there was a youtube video which looked at the three pointers in the NBA:

"Chart Party: We decided to erase the three-pointer""

They showed that the 1982 NBA champs made 10 threes... all season

If you look at NBA shot selection, it is bi-modal.... All lapups or threes. Combined with free throws, is this more exciting to watch than the old days where there was a mid-range game?

They also show that the shooting percentage doesn't drop much as you get farther out. Something like a three is only 1% less made that a 6 footer (again, something like that from memory). The reason is folks grew up shooting the three and defense gets worse further out.


Therefore, two proposals I have seen are:

1) Let each team draw their own three point line
2) move it back every year so the average shot is one point to make the risk/reward similar to two pointers (right now the incentives are all to shoot threes)

What do you think of these ideas? The first one is interesting but goes against some sort of "standard". Baseball does this with their parks and it adds to the charm. However, something about each court being different seems wrong somehow. Taking this to the extreme, what if each team could choose the height of the hoop?

The second idea is much more realistic I feel. What is does hose over is the corner threes (these are by far the best risk/reward, which leads to one player just standing in the corner which is boring). I also like this idea because it can be changed every year to auto-adjust

What do you think?

I'm a celtics fan. The C's shoot a ton from inside the arc but outside the lane. Goes against a lot of analytics. I recently saw a stat that Boston was 5th in shots (can't remember if it was attempts or makes) from between the protected area and three point line. I was surprised because I thought they would be first.

Can't remember the teams that shoot more than Boston but GSW was one of them.

I don't think they need to punish three point shooting necessarily, I think they should incentivize the low post game. Take a look at these charts (from Kirk Goldsberry's new book "SprawlBall"):





The area where most low post shots are taken have roughly the same shooting percentage as corner threes. What if they shrunk the paint to allow for the big guys to establish better position?

The other thing they could do is either eliminate the corner three or don't allow guys to just stand there for the whole possession. Add a fourth official and make the corners similar to the paint and have a three second violation if a guy stands there too long.

Go listen to the Lowe Post podcast episode with Goldsberry from a few days ago, they went into some of this stuff in greater detail, it was good stuff.

3rdGen2015 said:

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Go listen to the Lowe Post podcast episode with Goldsberry from a few days ago, they went into some of this stuff in greater detail, it was good stuff.

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I think this is the guy that proposes to let defenses goal tend on 3 point attempts. Kind of hard to enforce specifically when your foot is on or near the line. Seems like an easy strategy would be to camp out a 7 footer in the low post and wait for the shot.

I think three point shooting is fun to watch, I'm in the minority apparently. Guys have crafted their games to do get better at shooting, would seem that a drastic move that could financially impact a lot of guys in the league with too drastic of a move.

All I know is that watching many of these games is brutal. You see tons of lazy possessions where teams just throw up bad three point shots over and over or drive into traffic rather than taking a wide open mid-range or using good ball movement to get an open look.

The three and dunk game isn't entertaing when teams are missing 60% of their shots. Just my opinion.

^
I agree with this. I'm not nearly old enough to remember pre-3-pt-line basketball, but it would be very interesting to to see w/ today's players. Although, it would take today's players/teams quite a while to adjust their game.