For Me, the Lack of Individual Creativity and Shot Creation in the Half Court is the Real Problem with the NBA

yes, it's the threes, but the threes are a symptom of a larger problem

Earlier this year I wrote an intentionally dyspeptic piece called “Fuck the Modern NBA,” expressing frustrations with professional basketball that had begun boiling over, at the time. By now, those complaints have been banded about long enough that most everybody is sick of it. Inevitably, and annoyingly, we’ve got the same dynamic that I’ve been complaining about for 15 years: a culture war masquerading as basketball debate, this slice of NBA media and “elevated fans” who insist on defying whatever they take to be the ordinary fan consensus, institutionalized basketball contrarianism. And since there’s brewing discontent about the state of play, they’re now zagging by loudly endorsing the current NBA status quo, usually in endlessly patronizing tones. Like so:

This is everything that I’ve been criticizing in NBA coverage for all these years, a smug, superior defense of what’s happening now that complete sidesteps what people actually don’t like about it. I’m naive enough to think that we could have an NBA where Kendrick Perkins doesn’t start for a Finals team and where I don’t have to pretend that Payton Prichard is who I tuned in to watch! Sure, the latter is better at his job than the former was at his, but that’s not really the question, is it? The question is whether the state of the game right now is particularly healthy on the court and whether the league could tweak the rules to encourage a more entertaining default playstyle than Threes & Fouls. Baseball, land of hoary old tradition, has made some serious changes in the last couple years, and the games are more watchable than they’ve been in a long time. There’s nothing sacred about the NBA’s current rules; the league didn’t have a three point shot for about as long as it has had the three point shot. Leagues evolve or die. If you change the rules, the analytics will change with them. So stop playing Shoeless Joe in the Holy Cornfield But for Basketball, please.

(For the record Victor Wembanyama’s career three point percentage is 33%, and modern NBA conventional wisdom ensures that he will chuck an immense number of them this season and beyond. I’d prefer if he didn’t.)

The number of three point shots in a game has been a point of major contention; just earlier this month, a game tied the record for most combined three pointers at 44 only for that record to be smashed the following night, at 48. And, as I’ve said, I like threes as one tool in the toolbox of basketball teams, in contrast to what they’ve become, a league-wide obsession as the most coveted shot in almost any situation. But it’s not really threes in and of themselves, just like the end-of-game fouling grind isn’t the problem even though it’s bad. From my perspective, the problem is that modern NBA coaches have embraced very regimented rules for playing half-court offense, reducing player agency in favor of systems, sets, and plays, resulting in a lack of individual shot creation. In the supposedly bad old days of the NBA featured a ton of isolation plays and clear outs, where the team’s star would go to one wing and the other offensive players would move away to drag defenders with them. Players like Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson or Tracy McGrady had a great deal of freedom to operate the offense as they pleased, and games had many moments where stars would attempt to beat their man with creative dribbling and movement or else to rise up and shoot over them while they contested. Those days are long, long gone. The basketball analytics types determined that the most efficient approach was to build teams around creating open threes or drives to the hoops through ball movement, which was itself predicated on role players having the green light to chuck threes and every aspect of floor spacing and movement predetermined through coaching. And they were right - that is more efficient. Whatever our problems are, it’s not that the analysts were wrong about what actually won the most games.

If you look at the famously detail-oriented and intense Joe Mazzulla, who led the Boston Celtics to a championship last June, you’ll see a good example of what I’m talking about. Mazzulla is famously determined to get his players to operate within the structure of the team’s offense in the half court; the Celtics embody the contemporary ideal of a team where everyone has a job on every play and has been coached on just how to react to whatever the defense does. It’s proven to be a lethal approach in the past several years, as the team operates with remarkable efficiency, the obsession of analytics. You never see a Celtics player clear out for an iso and generate his own offense, as that type of offense is low-efficiency. Almost everyone on the team can shoot threes and they’re empowered to, but only so long as they’re doing so within certain regimented parameters. The rest of the league is pursuing the same kind of automaticity and system-based play. And that’s exactly the problem.

Consider the video of McGrady’s best game, at top. This is exactly the kind of play that today’s NBA trimuphalists disdain - prototypical hero ball, an NBA team forcing the entire offense through one player. His team is constantly clearing out and giving him space to cook individually, which amounts to a bunch of guys standing around watching on many possessions. McGrady’s shots are high degree of difficulty; he takes a few long contested two-point shots in that video, which are pretty much the most forbidden shots in modern basketball. I can’t unlearn what I’ve learned in the past couple decades, so I am vaguely aware as I see him pound the ball and then elevate to shoot that what he’s doing isn’t good basketball strategy in modern terms. But you know what I think when I watch him do all of that, to the tune of 62 points? That’s really fucking cool.

Contrast McGrady with Celtics megastar and efficiency machine Jayson Tatum. Tatum doesn’t take guys off the dribble very much, or certainly not in the half court. I’ve never seen his team run a traditional iso for him, that I can recall. He takes a lot of threes and makes enough of them that the math is very advantageous for the Celtics. He drives only when there’s a clear lane to the basket and converts at a very healthy clip when he does. He’s also adept at guarding the perimeter, thanks to his length and smarts, and again plays within Mazzulla’s defensive scheme. He’s remarkably well-built to flourish in the modern league. The thing is, and I’m sorry to pick on someone who has been picked on in this conversation… I just don’t find him compelling to watch. Not relative to his ability and reputation. He shoots and he slashes and he defends. He has shown the ability to cross guys over, even elite defenders, but he’s clearly been discouraged from playing that way. He just doesn’t do much of anything creative, anything unexpected or inventive, and that’s the thing for me, more than the threes or load management or the plain fact that players don’t care until around February. The lack of personal basketball freedom even for many stars, while strategically defensible, leads to a player like Tatum operating in a robotic and constrained fashion. For me, personally, that’s not consistent with entertainment.

With my 2024 brain, knowing what I know about efficiency and success in modern basketball, I couldn’t ever say that Tracy McGrady was a better basketball player than Jayson Tatum. But I sure as fuck would rather watch McGrady in his prime than Tatum now, during his. Sorry. You can look down on me from NBA Twitter’s sanctimonious clubhouse if you choose.

I’ll save my preferred solutions for another time. I will though say that of course I know that hero ball was often unwatchable too, that having eight guys stand around while two played one-on-one wasn’t ideal, that Kobe ball can become frustrating and unpleasant with fans as well. I’m not asking to go back to the 2000s. But I am asking to go back, at least partway, to an NBA that could showcase stars like McGrady or Allen Iverson, and that had a place for midrange-shooting role players like Rip Hamilton, and that didn’t lead to watching poor old Al Horford stand around the three point line to take shots, when he was made by God to play down low. I have to think that there are ways to adjust the current rules so that star players are given more opportunities to create off the dribble and take the occasional long two without completely breaking the flow of an offense. I really don’t think what I’m asking for is that outlandish. To get to something better, though, and hopefully stop the NBA’s slide in terms of ratings and public mindshare, people have to be willing to break a few eggs and not treat the rules as holy scripture. If any sport should be amenable to making change to increase the fun factor, it should be the NBA, the sport of flair and style and endless reinvention. The teams are doing the rational thing and maximizing efficiency to try and win championships. But the league has a different set of responsibilities, and the league should disrupt the current meta and see what shakes out. Might be something really cool.

You know the thing about hero ball is, sports fans love heroes.