LAS VEGAS — The big eyes of the NBA are in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup, but some bulging eyes have taken notice of box scores in non-NBA Cup games.
Or eyesores, honestly.
On Friday night, the Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets combined for the most 3-point misses in a game in NBA history, with 75. Then on Sunday night, the Golden State Warriors and Dallas Mavericks combined for the most 3-point makes in a game, with 48. (Ironically, the Warriors made 27 triples and lost at home.)
Both extreme instances are an indication of where the game has gone in recent years, where the math has largely taken over the aesthetics. Player evaluation seems to start and finish with, “Can he shoot the 3?” while so many other attributes are drowned out.
The Warriors have been far and away the forefathers of the 3-point revolution, and even as Klay Thompson has departed to Dallas and Stephen Curry is getting closer to his twilight, it’s still a huge part of their identity. The Boston Celtics, meanwhile, have adopted the darkness and molded themselves in it, averaging over 50 3-point attempts a night.
It’s worked to the tune of a championship for the Celtics, a 21-5 record this season and being the odds-on favorites to repeat.
“You know, I can watch Golden State play all night,” Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Monday afternoon before his Bucks play the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA Cup championship on Tuesday. “They take a lot of 3s. [But] they move the ball.
“But I can watch Boston play, too, and it’s not because they take a lot of 3s. They play right. They move the ball. The ball moves to the right guy. They defend. They play together.”
The Celtics didn’t claim last year’s title just because they took the most 3s. Like Rivers said, their team defense and unselfish approach aided in how they seemingly overwhelmed the competition through their dominant regular season and playoff run.
But to frame this around how the game has tilted so drastically, the 2014-15 Warriors took 27 triples a night and didn’t even lead the NBA in that category. Still, there was so much conversation about how they were changing the league for the worse.
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This season, 27 3-point attempts per night would be a full three attempts a night behind the league’s lowest-ranked team in the category, the Denver Nuggets.
“I think there’s times where you watch the game and it looks beautiful, and then there’s times where you watch the game and it looks awful,” Rivers said. “You know, I think it goes game-to-game.
“There’s other teams that only just jack shots up, don’t play defense, and I don’t want to watch them.”
That seemed to be the case with the Bulls and Hornets. It never seemed to occur to either team to deploy a different strategy. Either poor decision-making on the floor or an overreliance on the math led to the unfortunate night — and the league should be taking note.
Perhaps rule changes should be on the way, eliminating the corner 3 or moving the line back overall. To this point, there hasn’t been serious discussion from the competition committee, but the game is trending in an ugly direction.
For what it’s worth, the Thunder take 39.6 triples a night (ninth in the NBA), and Rivers’ Bucks attempt 36.8 per game (15th). On balance, teams like Memphis and Cleveland lead the NBA in raw scoring and are still efficient (fifth and first in offensive rating) while still taking more 2s than 3s — perhaps a smart use of recognizing their personnel.
Giannis Antetokounmpo entered into a different NBA and evoked the names of players whose style has been phased out through the last decade, low-post technicians Greg Monroe and Al Jefferson.
“I’m not the one shooting the 3s,” Antetokounmpo said when asked if the quality of play was getting better or worse. Antetokounmpo went through years where he attempted to become a 3-point shooter, taking nearly five a game during his second MVP campaign (2019-20), but never got over the 30 percent hump.
He’s much better attacking the basket, and he’s found a home in the 18-foot range, making him a much more dangerous scorer now. He hasn’t shot below 50 percent in any game this season.
It’s contributed to his career-high 61 percent accuracy, as he’s taking fewer than one triple a game — the lowest mark since his third season, the year before his first All-Star appearance.
“When I came to the league in 2013, teams weren’t shooting this many 3s, and I know it wasn’t that long ago, but I remember you had players like Al Jefferson, like we had a great player on our team, Greg Monroe, we had to put the ball in the post and then play off the post. Guys were moving, screening, cutting. You were playing deeper into the 24-shot clock.”
Those plodding, back-to-the-basket centers would get moved out to the perimeter, spread out on pick-and-rolls and be exposed for a lack of mobility against spread lineups and stretch bigs.
“Now it’s different,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s totally different, and I don’t know if that necessarily helps my game. But at the end of the day, the game is evolving. It looks good. We have more eyeballs watching basketball right now.”
The NBA always has an eye on the ratings — which have been up for Cup games relative to regular-season games but down from last year — and what fans are thinking, and it feels like the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the other direction. One wonders if the league will take drastic measures to make the game one of variety and not of a math equation.
“So I think it’s hitter’s choice, I guess,” Rivers said. “I thought last year, the game got more physical in the second half of the year, and I think fans actually enjoyed that.
“I think what we want is motion, movement, a physicality to the game, as well, and we like watching teams play. I don’t think that will ever go away. And so the teams that do that, you enjoy watching, and the teams that don’t, you don’t.”
