Two years ago, it looked like the NBA’s 3-point revolution was nearing an end. In 2022-23, teams attempted fewer 3s per game than the previous season for the first time in more than a decade. In 2023-24, there were still fewer 3s attempted than in 2021-22.
Just over two months into the 2024-25 season, however, the 3-point explosion is back with a bang. Teams are attempting 42.4% of their shots from beyond the arc—an upward shift foreshadowed during the preseason. The 3-point rate has never exceeded 40% in a full season.
More from Sportico.com
Six NBA teams are taking at least 45% of their shots from downtown. Just two or three teams a year did that between 2019-20 and 2022-23, and only one did it last year, when 47.1% of the NBA champion Boston Celtics’ attempts were from deep. This year, the Celtics’ 55.2% mark is on pace to shatter the single-season record.
Out of the roughly 100 possessions per team in an NBA game, even 2.5 additional 3s per side is a significant uptick. In fact, it is the third-largest increase between any two seasons in NBA history (not counting 1994-95, when the line was moved in). This campaign, 22 of the league’s 30 teams are shooting more 3s than last year.
This particular bump, as opposed to the previous ones in NBA history, is not driven by simple arithmetic. Throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, 3s were much more efficient shots than 2s on a points per attempt basis. That gap, however, had been closed by 2021-22 due to the gradual replacement of inefficient long 2s by 3s, and the relative value of 3s and 2s has been roughly the same ever since.
Now, teams’ motivation for bombing away is more about spacing the court and forcing the defense to cover maximum area rather than the basic 3 > 2 math that led teams to shoot more 3s in the past. Additionally, as shooting percentages at the rim have risen along with that more optimal spacing, defenses have reacted by shoring up their paint protection, which in turn has led to even more 3-point attempts.
The types of 3s that teams are taking more of have also changed. For decades, the increase in 3-point attempts was driven primarily by catch-and-shoot players spotting up from behind the arc as opposed to inside of it. This year, however, the change in strategy has been pull-up shooters picking up their dribble and firing from deep as opposed to from the midrange.
Indeed, catch-and-shoot 3s are up 5% year-over-year, while pull-up 3s are up 13%. Those additional shots are coming mostly at the expense of pull-up 2s, which are down 9% from last year.
Since role players tend to be the ones shooting off the catch, and stars are more likely to shoot off the dribble, this year’s 3-point bump has been seen most acutely in stars. The league as a whole has increased its 3-point rate by 7%, but the average 2024 All-Star guard is shooting 19% more 3s than last season.
The Phoenix Suns’ Devin Booker, known for his midrange prowess, is now shooting 7.6 3s per game after attempting only 6.1 last season, while his attempts between 10 feet and the arc have plummeted. The Minnesota Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards, one of the league’s exciting young players in large part due to his ferocious dunks and acrobatic drives, increased his 3-point attempts per game from 6.7 to 9.9—in range of Stephen Curry’s average. The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is a below average marksman at 35% on 3s for his career, is nonetheless taking 6.0 of them a game, up from 3.6 last season.
More 3s aren’t inherently bad, but the unprecedented high rate at which superstars have been shooting them off the dribble comes at a cost. Specifically, the league’s most popular players are eschewing exciting plays inside the 3-point line in which they showcase their moves, ball-handling abilities and athleticism. Case in point: Edwards has dunked just 14 times in 34 games this season after throwing it down nearly once per contest last year.
There is a subset of NBA fans on social media who have bemoaned these changes. Last month, a two-minute clip of an NBA Cup game between the Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers in which the teams combined to miss eight 3-pointers went viral. The video, captioned “Why don’t you watch the NBA anymore? THIS is why,” garnered 10.4 million views.
The league does not believe there is a consensus that the rate of 3-pointers being attempted is an issue. “If this is a style of play that is not enjoyable to the majority of [our] stakeholders, then, of course, it would be incumbent upon us to change it. That is not what we’re currently hearing,” NBA EVP of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch said. “There are certainly those that we’ve heard from—teams, players, fans, media—that think we may have crossed the threshold, that there are too many threes. There are others who say that they love it and actually want to see even more of it, because of how exciting those plays are.”
Wasch emphasized that the total time elapsed while players are shooting the basketball represents a small fraction of an NBA game, and that a variety of playing styles can generate 3s, some of which are entertaining and some of which are not.
“It’s not so much a 3-point issue,” commissioner Adam Silver said to reporters before the NBA Cup final last month. “But that [to] some of the audience, some of the offenses start to look sort of cookie cutter and teams are copying each other. I think that’s something we should pay attention to.”
Indeed, critics could be responding to the proliferation of spread pick-and-rolls, which enable stars to get open shots off screens or force a switch to get a mismatch rather than putting moves on an elite defender in isolation, which used to be more common. Fans who shout “too many 3s” may actually just be missing the post-up, which the average team now uses on less than 4% of all possessions.
“For the most part, I think that the game is still viewed to be in a really positive place,” Wasch said. “The amount of spacing, ball movement, fast paced action, the quality of shots that teams are getting and the ability for teams to play defense.”
Additionally, nostalgic complaints about a seismic shift in teams’ reliance on jumpers is out of touch with the stats. Since most 3-pointers are simply replacing long 2-pointers, the percentage of overall shots that are jump shots hasn’t changed all that much. In 2005, 43% of shots were from 16 feet away or more. In 2025, it’s 47%.
“In the 90s they took bad midrange jump shots all game lol nobody cared,” Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant replied to one user while debating with fans on X, formerly Twitter, about the league’s declining TV ratings.
All the logical arguments in the world, however, are irrelevant if fans believe something is off about the product and change the channel. “We should take seriously this notion of more diversity in offense,” Silver said.
And yet, it’s difficult to come up with a rule change that would fix all the issues about which complaints have been levied. For instance, the often-proposed longer 3-point line would only enlarge the inefficient midrange wasteland that teams are already reluctant to shoot from. Wasch stated that there isn’t a particular rule change that the league is considering, and that no such changes would be “imminent.”
“We’re not trying to find solutions in search of problems,” Wasch said. “We’re trying to identify whether there are issues and then think about how those rule changes might impact the issue that we’re facing.”
Best of Sportico.com
Sign up for Sportico’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
