Thinking Basketball is one of my favorite resources for basketball analysis. He recently made a video debunking myths about the modern game [1]. While yes, there’s far more analytics and knowledge in the game, it hasn’t lead to monotony or poor quality. It’s instead resulted in a Cambrian explosion of tactics, counter tactics, and really diverse team strategies. But the commentary and analysis in mainstream basketball hasn’t caught up, so your average viewer is watching a chess match but not even understanding the basic moves. Which leads to frustration and confusion.
> your average viewer is watching a chess match but not even understanding the basic moves
Your average viewer isn't tuning in to watch a chess match. You'll notice that professional chess doesn't have the same viewership as basketball.
Regardless of the mathematical strategies, it sucks to watch a bunch of three pointers getting missed. The NBA team average is 36% on 38 attempts per game. Thus, in an average game, there are 76 three-point attempts and 49 misses.
The worst is when they take and miss a three-pointer early in the shot clock, maybe even from the logo. Shoot, clunk, possession over, yawn.
> Green talked about a recent Warriors game against the Los Angeles Lakers and how it was "refreshing" to go against a thinker like LeBron James, who is notorious for finding weaknesses and exploiting them.
> "Every possession is some type of chess move," Green said. "You don't get that today in the NBA, often. ... You don't just get that on a regular basis. It's just who can run faster, who can hit more 3s. It's no substance. I think it's very boring."
So I agree that more complexity is not better and there’s a real risk of alienating fans with complicated schemes. But chess has made real inroads by providing good commentators and analysis. You can’t make teams play dumber but you can teach fans to be smarter.
As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage. And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups. The pace has also dramatically increased, leading to more swings in scoring, which is pretty exciting.
Thinking Basketball is great. The people who complain about the 3s in basketball probably didn’t watch the NBA in the older days. Horrible defense and far less skill — and that’s the era I grew up and loved.
I have two major complaints about the game nowadays: (1) intentional fouling to get an advantage. It’s the only major sport where fouling can often work to your advantage.
(2) The block call is so inconsistent it might as well be a coin flip.
The end of a basketball game feels almost completely unwatchable for me when they devolve into constant fouling, stopping the game every couple of seconds.
There are possessions where the defense has the sole objective of ignoring everything other than fouling as fast as possible, which feels boring and can stretch 30 seconds of in game clock time to 5+ minutes of back to back stoppage. I get that it might be the mathematical best play because it forces the winning team to take free throws and then turn the ball over without taking any clock time, but they could architect the rules to avoid it.
I totally agree with the block call being a coin flip.... I'd extend it to almost every other call. NBA reffing seems like it absolutely sucks for such a large scale professional league. Basketball is a fast paced game so I know they can't catch everything, but when you're watching on TV you see so many things that are so inconsistently called. Those calls end up changing the outcome of the game when one team has 20 more ft chances than the other.
> (1) intentional fouling to get an advantage. It’s the only major sport where fouling can often work to your advantage.
nitpick: This happens in soccer as well. Oftentimes it's late in the game and you see the opponent has a counterattack that has a high probability of scoring. In that case, it's better for you to tactically foul them by taking them down before they reach your box and take the yellow card.
Came here to say this. It doesn’t have to be late in the game. The whole time tactical fouls is a valuable tool for defense. You try to make it non-violent enough and, when it’s a counterattack, early enough so the referee might not interpret as a foul to prevent a counterattack, so you don’t get a yellow card.
Also, exchanging a certain goal for a penalty+red card is a very common defense tactic. Check Uruguay vs Ghana, World Cup 2010.
The defense was much more on point back in the ‘90s because the defenders were allowed to be more physical without fouls getting called left and right. Nowadays it’s all a travesty, you’ve got scoresheets like 145-135 and nobody blinks an eye about it.
Horrible defense? You're kidding, right? Check out the mid-80's - 90's - early 2000's Bulls, Knicks, Celtics, 76'ers, and Pistons, or basically any team east of the Mississippi. The 95-96 Bulls were the best defensive team in NBA history. No one's played defense in the NBA for 20 years at least. And yeah, the 3 has completely changed the game into something more resembling NBA 2K1, which is exactly what the league wants.
Completely agree, but I would add the incessant need for counting, 3 seconds, 8 seconds, 24 seconds. But the current fouling situation really needs to be fixed urgently.
besides 7-footers chucking 3’s what “skills” do these new nba players have? there are maybe 10 that have any skills, the rest can shoot and that’s about fucking it.
90% of today’s players would play in D league two decades ago
Are you thinking the salary cap hasn't changed from the 90s? The MLE is 12.3m this year, and that is a high-end role player. If one plays at that level for 8 years, they make that amount you're complaining about. And the cap is expected to go up significantly over the next few years (would have gone up more drastically, but the KD to Warriors situation convinced teams to adopt smoothing).
It is true that in general, super stars are underpaid, and role players are overpaid.
> As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage.
I'd much rather watch NBA players miss 3's than watch a 23 minute YouTube video of someone talking about missing 3's. ;-) But the NBA FG% in 2025 is 46.5%, while it was 49.1% in 1985, so I'm skeptical that 3 pointers are simply replacing long 2 pointers with equal percentages. Obviously the % would go down the farther you get from the basket.
> And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups
Crowding is not necessarily bad. A contested shot is interesting; an uncontested shot, not so much. Even uncontested dunks are less interesting than contested dunks.
That's not a huge difference. 3% is like an average of 3 extra misses, which is probably not even that noticeable with variance. 3 pointers are not replacing 2 pointers with equal percentages, but they are creating opportunities for higher percentage 2 pointers.
> Crowding is not necessarily bad. A contested shot is interesting; an uncontested shot, not so much. Even uncontested dunks are less interesting than contested dunks.
That's because you're thinking of a really cool dunk, not a big man backing down his man for like 20 seconds and throwing up a clanker that gets rebounded into another 20 second post possession. Realistically that's what a lot of offense was like back in the day. There's just selective nostalgia for the really cool plays.
> That's not a huge difference. 3% is like an average of 3 extra misses
More like 5 extra misses per game.
And we're getting more uncontested misses today.
> a big man backing down his man for like 20 seconds and throwing up a clanker that gets rebounded into another 20 second post possession. Realistically that's what a lot of offense was like back in the day.
But this clearly wasn't happening 64% of the time.
The irony is that contemporary players are better shooters. Yet their overall shooting % is lower, because they're consistently taking longer, harder shots.
If shooting and defense got better simultaneously, then all other things equal, overall shooting % should have stayed about the same, not gone down.
Also, as hardwaregeek mentioned: "And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups."
The 3’s are not replacing 2’s at the same shot percentage. The 3’s are slightly lower percentage, but they are high enough that the overall value is higher than the long 2’s they replaced. They came to the conclusion that the long 2 was a high risk play so they replaced it with a comparable play with a higher reward. It’s common sense. Frankly, it’s the long 2 that’s a stupid play.
The video is worth watching and I’m not even a basketball fan. It shows parts of 3 games from 3 eras back to back and it’s really interesting. Personally, I find the modern game to be the most engaging.
The skill level of the guys who aren’t superstars is clearly much higher than the old days. Outside of the stars, you had guys with certain body types that were pretty much one dimensional. It was neat seeing a big guy like Jokic in the video making ridiculous passes and hitting 3’s. Twenty years ago, all he would have done is hang out 4 feet from the basket.
I remember seeing part of a game in about 1985. IIRC, it was the Jazz against the Knicks. Utah won, something like 86-82. The Knicks offense was laughably bad. They came down the floor, wound up standing around the perimeter of the key, all five of them, each with a defensive player in front of them. They passed the ball around that perimeter. Nobody moved; they just stood there. Eventually somebody shot.
I know it was late in the game and people were tired. The shooting percentage may have been reasonably high. I don't care. That's terrible offense. And horrifically boring.
Draymond Green is the Joe Rogan of the NBA. He's just optimizing for engagement and controversy.
If it were truly as you say, those players would get pulled. Logo 3s are rare. And when someone heats up and hits multiple consecutive, it's anything but boring.
I personally dislike Green because of his on-the-court antics, but I don't think that comparison is fair. Rogan is a know-nothing meathead unqualified to challenge his guests, whereas Green is a veteran, elite, champion NBA player. His opinions, however controversial, have some basis in experience, expertise, and reality.
> If it were truly as you say, those players would get pulled.
Why? The mathematics are still on their side, due to the percentages and the value of the 3. I never claimed that jacking up 3's is irrational; I'm just claiming that it's ugly.
If I were commissioner, I'd abolish the 3. Then they can shoot logo 2's if they want. ;-)
Is there some magic percentage that must be passed to justify your aesthetic demands? I think the fact that guys like Dame hit 1/3, and seem to hit even more in the clutch, is wildly entertaining.
"The regular season is too long" and "the first quarter doesn't matter" (make that anything before the last 5 minutes, really) are practically ancient complaints at this point. Decades long.
"Too many threes" is a more novel complaint but one that should self-correct in a couple of ways:
* the passing/screens/movement that leads to a good look at a three is often pretty fun
* taking bad threes has a lot less mathematical advantage and as defenses get better at shutting down the schemes for the good ones, the best teams will adjust what other looks they try to generate
I would also be fine with moving the line back, or getting rid of the corner three entirely. The fixed-distance shot is an easier skill than being able to hit jumpers from various distances so as long as its easy-enough then you're never gonna see players who don't otherwise have much offensive game train themselves to be 3pt specialists.
1. <- I think this is a good thing to focus on, and even lightly touched on in the video. The idea should be that you don't _need_ to be sophisticated to enjoy the sport. The NFL does well in this regard because it's pretty easy to understand that moving the ball forward is good, losing the ball is bad.
Where basketball misses there is that the "get the ball in the hoop" portion of that is _really_ boring now. I'd wager that people don't want to be concerned with some 3rd man setting a screen on the other side of the court allowing some 2nd man to set up behind a pick from a 4th man to get passed the ball from the 1st man to shoot a three... and then clank it off the rim. Then, rinse and repeat on both ends. The end result is that the "get the ball in the hoop" part just feels like a back-and-forth 3-point shootaround, even though the actual sequence is far more complex.
I love the modern game. I just think the pendulum has swung a tiny bit too far toward 3s in the past 3-4 years, that's all. Just a nudge in the other direction.
My ideal would be to try changing 2s and 3s to 3s and 4s. But that will never happen.
I think it would be enough to simply move the 3 point line back a couple feet AND have it follow its natural arc out of bounds, thus eliminating the shorter and easier corner 3 shot.
I’d rather defenses covered it better to give up more 2s in the paint. If we make it too far out it no longer spaces the floor and then we’re back to a game in the paint.
This is my preferred answer. Bring back physicality into the sport, especially on defense. There are moving screens on every play, and yet a defender can stand and get jumped into resulting in free throws.
couple of feet is not enough. the line needs to move far enough such that vast majority of the players (more than 95%) shoot less than 30% from there. so probably 8 to 10 feet back. absolutely should happen but they will likely do something awesome like shortening quarters to 10 minutes
curry and bol bol are two good candidates. in today’s nba you can’t tell difference between them on the court except for several feet of height difference. but practically same player as they shoot about the same shots
I don't watch basketball, so I am speculating, but isn't this a case where defence hasn't yet adapted to the new attacking strategies? Wouldn't you expect that in a few years teams will be better at defending against 3s, reducing their expected value and therefore swinging the pendulum back towards more 2s?
The Nash equilibrium should be that the expected values of 2s and 3s are equal. If you're off, you would expect a trend toward that equilibrium, possibly with some overcorrection.
Ironically Steve Nash didn't shoot enough 3s, so his Nash equilibrium was pretty off.
In all seriousness, yes, there's a lot more to modern basketball than just "take more 3s". It's more like "try to get dunks and layups, but if that doesn't work get 3s, but also mid range is still valuable if it softens up defense". And defenses have learned to scramble and switch to cover a lot of 3 pointers, but that can still be exploited with cross court passing and switch hunting. Check out some cool plays here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo-V_ujmMFo
If the answer is “they have to make less money”, it’s just very unlikely to happen. Most sports, but especially the global behemoths that are basketball and football (soccer), have made more money over time just because of population.
I love thinking basketball but think he completely missed the point here. An apt quote is when he's talking about how much strategy the game has and says "its like high speed chess." The problem is that people dont want to watch high speed chess. The NBAs job is to be as entertaining as possible, not just as strategic as possible. Like it or not iso plays are entertaining even if theyre "bad basketball" in terms of winning. He says the only thing thats changed is that people take less mid range shots and more 3s as if thats a good thing but the league has replaced entertaining sets where you have to actually beat your defender with shooting contests(even if you have to run around a lot or step back to get the shot off) and the product has suffered because of it.
I think defense is a lot more interesting now and the media has done a horrible job capitalizing on that but end of the day people care more about offense.
I am about as crazy of an nba fan as they come - or at least I used to be. I was averaging 80-90 games per year before, now I watch maybe 20 max, mostly in the playoffs. Surely there are people that prefer today's nba, I am not one of them. I think chucking 3's is the least interesting part of the game and it is so overwhelming in today's game that I lost interest in watching
This article presents a readable overview of today’s NBA trends, but IMO is too absolute in its judgment. Basketball is not a solved sport. There is still innovation, for example with OKC’s historically good defense that relies on playing 5 smaller but faster players. There are still good all-around players. There are still people that hit a lot of mid range shots. We have trends going the other way, sure, but they have their own set of tradeoffs and are neither a total solution nor totally embraced in the NBA. Teams will continue to evolve based on the talents of people at their disposal and their own innovative ideas.
In my opinion, the real problem with the NBA is that we no longer get the marquee matchups in the Finals that we used to during the 90s and 00s, mainly because the season is too long. An 82-game grind isn’t sustainable - it practically guarantees that stars like Giannis, Luka, or Jokic (or their key teammates) will get injured to the playoffs or not at all.
The fact that we’ve never seen Embiid vs. Giannis in the ECF, and that we’ll likely never get Giannis vs. Jokic, the two best players during the 2020s, in the NBA Finals says everything you need to know and it's a bummer.
Aside from 2021, I can’t remember another truly competitive finals where both teams had a real shot at winning. Maybe Boston wasn’t expected to fall so hard against Golden State, but matchups like DEN vs. MIA, BOS vs. DAL, or LAL vs. MIA felt lopsided—one team stacked with talent, the other never really standing a chance.
At this point, injuries, not players or teams, are deciding who moves forward.
> At this point, injuries, not players or teams, are deciding who moves forward.
Football is kinda like this at this point too. Some fraction of the top QBs are going to go down each year, and it feels like a limp to the finish.
That being said, somehow Wilt Chamberlain once played a season in which he only missed 8 and a half minutes total in the entire season, including OT. Amazing. Times have changed but that will never happen again now.
Soccer is slowly getting there. You play for your club in the series, the cup, some europa cup, now also the world club cup, then there's matches with your national team, world cup etc. They are now even contemplating having the world cup more often.
Having more games is an quick way to make more money, but in the long run it waters down the product.
> Wilt Chamberlain averaged more than 48 minutes a game during the 1961-62 NBA season, where he played an average of 48.5 minutes per game; this is considered one of the most remarkable feats in NBA history.
The real problem is the amount of ads and game breaks. Everyone knows basketball is about the fourth quarter so the league has backloaded ads. Now it routinely takes 20-30 minutes to get through the last 6 minutes of a game. Completely breaks the flow of the best part of the show. Second problem is that with the play in 2/3 of the teams make the post season so there is little incentive to try for a top seed anymore.
This is an interesting point. All the breaks also make it so that players get less tired from a cardio standpoint, are able to further exhaust their muscles, and leads to more injury.
I agree with the breaks, but there is a lot of incentive to make the guaranteed playoff seeding. You might only have a one game chance to make it into the playoffs otherwise.
It's weird because almost all of the levels below the NBA are better games than the NBA. Nobody really goes out of their way to follow AAA baseball teams, but college basketball and even some high schools are great games.
The pet theory is that the NBA is a RNG for gambling now the game isn't really the game. TV is near death, so gambling is the only source of revenue that can possibly replace the big TV deal.
My theory is that it’s only a matter of years before the Saudi’s launch a league. It’ll scoop up a large swath of international players including NBA superstars. Jokić becomes very famous and wealthy.
This is why I don’t comment on the internet anymore. You exist in the alternative reality in which every back and forth is a polarized ridiculous showdown.
Jokic is not famous outside of basketball. The Saudi’s would make him so wealthy he’d seem poor today by comparison.
I agree with your point and response. This activity of being players overs to new leagues run by Saudi or adjacent countries has been huge in almost every major sport. Some with much more success than others.
I think a big reason we don't have competitive finals is generally not having a harder salary cap and allowing max for contracts. If a player really is that good they should take up 50% of the cap and to balance it out have terrible other players.
Anything else allows stacking value above cost and leading to team imbalances.
The real problem is the players don’t give a sh*t about the fans any more. You need no better example of that than the All star game tomorrow. In the 90’s it was an amazing, competitive game between the best players in the league. Now…the players can’t even be bothered to jog up and down the court. Load management: players claim their bodies are delicate and can’t play too many games. Why would I want to buy tickets to a game or watch on TV if there’s a good chance the stars aren’t even playing. Guys the 90’s played every game. Players now sign a 5 year contract and the next day ask for a trade. Look at Kevin Durant - great player, but has forced his way out of 3 teams and it’s about to be a 4th. Too much guaranteed money means too little incentive.
If the players don’t care about us, why should we care about them?
They've gotta change up the all star format then. NHL didn't do all star stuff this year; instead they're running a pseduo-national teams tournament with NHL players, and the four teams are all top players playing really hard. I don't know if there's enough non-US players in the NBA to do the same thing, but it's an idea.
The 90s All Star games were 160-150 affairs and had all sorts of sideshows. And players should absolutely maximize wealth which includes protecting their health. And there has never been a time when every person played all out, that’s just nostalgia creeping up on you.
I think the difference is that teams are more cautious because they don't want a season disrupted by a major injury. Zion the other day said that the Pelicans were the limiting factor in his sitting back-to-backs. Players frequently come back on minutes restrictions (Kawhi previously, Exum currently).
"Only 3s and layups" is the current easiest strategy to build a proficient offense, but it's certainly not the only way.
You don't even have to look far for an example. The Denver Nuggets won a championship a year and a half ago while nearly attempting the fewest 3s in the league.
> In the past, the team built its roster around a big name like Shaq. Most of the offense were from the center. This has now changed...
Is the author not aware of Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, (Wembanyama... soon)? The winners of the last 6 MVP awards? If there were enough talented bigs to go around, every team in the league would be building around them because it works really, really well.
wow really? Did soccer also go through a statistical revolution? I don't watch soccer at all and am pretty surprised to hear this. Did all the teams converge on a winning solution?
because of the structure of soccer (completely different to basketball, it is an invasion sport but statistically very dissimilar), it has completely reversed the ordering of the sport
there is significantly more strategic diversity, and teams that were unable to compete ten years ago are now able to compete effectively with wealthier teams (there is no catchup mechanic in soccer unlike US sports, ffp rules have also played a role but in the EPL at least the primary factor has been smaller teams using their budget more effectively)
the most recent changes have been: premium for coaches (distinct from managers) has increased significantly and a greater focus on set pieces (but this is going back to the future, twenty years ago EPL had a period where teams did this to level the field...today, they are doing this and it appears to be permanent).
it is also worth adding, i would say the majority of clubs that have tried a naive statistical approach have failed. Liverpool tried and are leading but are completely reliant on one player, Arsenal are doing better but reliant on set plays and their recruitment has been poor (they have had a stats team for over ten years at this point), the teams that have done well with stats (Brighton and Brentford) have a hybrid approach (and Brighton is further down the road with this, and have done significantly better...they use non-public resources far better, integrated with sport science, etc.)
if stats in soccer is a 90-minute game, we are still at minute 5
he has changed strategy multiple times based on team composition
possession-based at Barca, more pragmatic at Bayern, first City teams used wing-backs and insane attacking then acquired more defensive players and went back to suffocating opposition
playing out from the back is ludicrous only because teams who are unable to play that way insist on doing it, and the credibility of that strategy as a global minima has already passed (largely due to the issues Burnley had last year and Spurs/Southampton had this year)
this year has proved that there are multiple ways to win. imo, the most boring manager is Arteta who does the defensive stuff without (almost) any attacking players (and is, thankfully, failing...the worst thing would be a manager playing like a Serie A side and winning)
Pretty much all teams play more or less the same style of building up with the goalkeeper because data shows that even though you suffer more goals it's offset by scoring more.
It seems like a very brief and abrupt article. I can understand the part about strategy of three pointers. But how does all the technology and analytics actually change the game, besides "improving form"? Has it allowed better calculation shots with the best odds for a given player? Has it discovered other team's weaknesses to exploit? Etc
Analytics leads to teams converging on the same strategy, at least on offense. The data makes it clear that you should almost never being taking mid rangers or running iso sets. So now those plays are gone from the game.
When analyzing non-computing problems through a computer science lens, the human element merely muddies the path to a concrete answer. It’s best to avoid that ambiguity and complexity.
I think that's unfortunate: the article still has that title, and knowing it wants to lead to such an absolute conclusion can tell a prospective reader if they are interested to be led down that path or not.
That approach to baity titles doesn't generalize, I'm afraid—neither to users nor to titles. In general, baity titles cause threads to fill up with responses to the provocation in the title, making for shallow and ultimately off-topic discussion.
It's standard practice on HN to replace these with titles that are more accurate and neutral, but we always try to do this using representative language from the article itself. Usually that's a subtitle, or the HTML doc title, sometimes it can be the URL slug, or even a photo caption.
Often there's a sentence at the start of an article that walks back the title and says what the article is 'really' about. It's as if the title 'takes' too much and then the article 'confesses' and gives most of it back. These walkback sentences often make good HN titles because they represent the article more accurately. That's what I used in this case.
This reads as someone who looks at data but doesn’t actually play basketball, coach basketball or generally know basketball. Numbers can only tell you so much, and 2025 Celtics and the rise of Steph have led to more 3s but the sport of basketball is not as predictable as the author suggests. For example, look at the college game, which doesn’t reflect this trend as much as the NBA does.
It's basically just seems like a riff off of a Bloomberg article published yesterday, titled "The NBA Has Fallen Into an Efficiency Trap", without any of the details in the article, besides the 3-pointer trend chart, which is basically a carbon copy. I'm not even sure this article is suggestive of someone simply looking at the data. Given the close timing, they probably just read the Bloomberg article, or a different blog inspired by the Bloomberg article, as opposed to just coming to this conclusion as a NBA aficionado.
College players are much more inconsistent because they're younger and less experienced. There are not many 20 year olds you can depend on to consistently make 3s. There are also a lot more teams which spreads the talent pool around. In my opinion, it amounts to a more exciting product to watch, even if it's less polished.
Yes, I agree. Love the college game. I think people don’t realize how talented NBA players really are, which sounds crazy to type - but I believe its true.
There probably are as many 20 year old college kids who can hit threes as there are pros who can hit them, but they are spread over many more teams.
Unless you have a correctable mechanical problem with your shot, the ability to hit a three point basket is more of a natural ability than a learned skill. Those guys just have incredibly good hand-eye coordination.
I play and watch a lot of basketball and this article seems to be written by someone who doesn't do either.
The idea that players are more specialized is wrong. In the 90s there were plenty of defense-only players like Denis Rodman and Ben Wallace; they might not start in today's NBA, let alone make all-star teams, because they are too one-dimensional.
Disagree. Also watch and play a lot. And also think the article is poorly written, amateur analysis FWIW.
That said, Wallace was 2000s, not 90s, and they were specialists whose exception proved the rule. Basketball then was much more positional, so you did have specialists in that you expected your PF to rebound, your SG to shoot, etc. Considering the modern game is much more positionless, it is surprising that in relation that foundation, there is much so much more focus on specialized skills (3pt shooting, wing defense, paint protection, offensive rebounding).
Also agree that Thinking Basketball is a terrific podcast.
This blog post was likely inspired by an article published by Bloomberg yesterday, about how basketball had fallen into an efficiency trap, centered around avoiding mid-range shots in favor of threes and high percentage close range shots.
> Recently, teams have realized three-pointers have higher point value despite their lower scoring percentage.
This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?
Disclaimer: I have only extremely limited exposure to this topic (I worked in sports analytics, attached to a team, quite awhile ago), so take it all as heavy speculation:
1) It seems like there’s a natural resistance to change driven by loss aversion; you see a similar pattern in the NFL with decisions like punting vs. going for it on fourth down. Even if the expected value is positive, the failures are given far more weight than the successes.
2) In general, there's a lot of skepticism toward analytics until they reach a tipping point where they’re impossible to ignore, at which point they take over completely and introduce shifts like the ones shown here.
Moneyball, for example, has plenty of anecdotes about front office staff and coaches dismissing analytics in favor of “gut instincts”—and that was in 2002! In baseball, a sport which adopted advanced analytics far faster than others (obviously in no small part due to teams like that As roster).
Even today, plenty of NBA personalities push back against analytics—Reggie Miller, for example, has been pretty vocal about his distaste for them. He's obviously increasingly alone in that opinion, but it can be really hard to break old habits.
Baseball lent itself to advanced analytics even before player tracking became a thing, since the sport consists of a series of discrete one-on-one matchups with limited possible outcomes.
I'm guessing that it's more complicated than that. Possibly when the specifications for a basketball court were laid out, the 3-point line was intentionally drawn where it would be a risky shot. And the coaching/playing culture developed with that mindset.
But since then people have gotten at least a little bit taller. We developed more ways in which to train and grow our physical strength. Training got more intense, improving results. And more subtle changes along those lines, which are micro-changes that accrue over time, and often hard to notice.
It can take a while for someone, anyone, to realize that all the various changes have made what was intended to be a risky maneuver into a viable play. It seems obvious in retrospect, but until someone points it out, it's one of those avenues of thought requires you to shake off what you've known your whole life before you can accept it.
Could also be that none of that was relevant, but it's worth considering and keeping in mind.
"But since then people have gotten at least a little bit taller. We developed more ways in which to train and grow our physical strength."
The person who shifted this mindset is one of the smallest players in the the NBA though, would be considered small by the standards of any era of the game. And in fact, the game has shifted to smaller players in general in recent years. It's more of a skill/agility thing.
I do believe technology has played a part though. Being able to 3d scan a player's motion and find mechanics adjustments has proven to be quite powerful.
Ok, so we learn a function mapping position on the court to point value. Clearly a step function was too simple. Might want to fix the values during the games though to make it a bit easier on the fans.
One possibility is that there are more players who can make 3-point shots at a high enough percentage to make this true. Also, it depends on how good the defense is vs. 2-point shots; if that gets tighter, then the 3-point shot becomes more valuable.
Which also suggests how things may continue to evolve; the best defense vs. 3-point shots probably compromises your defense vs. 2-point shots, and eventually some team will "realize" that they can do better with _fewer_ 3-point shots.
Further complication comes from rebounds; the player taking the 3-point shot is less likely to be able to get the rebound if he misses, relative to a player trying to dunk it. So, the math is not trivial, and it depends on what the other team is expecting/guarding against, which might make it a non-linear system (i.e. constantly evolving over time).
There was a time when chess theory said that there was one perfect, optimal opening, and anything else was a mistake. It was sort of true, until everyone took it as a given, and then doing another opening meant your opponent wasn't as likely to be prepared for it.
A tall player who can't make threes, is more limited in the modern NBA and more limiting for roster construction. As a result, a lot more practice would be allocated to shooting from range. Look at someone like Brook Lopez (7-foot centre) who attempted 31 threes total in his first 8 seasons. Then started attempting 250-500 threes/season after that (peaked at 512 attempts).
Developing players who are elite prospects are also now less likely to be pigeon-holed during development into: you're tall as a 12 year old, so just focus on drills for centres. So yes, there would absolutely be growth in the number of capable shooters.
On your point about realisation, teams already optimise to favour threes and high-percentage twos. They try to stretch defence to each extreme, but you need to excel and threaten at both things at any given point because teams will adjust constantly during the game.
While most of what you say correlates, there are other gotchas: moving around a 3pt line leaves a lot more space for defenders to cover, and the real innovation is introducing multiple staggered blocks to open up a 3pt shooter (as a development of pick-and-pop). And moving around an even farther imaginary line at like 40ft from basket and making ~35% of those shots.
So it really is impossible to cover a more than 33% shooter all around the court, and that equates to a better than 50% 2pt shooter.
No, because hand-checking was allowed back then. Smaller guards like Mark Price for example, would go off in some games but stronger, bigger defenders would ultimate shut them down because they could feel and follow their movements with their hands. Now, if you so much as think too much of a player, they call a foul - supposedly to help the offense and make the game more entertaining. The result? A watered-down product where any team can win on any given night, but no one cares because defense is nonexistent during the regular season.
The only basketball that really matters happens in the playoffs; the rest is irrelevant and says nothing about the true power rankings.
Coaches and owners are not rewarded for innovation. Fans strongly discourage taking bets that could fail.
And then there’s preparing for the strategy change. Training, practice, and coaching time is extremely limited. How much do you re-allocate to this new approach? You don’t just tell players to take more 3s, it’s more complicated than that.
So in traditional innovators dilemma fashion, it’s much easier to follow when you see that the new way works. It’s easier to convince everyone (fans, coaches, players, owners) to get on board when you can point to Steph Curry doing it right.
"Really basic math"? Do you think NBA coaches reached this conclusion like this:
1. A player can throw X 2-points in a game.
2. Or he can throw Y 3-points in a game.
3. 3Y > 2X, so we should just throw 3-points all the time.
It's absolutely not what happened. And the reason teams didn't discovery the current strategy decades earlier was absolutely not that they couldn't do basic math.
In the 2008-2009 season, the year before Curry’s debut, the 3p percentage was 36% vs 2p percentage of 48%. If you took 100 shots of each you’d have 108 points vs 96 so yeah I consider that quite simple.
And call me naive maybe but not arrogant, I’ve never been called that in my life so it’s quite surprising to be called arrogant in HN where I know the average person is smarter than me.
When you elect to take more three pointers you necessarily have to resort to shooting more difficult ones, which lowers the expected return on each one. In the real world it's not so simple.
Similar reason why star players often have lower FG% than one might think: they are the ones tasked with trying _something_ when the shot clock winds down and there's no clear play. Not all shots are chosen equally.
> When you elect to take more three pointers you necessarily have to resort to shooting more difficult ones, which lowers the expected return on each one
But then 2 pointers become easier. You can’t defend tightly both the perimeter and the paint at the same time. Sounds like a win-win. Again, nobody seemingly noticed.
You can try to counter it but go ahead and look at the highest volume 3 point shooting teams and compare them to the highest volume layup teams. Part of it is that theyre following analytics so theyre looking for layups more than other teams but gravity is very real and does make it easier to get layups when you shoot more 3s.
> When you elect to take more three pointers you necessarily have to resort to shooting more difficult ones, which lowers the expected return on each one.
Well yeah, the idea is not to go all 3-pointer, it's that the borderline decisions need to adjust a few notches in favor of attempting 3-pointers, until the returns are balanced out.
This assumes the game is static and the question is selecting A or B, but all the variables are intertwined.
How does the percentage change when the other team knows you will go for 3? How much more effective is the three when you are able to have the threat of other scoring? A layup is 80-90% isn’t it worth it to try to create one?
Precisely. Shooting lots of threes with good/decent efficiency also made two pointers more likely as more players would be defending the perimeter. Again, seemingly nobody thought of this for decades.
Then why the first time someone tried it then it worked and it stuck for 15 years or so? Last season there were 35 3p attemtps per game on average vs 18 in the year before Curry’s debut, almost 2x.
It it really impossible to think that it was a huge oversight?
You can’t just tell your players to start jacking more threes and coast your way to success. Many tried, many failed. The game is more complex than that.
So in the 2008-2009 season, the one before Curry’s debut, the average number of 3 pointer attempts per game from a team was 18. Last season it was 35, so pretty much 2x.
If it was so intricate why nobody tried it before? And why after someone tried it it seemingly stuck? Is it really that far fetched that it was actually pretty simple and nobody noticed for many years?
Even if you consider the adjustement to the defense, you’d be making two pointers easier as you can’t defend tightly both the perimeter and the paint at the same time.
It was absolutely tried before. The 08 Magic shot threes at a similar % and volume to the 2015 Warriors, yet they got rolled in the playoffs every time.
Yes, 33% for 3pts equals a 50% 2pt shot, so beat that, and you've got yourself a pretty good scorer. But hitting 33% is not trivial unless you make a lot of other adjustments: multiple blocks for the shooters and not just a simple pick-and-roll or pick-and-pop, staggered blocks for a shooter switching from one sideline to the next. This has actually led to less specialization, as every player on the court needs to shoot 3s and defend faster or bigger players as switches became unavoidable.
And with all that, it only led to a "dynasty" when one player who could create his own shot and shoot from nearly anywhere at 35+% (Curry), paired with another ~40% career 3pt shooter and defensive specialist (Thompson) and completed with a power forward who could defend anyone and coordinate the attack too (Green). Even so, they did need another future hall-of-famer in Durant to win two of their last 3 rings.
That same team still has 2 of those core people in them, but they are unable to replicate anywhere near the success.
So if anyone can do this, why doesn't everyone do it?
This math makes sense, but it might not not always be so simple.
For example, maybe these probabilities might not always be the same as this in all circumstances. Also, how much risk you might take also might depend on the current score and remaining time (e.g. maybe you are likely to win even with only one more point than your current score, or maybe it depends how much time it takes to make a specific shot (I don't actually know enough about basketball to know if this is relevant)), and on how your opponent can defend against it at a specific situation (and if their defense would allow them to score instead; I don't actually know how much that is relevant either), maybe. There are probably other considerations as well.
(I do not actually know all of the rules or strategy of basketball, so if I am wrong, you can mention what mistake I made.)
4th down attempts in American football come to mind. Twenty years ago they were rare; mathematically they should be common.[1] Coaches have shifted with the math but not quite as dramatically as it suggests.
It’s a bit of a dodge. In the 80s and 90s, there were a handful of players making 40% of threes and most shooters were closer to 30% so the math didn’t used to be the same.
Stolen bases in baseball is similar to this. In 2023, MLB made two rule changes with stealing being at all time lows (and them thinking fans love stolen bases): 1) Limiting the number of pickoff attempts by pitchers, and 2) Slight enlarging of the bases. Take a look at the jump[0].
It's been interesting to follow some changes teams have made the past two seasons where teams are figuring out how to better time steals when a pitch is thrown, and which players to go after. For example, pitchers with slow releases and bad catchers.
Base running aggressiveness that some teams have been doing as well. The value of going 1st to 3rd on a single is massive and getting speed, and judgement and wanting your players to do that will be more and more valued.
I actually searched "base running aggressiveness" to see what articles had to say, and two months ago Statcast put in a new stat called "Net Bases Gained"[1]. Crazy.
This mimics the changes in NBA talked about here, where value in players changes over times when new ways of playing show their value. It's kind of like the 4 minute mile though, where until someone went out and was able to run under 4 minutes / make all those 3s / run that aggressive on the base paths / go for it on more 4th downs, teams are scared to be the first.
I don't really understand the comparison. The game changes with the rules. The meta shifts with the analytics.
But stealing bases has long been a science. It was something I admired about college level development of players in the 2000's - stealing bases went from fundamental to advanced and well beyond "just let the fastest guys do their thing." UVA's coach had a saying like "every player on this team will be capable of stealing bases"
I think the comparison in general to baseball is pretty apt. Baseball has always been ahead of the curve in terms of analytics in sports. In the last 10 years it really went to extremes that made it unwatchable. The OP didn't mention the pitch clock, but that has made numerous improvements as well. The shift rules too. The game is a lot closer now to its history than it was just a few years ago.
The NBA could use its own blast from the past. There's too much isolation and 3s. When the 3s are falling, it's fun, and when they're not, it's terrible. Much like baseball and its homerun or nothing strategy.
I think the NBA has other problems too, though. The regular season doesn't mean much so their superstars take lots of time off throughout the year. Either shorten the regular season or eliminate some playoff teams.
MLB teams abandoned fundamentals because of the moneyball analyst guidance. Just like in business, following the MBA short-term analysis stuff often has negative impacts. You need to tweak the rules to break the statistical advantage.
When the NHL over-expanded in the 90s a similar thing happened -- there wasn't enough talent so they'd just skate in these obnoxious circles, which is super boring to watch.
The comparison IMO is that how baseball is played changed over time as teams optimized, and some of those changes are undesirable from the perspective of an entertainment product. So MLB changed the rules to increase plays at the margin that are on average considered "more exciting."
Every league does this of course, NBA did it just last year with the stealth rule changes around fouls.
Ah, this is the current grouse about the league, that it is all pace and space and somehow the art is lost. Sports go through eras. I will simply assume the author was not alive to watch Pat Reilly’s Knicks play their version of juego bonito, but while the over reliance on threes can make individual games hard to watch, the league has more talent that I can remember and there are so many fun players. It is bold to declare basketball is now deterministic in Year Two of Wemby and with all the other people capable of doing things we thought unique a generation ago. Plus there are some great minds as coaches right now. I think Spolestra, Daigneault and Mazzula will have something to say about how the game is played.
E sports actually gave me a lot of insight into regular sports which decreased my interest. The real power is with the league, not the players. And they steer the sport to promote business engagement. If the sport is hyper optimized and boring they will change the rules. If teams from smaller markets keep winning they will do what they need to, to help other teams win.
Playing sports is a fun activity to get exercise, it’s not worth getting emotionally invested in teams or leagues.
I don’t think this is a particularly well written article, but I sort of agree with the sentiment. Basketball just isn’t THAT complex and the talent pool is homogenous enough that most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs.
That said, trends are cyclical. Look at the role of the running back in the NFL. There will always be outlier players like Shaq who will buck the trends and exploit matchups.
“The NBA talent pool is homogenous” is the new worst hn take I’ve seen.
If “most teams can build rosters that get to the playoffs” is true it’s only because the NBA playoffs are so big. I’d assume it’s false based on any interpretation of “can build” you pick.
Realistically only a handful of teams compete for a championship in any given span of years.
My country of Smugistan solved playoff problem years ago. Very simple: every Smugball team makes playoffs. If Americans and Europeans weren't so far behind Smugistanian education system, they would have figured it out too.
1) playoff format rends 6 months of games not very important, the biggest difference is in your seeding. That's..all?
2) another way it makes the previous 6/7 months pointless is that your entire season is based on a single set of games. You can be the best team in the league by far, but then if one player gets injured or you're out of form or unlucky it's over
I just don't like leagues with a playoff system, you either have a league or you have a round robin, both seem directed toward squeezing tv rights, not awarding the best team of a season.
Most sports pretty much have a playoff system to a greater or lesser degree.
That said, basketball has pretty much always been one of the major US sports that can rely on a fairly small number of really good players and the rest don't matter nearly as much. Stars (pitchers, QBs, receivers, etc.) matter elsewhere but probably not individually as much as they do in basketball.
The German Bundesliga has a playoff to see which of the 16th team in tier 1 or the 3rd team in tier 2 goes into tier 1 next year
The English Championship (tier 2) has a tournament of four teams (placed 3rd-6th) to determine who goes up into the Premier League. The final of this is known as the richest game in football, worth £120m+ to the winner.
It could also be argued that the new UEFA Champions League format is a US-style playoff system. Maybe the old format too now I think of it.
These are not playoff systems for a championship but for a promotion/relegation. There are better examples like the Belgian league but they carry over more benefits from the regular season.
The champions league determines the teams going the brackets in 8 "season" games. Instead of > 30.
But even in your bad faith argument the number 1 and for the championship even the number 2 is decided by just the regular season. So they understand that the regular season should mean more than some seeding.
Everyone knows that in 80 games a half are either walkovers or don't mean anything in the end. They are only there for the money and could be cut for a better league. They could, just like 3 pointers, even make it a more profitable option.
These are not playoff systems for a championship but for a promotion/relegation
And again, UEFA CL is NOT (look that up if it is confusing) single country league. Once Chiefs start playing Montreal Destroyers and San Salvador Bulldogs in North America Football league than we can compare US sports leagues with UEFA CL. until then, try to find a country in which there are playoffs after league season is over, only US does this garbage and makes regular season generally un-watchable and meaningless
I mean there's the World Cup though that's a bit different. The US (or US + Canada) is big enough that having large leagues of top-level teams makes some sense to have playoffs.
My point is towards the regular season + playoffs which is imho lame.
Imagine a formula 1 season where you watch 20 races and then the best teams play it out in the last 4. That's a giant nonsense in most sports but somehow it spread even to European basket and volley in the 80s, I guess under the American influx.
That's your choice of course. I suspect that a lot of casual fans (raises hand) may largely ignore the regular (long) season but get more engaged in the payoffs, especially if they have a team they care about involved which has obvious financial implications for the teams involved.
Exactly. ;) (Per cogent upthread analysis about maximizing revenue.)
But even casuals may get excited about e.g. the last few games of the Premier League season which determine the league winner (as well as who survives the relegation battle, which is a whole 'nuther drama).
may largely ignore the regular (long) season but get more engaged in the playoffs
you are saying exactly the right words but arguing the wrong side. that is exactly why shit stinks, make the season ALL there is to it, then see whether it is long / boring / … :)
>My country of Smugistan solved playoff problem years ago. Very simple: every Smugball team makes playoffs.
Not that I disagree with the intent/target of your sarcasm, but there are US leagues where every team makes the playoffs. The Pac-12 did this with its conference tournament for most of its history, for example. One can argue that such is the logical conclusion of separately rewarding the winner of the regular season and tournament.
While there is obvious winning strategy, rule changes around salary caps have already limited any one team's ability to dominate like GSW did for a couple years.
They mention Boston Celtics, but they are only a single time champion, and we can see plenty other teams with good chances to beat them.
And I'd argue we are moving further away from specialization: now centers are required to shoot 3 pointers at a high clip and high percentage, they have high number of assists (it's not just Jokic, look at Iannis, Sabonis...).
And centers need to defend smaller, faster players when switching, just like smaller players need to defend centers.
Danny Green is probably the father of [the 3-and-D] model, with his 40% career three-point field goal percentage and he also made into all-defensive team.
Obviously people shot fewer 3s back then, but as far as I remember, Bruce Bowen was really the first 3-and-D player back in the 90s.
Gone are the days of an all-around player. There is no longer a need for a player who does everything. Look at players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James (early career); they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Not sure how true that is. People sometimes call the modern style "heliocentric" - one star who makes the offense work, surrounded by a bunch of role players. These star players often do basically everything, albeit most are better at some things than others. But that's always been true, stars in the old days were not always perfectly balanced.
And stars these days have a ton of variability. Look at the best players in the league - Jokic, Shai, Giannis, Luka, Embiid (when healthy..) - those guys all play very different styles of basketball, and that's awesome!
But I do agree with the overall point of the article. I find it annoying when I'm watching a game and so many possessions there's just not much happening. A couple passes around the perimeter, someone jacks up a moderately contested 3, rinse and repeat. Not the most exciting basketball. That doesn't happen every play, and there's still plenty of exciting plays and players, but it happens a lot more than it used to.
One of my favorite ridiculous stats. Bruce Bowen had one year where he shot better from 3 than he did on free throws. He was a dreadful shooter, but somehow he taught himself to be passable at this one specific skill, corner 3s.
Danny Green is not the father of the 3-and-d model, he's like the great nephew. Not only Bruce Bowen but you also have Shane Battier, and can also go back to Michael Cooper.
Usage rates also show there is still plenty of heliocentrism so Copernicus remains happy
Yes. The season is so long it gets boring tbh. I never watch the season to begin with only the playoffs but a big reason is there’s so many games it’s not really interesting to watch that many games. But if it was half as long and half as many games in the season I probably would watch every one.
How much of the NBA economy is predicated on those regular season ticket and arena sales? And despite viewership dropping off, it isn't zero so the ad money lost is still a thing too isn't it, unless they charge more?
I think this article doesn’t do the sport justice. Modern basketball is amazing and light years ahead of where it was even ten years ago. Watch “explain one play” on YouTube and you’ll begin to understand how much thought goes into even 5 seconds of normal basketball. The craziest part is how teams now days know how to punish a mistake, and virtually every point comes from very slight mistakes happening. Being too slow to close out, miscommunication on the dribble handoff, size mismatch, etc… in this way it’s like chess where you make threats but they’re just threats until your opponent commits an error. You still have to be able to punish the error.
A big conversation I see now days is what’s “wrong” with the modern nba, with too many 3’s being the most common refrain. That’s silly. I will tell you what’s actually wrong about the nba. They’re playing the most amazing basketball the worlds ever seen, but the entertainment ecosystem around them hasn’t changed at all. Literally they just talk about the stupidest stuff, like who’s the GOAT, instead of actually educating their audiences about the incredible level of play that exists now days.
You could argue that people aren’t interested in seeing that, but I don’t think we will ever know until it’s been tried. Instead, sports pundits are just being negative about the sport and filling the airwaves with low effort, toxic cliches while providing zero information about the brilliance we’re seeing. As to why I think people would actually care to know, I think it’s because once you’re exposed to this stuff it sticks and then you can’t unsee it. You start to notice the patterns and enjoy the game again.
So anyways sorry for the rant but it drives me nuts. Basketball is so cool right now once you start to get what you’re actually seeing and players can be so smart too. It’s amazing.
Wow, I hadn't watched basketball in ages, so I followed your recommendation and watched a random "Explain one Play" video [0].
The narration is excellent, and if all games contain amazing stuff like this one, I may just start watching NBA in the future (or at least follow that YT channel).
>A big conversation I see now days is what’s “wrong” with the modern nba, with too many 3’s being the most common refrain. That’s silly. I will tell you what’s actually wrong about the nba. They’re playing the most amazing basketball the worlds ever seen, but the entertainment ecosystem around them hasn’t changed at all. Literally they just talk about the stupidest stuff, like who’s the GOAT, instead of actually educating their audiences about the incredible level of play that exists now days.
100% agree on this. NBA coverage, especially on ESPN is garbage. Not to mention how expensive it is to (legally) watch the NBA. If they actually had better coverage explaining different facets of the game, and analyzing it, maybe people would appreciate what they're seeing more.
I agree. As someone who watched Magic, Bird and MJ in their prime, I think the modern basketball is at much higher level of both skill and athleticism. The level of "4D chess" going on is incredible and very enjoyable to watch!
I do not like the bullying aspect of it though. Offensive players are ramming straight into defenders, shoving the them mid-jump to get a rebound etc.
Yeah this is a big problem too I think. The referees need to be more consistent. People hunt for fouls, flop, and play too dangerously like you said. Taking a charge can be a deterrent but you could also seriously get hurt attempting that.
Not a particularly well written article, but I haven't ever really believed that jacking up threes is a global maximum in the basketball optimization problem.
For example, if you have a team that posts up in the middle, actually moves the ball around and not just around the perimeter, and utilizes the shot clock well, this is going to wear down a team by forcing them to play rough defense, reducing the effectiveness of the three point shot over the course of the game.
Part of the reason of the decline e of interesting basketball is the insane relaxation of rules. Offensive players can travel, carry, flop, ect. all the while knowing that defensive players are handicapped in the contact they can initiate.
I haven't looked at the NBA in more than 20 years and recently started watching it again. I was shocked. Not necessarily by all the three point shots, but more about the carrying of the ball, the multiple extra steps that players take before dunking or laying up, and getting extra free throws when it's the offensive players who rams into a still standing defender. If I want to watch rugby or ice hockey, then I watch rugby or ice hockey, this jumping into defenders has nothing to do with basketball if you'd ask me. And this Donkic trade to the Lakers because of gambling money, ughh... it's an ugly organisation.
This article has reduced it too far. Yes, the game has gotten optimized... for the moment. However a few years ago the complaint was that it was only about 3s. Now it's about 3s... and defense... and floor spread... and layups... and small ball... and big men who can shoot the three... and rim protectors... and it goes on and on. There's no one thing and the number of combinations of tactics, players, and circumstances make it pretty dynamic.
If there's any problem with basketball right now it's that Adam Silver is trying too many radical things and leaving history behind in uncomfortable ways. I mean, he's talking about going to 10 minute quarters! That will invalidate basically every record ever. I could go on and on, but the NBA game itself is not broken.
Basketball rules will change. It's becoming a more widespread view that the corner 3 should be eliminated, and perhaps the 3 line moved back in general. In the meantime, threat of 3s makes proactive defense more necessary and that's exciting to watch. Defense has evolved so much since the Jordan era. Some matches are not exciting right now, though.
Corner 3s are shorter because the 3-point curve flattens to give enough space to move between it and the bounds. The action in the corner is also less dynamic because it's hard to drive to the basket from there, so either you shoot a 3 or pass to center which resets the play if you can't find someone driving up center court. Here's a diagram of a regulation NBA court showing the issue. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Basketba...
Interesting to see this pop up on HN because this topic has dominated some sports circles over the last year- the NBA has become unwatchable for some, as teams like last year’s champion, the Boston Celtics, just throw up three’s constantly, regardless if they feel confident that they’ll go in.
> The Golden State Warriors, led by Stephen Curry, probably jump-started this trend with 34 three-pointer attempts per game in the 2018-19 season, twice as much from five years ago.
No, it was Daryll Morey's Houston Rockets around the James Harden era, who started advanced analytics player selection and shot selection. They started with enormous video analytics and Morey runs the yearly Analytics Sports Conference.
Moreyball was way more advanced than Moneyball. You go by the three and die by the three. He still didn't win a championship though.
This article was written by someone who has very little knowledge or appreciation of the history of the game. The NBA has always been a league of specialists revolving around a few superstars with a couple of “glue guys” thrown into the mix.
> but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
nobody who has watched basketball would say "guarded defense" or "caught rebounds". I saw "throw 3 pointers" elsewhere in this thread, which is similar, though I'm not sure if that's said by the article author.
Imagine if someone commented on the state of tech today and said that programmers "type code programs".
Honestly, this post comes off that way. Or you have a different timeline of what you consider always. Jordan basically invented the modern superstar. Sure, you had the Wilts and Dr J's back in the day, but they dominated based on their talent, not because the game was meticulously planned around maximizing their specific capabilities.
Basketball is not football. It is a five man game where one player can have an outsized impact.
Superstars not only impact the makeup of their teams roster, they impact the composition of rosters across the league. When Shaq was in his prime teams used to carry extra big men to have more fouls to give.
The most recent iteration of the league was teams going for small ball with three point shooting wings to compete with the Warriors. Right now you see serious contenders in the western conference going for size to make it past Jokic. The next iteration will be the Wemby stoppers.
Before Wilt and Dr J you had Oscar Robertson, Pistol Pete Maravich, Jerry West, Rick Barry, George Milan, etc. The league has always revolved around stars.
Yup, can't disagree with any of that! I do think the modern game has specialized a bit more beyond star stoppers, but that's kind of a natural part of the evolving meta game in any long running competition.
It'll be fun to see what Wemby stoppers could possibly look like.
Not to discount Jordan in any way - but Nike and all the marketing behind him with the shoes was a big part of becoming the first modern superstar. He won championships many years later.
> In the end, it’s all about optimizing every ball possession.
While I partially agree with the article's stance, you can't optimize for this[^1] or this[^2] because they’re unpredictable—historically great outliers that defy averages and planning.
The point about 3 pointer shots being worth more than 2 pointer shots is generally true. However, in the playoffs, when the going gets tough, usually the jitters set in and the teams hit a lot less 3 pointers than in the regular season. Especially with the season on the line in endgames[1]. Which means: In those cases easy baskets and also mid-range shots (from people who are used to making those) regain their importance. Thus, if you have your playoffs in mind, don't forget to plan for those middies!
[1]the worst were the conference finals 2018 game 7s: Cavs (9/35); Celtics (7/39). Rockets (9/44); Warriors (9/33).
> However, in the playoffs, when the going gets tough, usually the jitters set in and the teams hit a lot less 3 pointers than in the regular season.
Is that stats based or anecdotal?
Link to random person on reddit, but it seems like shooting percentage overall drops due to getting rid of bad teams in the playoffs. And 3pt and fg are affected equally. By about 1% - ie not that much.
You'd expect shooting percentage to go up based on bad teams dropping out. Elite offensive teams have a much higher increase in shooting percentage over replacement than even an elite defensive team can reduce an opponent's shooting percentage.
But, the game slows down, and everyone plays defense more aggressively, which might account for the change described here.
I find basketball (College and NBA) incredibly hard to watch. Beyond the basic necessary ball handling skills, the games are largely decided by the acting for the refs.
I much prefer the street ball route: make it a contact sport and stop the flopping.
This happens at times in all sports. The NFL is a prime example. QBs were lighting up big, heavy defenses with deep passes. Then teams ran two high safeties to prevent this. This year, offenses adjusted again to run more against the smaller linebackers and nickel/dime packages.
With the quantification of sport, it has becoming increasingly common for people who only look at the statistics to assume that some global strategic minima has been achieved. In reality, in every competitive invasion-based game strategies adapt.
The adaption varies by sport - without going into the weeds, basketball is less random than other invasion sports so there has been typically been a higher premia on player talent so you see high levels of strategic adaption to individual players...by contrast, you don't see this in soccer to the same degree, apart from the top one or two players - but it happens all the same. For some reason, the assumption is that without quantification none of this stuff would be obvious...but if you look at the history of almost every invasion sport there have been strategic adaptions over years/decades/centuries because this stuff is obvious to people playing it.
To be clear, this doesn't happen in non-invasion sports. There is no strategic adaption so you see interesting things like the ability to compare statistical records over long periods (to a certain degree, over very long periods the rules often change and there can be adaption due to generally increasing physical capacity of athletes).
In other words, there is always someone who wants to spoil the fun. The beauty of invasion games is that there is no global minima (and there is a profound lack of joy in non-invasion sports when someone has a higher level than the competition, and just annihilates everyone every match).
Maybe the solution is with a different type of 3D model, namely the Wilson 3D printed basketball. It has more drag than the regulation basketball, making long shots more difficult. This could restore the balance between long field goals and shots near the basket.
Teams try to win, but basketball as a sport is entertainment. The opposing teams actually work together to put on a great show for the fans. If those fans don't want to see an endless series of 3-point shots, basketball will indeed change its rules.
We see this a lot in football as well. Some say it's "lost its flair", I still can't tell if it's rose tinted glasses or if truly something was lost in with the omnipresence of data-driven optimisation. I tend towards the latter.
Professional athletes are freaks of nature being given millions of dollars to optimize for the problem. If you give them an unopposed chance to score, you're going to have very unfun sports.
The same problem is happening in baseball pitching and football kicking.
Even if true this has nothing to do with the value of the sport to the spectator or the competitor. Seeing world-class athletes push themselves to their physical limits is intrinsically exciting even if everyone is on the same page on how to win.
Nothing to do? If that were true, Olympic weightlifting would be a primetime sport.
The strategy, drama, and player celebrity are all part of what makes a popular spectator sport. Lots of casual viewers found the recent Superbowl to be boring because of the early runaway score, despite lots of great athleticism on display.
And of course it's a tautology that "true fans" will always find something to enjoy.
This has many "not even wrong" observations, and if it was, is so surface-level as to be meaningless regardless. It'd be like reading how software engineering has evolved into a game of prompting AI.
You mean, a free throw is a chance shot that when missed awards the defense?
Seems like that would have a huge impact on end of game strategy.
It would change the “in the paint” strategy—maybe defense would foul earlier to avoid the 2+1? Hoping instead to split the 2, 1-1 with a miss. Of course, the centers and forwards, who typically aren’t great free throw shooters, are gonna get the ball less. Where does the play go? 3pt land, where it’s way more risky to foul.
To clarify, award the offense a point when fouled shooting a 2-point shot and two points if shooting a 3.
There’s still a free-throw left to earn the old fashioned way.
Mostly the thinking is this encourages post-play since bigs are usually worse free-throw shooters. Also, it should shorten game length which is another recent audience concern.
I like my idea a bit better. Fouls become way more strategic. Maybe you do away with the bonus, though. A foul on the floor just changes possession. A foul during shot becomes almost a toss up. You still have foul limits on players, and maybe you decrease the foul out limit to 4 just for fun. :)
I read something about Go - that very unusual (maybe even considered bad) playing could beat the super-AIs. They are so tuned to opponents in a "typical" style, that they don't know how to beat a player outside this distribution.
Maybe an NBA team will come up with something like that.
I'd be interested in seeing a link to this. Decades ago, playing defensive "computer chess" used to be a relatively optimal strategy against Chess AIs.
However, I believe Kasparov famously tried to employ this tactic against Deep Blue but by that time it wasn't particularly viable.
I can see it in the case of champion-trained AI, but in the case of Alpha Zero trained AI, it should have encountered virtually every kind of senseless play.
I can't speak for go, but I've seen beginners get an edge in other strategy games by playing a very unusual strategy. The trouble is, it doesn't tend to last - it turns out either that their strategy really is weak, or that it's viable but they don't have the ability to follow up on the early edge they gained. I can imagine a similar thing might happen with sports strategy.
i forgot what year but the year the spurs won the championship against lebron would be unusual today. tons of passing not necessarily for the 3 but to just dislodge the defense enough for a guaranteed bucket
The author does not know basketball, either watching or playing, which is evident from their claims and from their language.
> Players are no longer do-it-alls; they are now given specialized roles.
> they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Anyone who even watches games would instinctively use different language. Nobody in basketball speaks this way.
As far as the veracity, I'd really need to see some data.
First, nothing in cutting edge, 3-and-D basketball says to stop playing defense. Defense is the D in 3-and-D.
As just one counter-example to the author's claims, big players - centers and power forwards - have become more generalized. Instead of just playing near the basket on offense and defense, many now handle the ball, pass, and also shoot from outside - the old-style guys who lack those skills have taken big pay cuts. The primary ball-handler for the author's local Golden State Warriors is Draymond Green, their center. The best player in the world is a center renowned especially for their passing, Nikola Jokic.
Wing players (small forwards and shooting guards) do it all. The local Golden State Warriors also have Steph Curry, the best shooter ever and an excellent ball-handler and passer. And they recently acquired Jimmy Butler, an all-star all-around player; here is the coach:
"Jimmy, he's a real deal," Kerr said. "I mean, just a complete basketball player, methodical, under control all the time, plays at his own pace, never turns it over, sees the game and then can get to the line frequently. Great closer, not in the traditional sense where he's going to be Kevin Durant and make four straight midrange jumpers, but it's more of a complete game. Get to the line, make the right pass, get somebody else an open look, get a defensive stop, get a rebound. He's a fantastic player."
What's changed in the NBA is that 3-point shooting has become more valued, partly supported by analytics, partly because Steph Curry redefined what is possible for 3-point shooting for both playing and for being a star: Before Curry, every kid wanted to be Michael Jordan or others who made miraculous drives to the basket through crowds; after Curry, kids were heaving up shots from ridiculous distances, just like their hero.
You won't be surprised to learn that many people say, 'it's not like the old days', and are debating changing the rules to make everyone play like they did 20 years ago.
> Hi, I'm NT (Nabaraj T), a full-stack engineer in Northern California. ... ten years of professional experience
> Besides software development, my interests are in embedded circuits and astronomy. I have started my startup to research space technologies. When not tangled with 1s and 0s, I usually watch football, cheering on Chelsea.
I wouldn't be that pessimistic. Just like Stephen Curry discovered the value of the three-point shot, someone will come along and spot an opportunity by going against the grain of today's paradigm. Perhaps an AlphaGo for basketball will help to find it.
I don't think that will happen broadly, there will be physical freaks like Wembanyama or players with extreme talent like Jokic that will create teams with unique edges, but the mid range jumper is dead and it's a game of 3 pointers and dunks forever now.
I doubt that. Players like DeRozan prove that mid and even long 2s have utility. As defenses optimize to pack the paint while chasing shooters off the line, more opportunities will open up. If it were obvious how, we'd already be doing them!
Wish OP had presented some data beyond "people are shooting more threes". From the bit of basketball youtube I've watched, there seems to be a bevy of data. I roll my eyes a bit at announcements like "he's the first person ever to have X points, Y assists and Z steals in 3 quarters" but they are pulling that data from somewhere.
Would be really interesting to read about team records when they field a bunch of specialized players vs generalized players (due to injuries or foul trouble). That would be far more convincing.
[1]: https://youtu.be/fp4but75EjY?si=YdOqZZ5-sH6lQHd9
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