by LAS VEGAS – The NBA’s big eyes are in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup, but some big eyes have also turned their attention to box scores in non-NBA Cup games.
Or, frankly, an eyesore.
On Friday night, the Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets combined for the most 3-point shots in a game in NBA history with 75. On Sunday night, the Golden State Warriors and Dallas Mavericks combined for the most 3-point shots in a game, with 48. (Ironically, the Warriors made 27 triples and lost at home.)
Both extreme cases are an indication of where the game has been heading in recent years, where mathematics has largely taken over aesthetics. Player evaluation seems to begin and end with the question “Can he shoot the 3?” while so many other attributes are lost.
The Warriors were by far the forefathers of the 3-point revolution, and even though Klay Thompson has left for Dallas and Stephen Curry is nearing his end, it is still a big part of their identity. The Boston Celtics, on the other hand, have embraced the darkness and formed in it, averaging over 50 3-point attempts per night.
The result is a championship for the Celtics, who have a 21-5 record this season and are 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. “You need a lot of threes. [But] They move the ball.
“But I can also watch Boston play, and it’s not because they need a lot of threes. You play right. You move the ball. The ball goes to the right player. They defend. They play together.”
The Celtics didn’t win last year’s title just because they made the most threes. As Rivers said, their team defense and selfless approach helped them seemingly overwhelm the competition through their dominant regular season and playoff run.
But to illustrate that the game has changed so drastically: The 2014-15 Warriors hit 27 triples a night and didn’t even lead the NBA in that category. Yet there were so many conversations about how they would change the league for the worse.
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This season, 27 3-point attempts per night would be three attempts per night behind the league’s worst-placed team in this category, the Denver Nuggets.
“I think there are times when you look at the game and it looks beautiful, and then there are times when you look at the game and it looks terrible,” Rivers said. “You know, I think it’s game by game.
“There are other teams that just push their shots but don’t play defense, and I don’t want to watch them.”
That seemed to be the case with the Bulls and Hornets. It didn’t seem to occur to either team to use a different strategy. Either poor decisions on the ground or an overreliance on math led to this unfortunate night — and the league should take note.
Perhaps rule changes should be on the way, eliminating corner 3 or moving the line back altogether. So far there has been no serious discussion from the competition committee, but the game is heading in an ugly direction.
The Thunder are making 39.6 triples per night (ninth in the NBA) and the Rivers’ Bucks are attempting 36.8 per game (15th). Overall, teams like Memphis and Cleveland lead the NBA in pure scoring and are still efficient (fifth and first in offensive rating), but still take more 2s than 3s – perhaps a wise use of credit from their personnel.
Giannis Antetokounmpo entered a different NBA recalling the names of players whose style was phased out in 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 is getting better or worse. Antetokounmpo endured years of trying to become a 3-point shooter, scoring nearly five points per game in his second MVP campaign (2019-20) but never topping 30 percent.
He’s attacking the basket much better and has 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.
This has contributed to his career-high accuracy of 61 percent as he averages fewer than one triple per game – his lowest mark since his third season, the year before his first All-Star appearance.
“When I came into the league in 2013, teams weren’t shooting that many threes, and I know it wasn’t that long ago, but I remember there were players like Al Jefferson, like we had a great player in ours Team, Greg Monroe, we had to put the ball in the post and then play it away from the post. The guys were moving, screening, cutting. You played deeper into the 24-shot period.”
Those lumbering centers pushing back to the basket would be pushed to the perimeter, spread out on pick-and-rolls and exposed for a lack of mobility against spread lineups and stretch bigs.
“It’s different now,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s completely different and I don’t know if that necessarily helps my game. But at the end of the day the game evolves. It looks good. We have more people watching basketball right now.”
The NBA always has an eye on ratings — which are up for Cup games compared to regular-season games but down from last year — and what fans think, and it feels like that The pendulum swung a little too far in the other game. One wonders if the league will take drastic measures to make the game a game of diversity and not a mathematical equation.
“So I think it’s the hitter’s decision,” Rivers said. “Last year I thought the game became more physical in the second half of the year and I think the fans really enjoyed that.
“I think what we want is movement, movement, physicality in the game too, and we like watching teams play. I don’t think this will ever go away. And you like to watch the teams that do that, and you don’t like to watch the teams that don’t.”
