NBA: The 3-point line continues to change the game

Big men in the NBA have been affected by the 3-point revolution more than any other position

The big man in the NBA has seen more change in the way the game is played than any other position. When the league first started, the big man dominated without much resistance. The early decades of the NBA gave us many centers who are still considered some of the best players to ever play the sport.

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain dominated the ’60s, followed by Kareem in the ’70s and ’80s, Hakeem Olajuwon in the ’90s, and Shaquille O’Neal in the 2000s.

Look at a list of NBA champions and you’ll see that the history of the NBA has been dominated by elite centers with few exceptions. That’s no longer the case, though. So what happened? How can the league be dominated by big men for so long, and then have it become perhaps the most forgotten role on the floor? Look no further than the 3-point line.

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Three-point attempts have been steadily increasing since the 3-point line was introduced in 1979 with the exception of the three seasons (1995-1997) when the 3-point line was made shorter and the amount of 3-point attempts increased at an abnormal rate. However, when the line was moved back to its normal distance, the year over year increase in 3-point attempts went back to the general mean.

Then, in the past five or six years, the number of 3-point attempts exploded. According to Basketball-Reference, the 2012-13 season saw 20.0 3- pointers attempted per game, a record at that time. We’re now coming off the 2018-19 season where there was an average of 32 3-pointers every game. That’s an increase of 12 3-point attempts per game over a six-year sample.

For comparison, it took about 20 years for the league to increase the amount of three point attempts by that kind of margin prior to this relative explosion in attempts over the last handful of years.

So why the change? The simple answer is math. Obviously, people have known forever that 3 is more than 2, but until advanced analytics became popular in front offices across the league, we didn’t know how much more efficient it would be to shoot this many 3-pointers.

It’s no coincidence that, per Basketball-Reference, the last four seasons have resulted in the most 3-pointers attempted (breaking the record each year), the highest effective field goal percentages, and the highest offensive ratings in the league’s history. If the results didn’t back it up then teams would stop, but this method of shooting an enormous number of 3-pointers is creating some of the most efficient offenses that the league has ever seen. It’s not going anywhere.

It hasn’t been a seamless transition for everyone. The biggest casualty in this 3-point revolution has been the traditional big man, as the days of throwing the ball down to the post and letting your center go to work with his back to the basket are in the rearview mirror.

The league now all but requires you to have a big guy who can function out on the perimeter on both ends. Having a center who can’t shoot and/or can’t guard out on the 3-point line is a liability in the league today, driving the traditional center into near extinction.

When I think of the great big men in the history of the game, I think of Kareem’s sky hook, Hakeem’s dream shake, and Shaq being an enormous physical monster. What they’ve all had in common is that they were dominant in the paint with their back to the basket. When I think of big men today, I don’t see anything like that. What I see is versatility, guys that can do a lot of things well, even if they aren’t particularly dominant as post up threats. There are a few bigs that still have the skill down in the paint, but that alone doesn’t make you a great center anymore.

Centers, and really all players, have been forced to spend more time developing those perimeter skills and the numbers prove it. When the 3-point line was first introduced, there were two 3-point attempts per game…total. Nowadays, in the midst of the 3-point revolution, we have 22 centers who take more 3’s per game than that by themselves.

Extrapolate this beyond just centers, and you’ll see that James Harden alone took 13.2 3-pointers per game, which is the same amount as the total per game average from the 1998-99 season just 20 years ago.

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse gave his thoughts about the 3-point revolution in an article by Reid Forgrave from CBS Sports:

"“I don’t see it slowing down right now. Most teams, ourselves included, would like to put 10 guys out there in a rotation that every single one of them could at least threaten with the 3-ball.”"

That’s not a bad thing either. Some of my earliest basketball memories are of watching Shaq, he was my favorite player because he just seemed so much more dominant than everyone else out there. So I really do understand fans who miss the old ways of playing, but there is so much more space for players to make plays in today’s game as a direct result of the strategy that coach Nurse touched on.

The NBA has a collection of the best athletes in the world, why wouldn’t you want them in space doing what they do best?

Further, the league NEEDED this change…badly. I know that triggers some people who can’t let go of the ghosts of the NBA’s past, but it’s true. In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, offensive basketball in the NBA was nearly at the worst it’s ever been. Every season starting from 1997-98 up until 2003-04 is one of the 15 worst seasons in offensive rating since the stat has been kept.

The only era worse than that one came in the mid-1970s. It was simply bad basketball, and the league needed to correct itself. Perhaps the biggest indictment of this era was the Celtics vs. Pistons playoff game in 2002 that ended 66-64. That’s just not how basketball is supposed to be played.

You can cling on to the glory days of the old NBA all you want, but the league isn’t going back to that any time soon. The front offices have adapted, and now even the most paint-centric players in the league have figured out how to survive in today’s game. It’s time for the fans to do the same. As the great Dwight Schrute once said, “Nostalgia is truly one of the great human weaknesses…second only to the neck.”