This Book Perfectly Explains the NBA’s Three-Point Revolution
Rule changes and basic economics have turned basketball into a long-range chuck fest. Here’s how.
It’s no secret that the NBA is in the midst of a revolution. The three-point shot, originally seen as a gimmick, now accounts for over one-third of shot attempts, and the number is still rising every year. During each of the past two seasons, the Houston Rockets have fired more threes than twos, something that would have unthinkable until very recently.
At the same time, traditional big men have turned into a dying breed, gone by the wayside in favor of stretch fours and fives who can knock down the deep ball and defend on the perimeter. Say goodbye to the George Mikans, Wilt Chamberlains, Kareem Abdul-Jabbars, and Shaquille O’Neals that dominated the NBA for most of its history.
Basketball has evolved from a glorified game of “feed it to the big guy” to a sport than emphasizes spacing, positionless play, and long-range bombs. That much is obvious to anyone who’s seen a game in the last few years.
But how exactly did this new NBA come to be, and what are the consequences of this new brand of basketball?
Those are the questions Kirk Goldsberry sets out to answer in his magnificent new book, SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA, which was released earlier this year.
Goldsberry‘s background makes him uniquely qualified to tell the story of basketball’s movement from the paint to the arc. As a cartographer and college professor, Goldsberry combined his passions for basketball and mapmaking by creating the hexagonal shot chart to measure player shooting efficiencies in different areas on the court.
After presenting his research at the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Goldsberry caught the attention of Bill Simmons and worked at Grantland before becoming the vice president of strategic research for the San Antonio Spurs and the senior analyst for Team USA Basketball.
He currently serves as an NBA analyst at ESPN and as a professor at the University of Texas (where I’m hoping to take his class next year!).
Together with Aaron Dana, who provides brilliant illustrations, SprawlBall provides a thorough examination of the root causes of basketball’s rapid strategic shift and is full of shot charts, graphics, and incredible stats to back it up.
In the book, Goldsberry essentially has two main arguments:
- The NBA’s decision to incorporate a three-point line in 1979 is the biggest rule change in modern sports history.
- The three-point line is entirely arbitrary, from its placement to its existence in the first place, and we should consider altering it if doing so would benefit the game.
I’ll briefly explain the basis for each.
The Biggest Rule Change in Modern Sports History
By adding the three-point shot 40 years ago, the NBA did the equivalent of legalizing the forward pass in football. They created a new rule that completely transformed how the game would be played.
Without the three, there was little reason for teams to shoot from far away. Generally, the closer you are to the hoop, the easier it is to score. So with each bucket counting for two points, the best strategy was to have a dominant big man like Mikan or Chamberlain and let them go to work.
However, deciding to make some shots worth 50% more than others changes everything. Suddenly, long-range shooting becomes an incredibly valuable skill, especially considering shooting percentages don’t decrease nearly enough behind the three-point line to make taking a three versus most twos an equal proposition.
The fact of the matter is that some shots — namely, shots in the restricted area and threes, are worth far more on a per-shot basis than others. By now, the NBA has figured this out, and it’s led to an explosion of threes at the expense of the post and midrange games.
Just take a look at this graphic, which probably does a better job than any other at explaining why the modern NBA looks like it does.
But despite the massive impact of the three-point line, it’s only one rule change in a series of changes designed to make life harder on big men. First, goaltending became illegal. Then, the lane was widened not once, but twice to force big guys to catch the ball and do their work further away from the basket.
More recently, the league instituted the defensive three-second call and eliminated hand-checking. This made it much easier for quick guards to get into the paint.
As other players migrated to the three-point line (and took their defenders with them), it led to offenses designed to set screens to create favorable matchups for ballhandlers and let them go to work.
Defenses now have to choose between letting star players attack one-on-one and sending help, which usually leads to a three-point attempt.
An Arbitrary Line
In 1961, Abe Saperstein created the American Basketball League (ABL). While the league folded during its second season and Saperstein would be known primarily for founding the Harlem Globetrotters, the ABL did have one feature which would change basketball forever.
That feature was the three-point line. Saperstein placed it at 23 feet 9 inches away from the hoop and just 22 feet away in the corners. Over half a century later, after being adopted by the ABA and later the NBA, the line remains where Saperstein originally drew it.
Of course, Saperstein could have put it anywhere. But while other lines on the court and rules of the game have changed, the three-point line remains where it was in 1961.
That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?
After all, there’s no data backing up the placement of the line. We know now that after free throws and shots inside of a few feet, threes are the most efficient looks in the game.
Heck, the line isn’t even a uniform distance. Some threes are actually closer than twos!
Once NBA teams realized just how valuable the three was, the league transformed into one where the ability to knock down the deep ball is practically a requirement. Guys like Kevin Love, DeMarcus Cousins, and Brook Lopez have transformed into three-point shooters because it’s actually more effective than dominating down low.
The NBA should be a league where each position can play to its strengths. Right now, traditional big men simply get in the way. Their skill sets are obsolete.
As more players take more threes, they stop doing everything else, and parts of the game go extinct. If we don’t do anything, this trend will only continue. Maybe it’s time to change the rules.
In the book’s final chapter, Goldsberry offers some potential solutions to this problem, including one I’ve covered before — letting home teams decide where to place the three-point line.
SprawlBall is an excellent book that explains how the landscape of the modern NBA came to be. As the title suggests, it does so with numerous engaging visuals while using case studies of players such as Stephen Curry, James Harden, and LeBron James to help convey its larger points about the transformation of the NBA.
It’s an information-packed read and a sneakily funny one as well. My only knock would be that it can feel somewhat repetitive at times, although it does help cement the book’s main arguments.
SprawlBall is an easy recommendation for all basketball fans. You can purchase the book on Amazon here and follow Goldsberry on Twitter here.
