Do you have any thought or hypothesis on why the “they shoot too many threes” discourse has gained such a foothold? (Besides the standard boosts any anti-NBA discourse from “everything was cooler when I was younger” and racism)
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Its because Modern NBA Defense with constant switching and rotation, and offensive pick and roll counter switching and all that is less obviously skilled then 1 on 1 post move stuff, like they're both hard to do its just one looks harder.
Is it something about fewer converted possessions? Or does it feel less satisfying when 3s miss as opposed to interior shots because it doesn’t feel like as direct a result of defense? Or something dumb like we are biased toward the ball moving linearly down the court to the basket?
for me, too many shots APPEAR to be too easy to come by. it's not necessarily them being 3s, but you just see so much effort and smart play by the defense only for the result to be a good shot that is either lightly or not at all contested.
i like watching good offensive players make good defense look pointless as much as good defensive players making good offensive players look silly and defeated.
there just FEELS to be too many open and lightly contested shots now, imo. i'd like a different mix of open and contested.
A much easier thing that can be done to address what you are saying is to call illegal screens. Just that small change(which requires no actual rule change, but just a directive to officials to call the rule as written) would help defenses a ton.
Yes, and I have in fact advocated for that for a couple years now. I have never been a supporter of heavily modifying the 3pt line or widening the court because it won't address the issue people are complaining about and could actually exacerbate it.
I feel like this is really helpful if you were actually trying to address the concerns because I don’t think banning corner 3s would solve much of this at all, whereas tweaking rules around perimeter D or moving screens, etc would help more
In fairness I was fully cribbing from your posts from yesterday on those two. But I do really think that would have a much bigger impact than repainting the lines
Thanks for this reply! I do think it makes sense that 3s are more likely to be open just given floor spacing. And I’ve had similar feelings watching college bball where it feels like good defense is rewarded more often (even if it’s often because players miss the same open looks NBA guys would make)
A lot of “good college defense” is simply recognizing there are usually multiple opposing players who are basically non threats. The whole “packline” concept is based on this.
Completely. And I’m in no way suggesting it’s better or that there’s more effort or anything like that. Just trying to understand the underlying drivers of the anti-3 stuff because I think in most cases it’s not actually about 3s at all
When I recently stated that I find the modern game beautiful and varied, some "bag" dude argued across multiple posts (no idea why I engaged, but so it goes) that MY favorite thing to watch in basketball HAD to be elite 1v1 scorers, even as I gave my own actual opinion repeatedly. It's exhausting.
Even that has a subtle twist. Obviously scorekeeping influences this...but up until the last couple of seasons we actually still had more of FGMs unassisted than we did in say the 90s (although I guess the extra free throws may have been disproportionally on self-created shot attempts?)
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there just FEELS to be too many open and lightly contested shots now, imo. i'd like a different mix of open and contested.
Banning the corner 3 is something you suggest only if you don’t actually understand what’s happening on the court.