Stephen Curry gets most of the blame for this national nausea over 3-pointers. Undoubtedly, the Golden State Warriors star inspired this shift in strategy. His wizardry from deep proved just as indomitable as it was dazzling. It pushed a generation behind the arc.
But what Curry and former Warriors teammate Klay Thompson did was spectacular. This modern saturation of 3-pointers is not. Assigning the responsibility of the current blight to their brilliance is about as inappropriate as blaming. … It’s not Bentley’s fault the streets flooded with Chrysler 300s in the early 2000s. And we dare not criticize the Air Jordan 1s for the existence of the gold Never Surrenders.
Greatness gets copied. That’s the game. Any aspersions for the prevalence of fake Louis Vuitton should be cast on Canal Street in New York, not in France.
That’s why this era is much more Daryl Morey’s fault.
He’s the master replicator most responsible for the style of play that’s ratcheting up the yawns. The genius whose work has been bastardized.
The 3-point issue is much more about the aesthetics of the games than the shot itself. It’s about the simplicity of the strategy being employed and the suppression of schematic diversity. It’s about the casual aura it exudes.
Stephen Curry and the Warriors did it the right way, building their 3-point-heavy strategy around a pair of Hall of Famers. (David Berding / Getty Images)
The Chicago Bulls have taken 763 3s in the first nine seconds on the shot clock, per NBA Stats. That’s 41.4 percent of their total 3s. The definition of chucking. Now that’s boring.
The Bulls are democratic with their distribution, too. Their attempts are pretty evenly spread out among their bad shooters. Zach LaVine is unconscious from deep this season — 45 percent. But he’s taken 50 fewer attempts than his backcourt mate Coby White (36.4). That’s what happens when 3-point shooting is reduced to a Costco deal. Nobody wants all those Kirkland 3s.
Morey’s Houston Rockets launched the 3s-over-everything ideology. And the unintended consequence of them trying to beat Curry at his own game, nearly a decade later, is the defending champion Boston Celtics running an offense designed to win stuffed animals.
After bludgeoning the Warriors on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with 20 made 3s on 48 attempts, the Celtics are now averaging 49 per game. Through Monday, NBA teams average a record 37.6 3-point attempts per game.
“There’s a certain homogeneity in the game that it looks like teams are copying each other’s styles,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on “The Big Podcast with Shaq,” hosted by Shaquille O’Neal. “I think that’s less interesting for fans.”
In 2014-15, the Rockets became the first team to average 30 attempts from 3 for a season. They made 34.8 percent of their 32.7 attempts.
The next season, two teams averaged 30 or more. The Warriors led the league with 31.6 attempts per game, followed by Houston at 30.9.
That looks close, but they were worlds apart. The Rockets made 34.7 percent of their 3s. The Warriors: 41.6 percent. It’s because 59.3 percent of their attempts were by Curry and Thompson. A distant third in attempts on those Warriors was Draymond Green, who made 38.8 percent of his 258 attempts. Curry made 144 more 3-pointers than Green took. It wasn’t five-out and everybody chuck.
James Harden and Daryl Morey, who later reunited with the Philadelphia 76ers, pushed the NBA into new territory with their 3-point volume in Houston. (Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)
You can guess the Rockets’ counter to the 2015-16 Warriors, who won 73 games and were a LeBron James block and Kyrie Irving 3 away from winning the title. The following season, they became the first team to get up 40 a game.
Two seasons later, in 2018-19, the Rockets set the NBA record for most 3s taken in a season — which Boston is about to break — averaging 45.3 per game. (It should be noted, this was right after missing 27 straight to lose Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.) Houston spearheaded the largest jump in average 3s of the modern era. The NBA went from 29 3s per team per game to 32 that season.
In fairness to the Rockets, they were simply trying to mount an offense against the Warriors juggernaut. They couldn’t compete in talent, so strategically, they decided to spam the 3-pointer with hopes of leveling the field.
However, they didn’t have the greatest shooters ever. Harden took 1,028 that season and made 36.8 percent of them. The next two: Eric Gordon took 600 (36.0 percent), and Gerald Green took 441 (35.4 percent).
It almost worked. They pushed those Warriors in a way even LeBron’s Cleveland Cavaliers couldn’t. Most important, it was a style of play employed by a team.
Morey’s methodology lives. Employed by nearly every team. The Denver Nuggets now bring up the rear with 30.9 3-point attempts per game. Six teams average at least 40, and the Minnesota Timberwolves are one binge from making it seven. LaMelo Ball leads the NBA with 12.8 attempts per game — at 33.5 percent shooting.
The problem is how 3-point shooting has gone from an artistic counter to a calculated offensive. And it coincides with a deconstruction of NBA defense, which is what spawned the 3 anyway.
The best 3s are earned and feel big as a result. The best 3s are the result of jousting with an aggressive defense. The best 3s are particular and efficient.
Some teams are taking good 3s. Not coincidentally, the two best teams are among them: Cleveland and Oklahoma City. But the decline in defense, from the rules and skills perspectives, leaves teams with no counters. The simplest response to an attack from a barrage of fiery cannonballs is to retaliate with your fiery cannonballs.
I won’t bore you with a list of solutions. However, one that sticks out to me is only awarding two free throws when a player gets fouled shooting a 3 — tip the scales toward the defense.
“Mike Krzyzewski, Coach K,” Silver continued, “he’s become an adviser post-Duke to the competition committee. And I remember him saying at one of the meetings, ‘The fans like defense, too.’ … Fans also like to see physical defense.”
But drastic alterations won’t be necessary. Something better than gimmicks will happen.
The NBA, though owners seem to hate this part about their league, is always influenced by the elite teams. It’s harder to stay elite under this parity-driven collective bargaining agreement. But the best teams will dictate. And, eventually, inevitably, the way to become the best team will be to do something other than launch 3s. Dominate inside. Take advantage of the wide-open midrange. Smother on defense.
Basketball at this level always fixes itself. It takes some time. But the league is full of smart and competitive people. Just look at how Curry is being defended. If his shooting inspired the birth of this era, then how he’s being systemically chased off the line should be a window into what may come of this bombs-away philosophy.
The antidote may already be brewing. Watch Oklahoma City. The Thunder get up 3s with the best of them — 10th most in the league (38.6 per game). But if OKC becomes champion and sets the bar for the league, it won’t be because of a 3-point obsession. It will be because it has the league’s best defense. It will be because it attacks the paint relentlessly (No. 2 in the league in drives per game). It will be because Shai Gilgeous-Alexander could not be stopped from getting to his spots. And the 3-pointer will be the Thunder’s knockout blow.
Then the league will copy Oklahoma City. And whatever unintended consequence comes from that will be Sam Presti’s fault.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of the Warriors’ Stephen Curry and the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown after Monday’s game: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
