Basketball

[Announcer One] “And exactly what Steve Kerr was hoping for right now is not coming into fruition. Until him! Curry knocks down the three! Curry again! Back to back three for Steph Curry. Curry steps back—bang! Curry the fake, Curry the three. Puts it in.”

[Announcer Two] “Thelmont played him extremely well and there is Steph Curry, first shot, bingo! Off the dribble three.”

[Announcer One] “Here’s Curry for three. Got another one!”

[Announcer Two] “With Stephen Curry and also Barbosa there trying to speed up this pace.”

[Announcer One] “Curry fires a three!”

What you just heard, courtesy of the National Basketball Association (NBA), is the dominance of Steph Curry. Currently the point guard for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Curry makes a living off of slinging three pointers from ridiculous distances. And he’s really freaking good at it.

According to the stat-site Basketball Reference (2019), the top seven seasons in NBA history for three point shooting goes as follows: Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Steph Curry, Steph Curry, Steph Curry, James Harden, and Steph Curry. He is—according to all measures of three point accuracy, attempts, makes, and misses—the greatest three point shooter of all time, and he’s still in the prime of his career.

Yet, the three point shot (and thus his career) almost never existed.

In the history of the NBA, no rule has been re-examined more times than the three point arc, a line on the court that separates a regular two point shot from a three point one. The rule has evolved many times since its inception, and even now people are still calling for changes.

But is it worth it? Has the three point shot really impacted NBA basketball to the point where it has become essential to the game? If we erased the three point line, would it even matter?

I’m your host Logan Boal, and welcome to Rules Rule, where today I’m going to tell you why the three point shot is absolutely worthless.

(“All That” plays)

Thank you bensound.com for that jazzy sax.

The three point shot surprisingly didn’t even originate in the NBA. According to Ryan Wood, a writer for USA Basketball (2011), the three pointer first popped up in the American Basketball League (ABL) in 1961. Unfortunately, the ABL only lasted for one and a half seasons before being disbanded, and the three point shot retired with it until 1967 when the American Basketball Association (ABA) brought it back. The ABA was the NBA’s competitor, differentiating themselves by using red, white, and blue basketballs, having slam dunk contests, and—of course—the legendary three point shot. Again, the NBA outlived the ABA, as the latter merged with the NBA in 1976. Four new teams joined the NBA that year along with the All Star slam dunk contest, but the three point shot did not. It wasn’t until three years later in 1979 when the NBA adopted the three pointer, and it took college and high school leagues about eight more years after that to paint the three point arc on their courts.

Currently, according to rule 1.1.d of the NBA rulebook (2019), the three point line is defined as having “parallel lines 3’ from the sidelines, extending from the baseline and an arc of 23’9” from the middle of the basket which intersects the parallel lines.” If you’re having trouble picturing it, the three point arc looks like a half circle with straight lines extending from the ends. However, I would hesitate from calling it a three point arc because—well, it isn’t one. The arc of the three point line only extends so far until two straight lines continue it down to the bottom of the court. An ideal three point line would be a complete arc, but at the distance from the basket the NBA wants it to be, the arc is too wide to fit the court; that’s why the straight lines exist. If there is any indication of how terrible the three point line is, not having a court big enough that fits the ideal three point arc has to be it.

However, one question still remains. How much did the three point arc affect the NBA? According to Archie Meng, who in 2018, posted a statistical analysis of the three point arc in the NYC Data Science Academy, three pointers made up about 29.6% of all scoring in the 2018 NBA season (two pointers made up 54.8% and free throws made up 15.6%). Meng also graphed the average total points per team per game across every season of the NBA from its inception up to 2018, finding that, “It is clear that the total points have not changed in a significant fashion. In fact, the average total points per team per game, if anything, have declined over some years.” The peak of points per game average actually came in the 1970’s, when the three point arc didn’t even exist. In fact, points per game average decreased for about 20 years after the arc’s inception, finally turning to a slow rise in the early 2000’s. Meng then decided to chart the ratio of three point attempts to two point attempts over time and also the ratio of three point makes to two point makes over time. Meng states his results best:

It is exceedingly clear that the ratio of three point attempt to two point attempt per game has shifted upwards, at an increasing pace. In the late 80s and early 90s, the best players in the league shot over 10 two-pointers for every three they shot. Today, the best players shoot close to 6 threes per every 10 two-point shots. The attempts line is closely correlated to the made line, as we would expect. However, as these two lines both trend up, they began to diverge. This is an important observation. The implication is that in the old days, only players who were very good at shooting threes would shoot them. Today, it is more of a dominant strategy. Many mediocre three-point shooters are also shooting a large volume of threes.

So basically, the three point arc did nothing. Many people claim that the three pointer leveled the playing field between big guys who could charge the rim and short guys who could post up jump shots from way out, which is true. But other than that, it diminished the quality of the NBA. The three point arc decreased scoring and diluted hard, gritty basketball. It also almost ruined the NBA.

According to a 2016 statistical analysis by Jon Bois, a writer for SBNation, the 1980’s were dominated by three players: Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. Those three players were responsible for about 3.3% of all scoring across the entire NBA in three seasons. And once they all retired, scoring dropped. Hard. So hard that the NBA moved the three point arc forwards in the ensuing abyss of lack of scoring, and after scoring spiked from the added ease of three pointers, the NBA moved it back to its original spot. Scoring dropped again after the move, but not as hard as before. Over the coming decade, scoring slowly crept back up until it stagnated in the shadows of Jordan, Bird, and Johnson. Three players almost broke the NBA, and to fix themselves, the NBA had to train the rest of the league like dogs to play better. Nobody could score points like those guys could, and fans were beginning to turn away from the slower, less talented form of basketball with lower scoring games until the NBA made three point shots easier to artificially inflate the league’s scoring. That is nothing short of pathetic.

But where do shots come from in the NBA? There has to be areas where players are more likely to shoot the ball, right? According to Bois in that same SBNation article, 51% of shots in the NBA come from either within 2 feet of the basket or outside the three point line. Those statistics are from the 2015-16 season, but the density of shooting areas on a basketball court should be almost identical every year with no new rule changes. The area in between these two shooting hills are a callous, desolate valley known as the midrange shot. The midrange shot used to be popular before the three point line because it was the only way shorter players could score on taller players (defense is more lax the farther away from the basket you are). Now, the midrange shot is almost extinct. And it makes sense why. Why go for a midrange two when you can back up a little for a three? Except, it doesn’t really work that way. According to Bois, NBA players make midrange shots about 43% of the time, while they make only about 33% of threes. So while a three point home run is more tempting, you’re more likely to score the midrange linedrive. The three point arc killed the midrange shot. In fact, to bring the midrange shot back, Dashiell Nusbaum calculated in a 2017 article for the basketball news site Medium that the NBA would have to push the three point arc back more than three feet from where it is now. That arc would not fit on the court; it would simply be too wide for the floor to compensate for it. The midrange shot is dead, and it’s not coming back.

What if we instead went the complete opposite direction and added a four point line? According to Jordan Ellenberg and Josh Levin’s 2016 article in the news site Slate, in order to make a fair four point line that distributes shots made and missed as evenly as the three point line, it would have to be about thirty feet from the rim. Not only is that ridiculously far away and an extremely low percentage shot, but it wouldn’t matter anyway; the court physically cannot handle a four point line. Even if it could, a four point line is arbitrary, just like the three point line, begging the question of where the limit is. A five point line? A six point? Seven? The NBA can barely handle a broken three point arc. Adding more would just be a disaster.

The three point line has been pretty much irrelevant. Let’s erase it to see how irrelevant. Luckily for me, Jon Bois already did all the gritty work and went through the entire 2015-16 NBA season and rescored it as if the three point line didn’t exist. Again, the data set is only from one season, but it is pretty safe to assume that it is representative across the decade as nothing major changed in the league. In the simulation, threes now counted as twos, third foul shots were just ignored, and games were rescored based on the new results. At the end of the corrected season, not much had changed. There were two teams in both the East and West Divisions that swapped playoff spots with teams that didn’t qualify originally, and that’s about it. The playoffs changed by four teams and a little bit of seeding changes. That may seem like a lot, but considering how the rest of the league’s standings barely changed, it really isn’t. Bois then redid the playoffs. Of the 15 series in the NBA playoffs, 13 ended up the same, 1 ended up flopping, and 1 became undetermined because another game was needed to settle the tie, but it was never played in real life. All in all, not much changed. The overall champions of that season, the Cleveland Cavaliers, still won it all in the simulation. In the playoffs, every team is a good team, meaning this simulation proved two things: teams who are good at shooting threes are typically just good at basketball and can win with just twos, and teams who are bad at hitting three pointers are typically just plain bad at basketball. In fact, Bois believes that even without the three point line, shots would still be taken from 26 feet out because defense would become so lax at that distance that good shooters would take every advantage they can to grab some points.

Every potential “fix” to the three point line has the same result: no improvement. So why have it in the first place?

(“Semi-Funk” plays)

The three point line is worthless—just irrelevant paint. It does nothing but sit on the court and look pretty. Really, the only use of the three point line is to let guys like Steph Curry become famous. It may energize fans when someone sinks a long bomb for three, but it also hurts them more with every miss, and there are a lot of misses.

The NBA has a leech, a three point line that sits in the middle between helping and hurting the league. It’s time to yank it off.

I’m Logan Boal for Rules Rule, and thanks so much for listening.

(“Acid Jazz” plays)

REFERENCES

[FreeDawkins]. (2015, June 17). Stephen Curry ALL 98 Three-Pointers in 2015 Playoffs, Unreal NBA RECORD! [Video file]. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ap2CA8Z58M

Basketball Reference. (2019). NBA & ABA Single Season Leaders and Records for 3-Pt Field Goals. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/fg3_season.html

Bois, J. (2016, July 06). We decided to erase the three-pointer. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://www.sbnation.com/2016/7/6/12105872/chart-party-erase-three-pointer

Bois, J. [Jon Bois]. (2016, July 6). Chart Party: We decided to erase the three-pointer [Video file]. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhB1vPM8ItA

Ellenberg, J., & Levin, J. (2016, June 20). The 3-Pointer Is Old News. Here's Where the NBA Should Put the 4-Point Line. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://slate.com/culture/2016/06/the-4-point-line-could-be-coming-to-the-nba-heres-where-to-put-it.html

Meng, A. (2018, November 5). How the Three-Point Line Changed the NBA and the Game of Basketball. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://nycdatascience.com/blog/r/how-has-the-three-point-line-changed-the-nba-and-the-game-of-basketball/

NBA Official. (2019). RULE NO. 1: Court Dimensions – Equipment. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://official.nba.com/rule-no-1-court-dimensions-equipment/

Nusbaum, D. (2017, December 17). How Far Back Would We Have To Move The Three Point Line To Bring Back The Midrange Shot? Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://medium.com/push-the-pace/how-far-back-would-we-have-to-move-the-three-point-line-to-bring-back-the-midrange-shot-c73a2d3831f0

Wood, R. (2011, June 15). The History of the 3-Pointer. Retrieved March 28, 2019, from https://www.usab.com/youth/news/2011/06/the-history-of-the-3-pointer.aspx