in order to make the shot be as valuable as a 3-point shot. However, I think a more drastic measure that would improve the shot variation is to actually move the 3-point line in to around 15 feet from the hoop at the free throw line, where it would take the place of the current mid-range shot but be more efficient and give players and incentive to shoot it, and make a 4-point line out at 25 feet from the hoop. At these distances, 2-point shots at the rim in the form of layups and dunks, 3-point shots from the mid- range and 4-point shots from deep would all be very similar points per shot values at 1.34, 1.27 and 1.32 respectively. When given this many different opportunities to have efficient shots at all three levels, NBA offenses will have much more variation in shot selection. This plan would satisfy the traditionalists who want to see mid-range shots and the new school analytics people who want to see their teams operate at optimal efficiency. While I understand that this is such a radical change to how the game is fundamentally played and would never be accepted other than maybe as a gimmick in an amateur league, I would absolutely love to see how the game would evolve under this set of rules and how the spacing and positioning of players would look.
Overall, analytics are here to stay. Not just in the NBA, but in every major sport. Baseball, football and hockey all have analytics revolutions going right this very minute. Every day, more and more “nerds” are being hired at the expense of old school people that eschew analytics. If any teams try to resist the changing tides, they will simply get left behind and not win games. It truly is adapt or die in the NBA. Shoot the 3-ball. You won’t regret it.
(all stats pulled from basketball-reference.com)