You're absolutely putting your finger on why, throughout last year's playoffs, I didn't find the Celtics a compelling watch, but loved tuning in for the Mavericks--a team with two of the most inventive and creative stars in the league.
I disagree on the Kobe/McGrady approach but I only speak for me. But from its inception the 3 point shot was flawed because it is not 50% more challenging than a 17 footer. 3 points is too good a deal. The mystery is why it took Curry's arrival to crack the code when even Manute Bol knew the cheat code. As weird as MLB undervaluing OBP for its first 100 years.
People just used to like to watch and play games like they were, you know, games that are supposed to be fun to play and watch. It's not weird at all, just a relic of an extinct and better culture. Running sports with the same stat methods that runs banks ruins the product. People didn't do it because it sounded boring and shitty and they instinctively rejected it without thinking about it. They were derided as morons by the stat crowd, but they turned out to be right. Billy Bean is the bad guy in Moneyball.
As a point of semi-relevant comparison, slow pitch softball became utterly boring to play, as every player swung for the fences at all times. It got so bad that in some leagues, batters didn't run the bases after hitting a home run. New leagues formed that limited or prohibited home runs and those leagues became much more popular as they resembled the type of game that most people found fun and entertaining.
How about once a team misses X 3 pointers in a game, all subsequent 3 pointers count for 2 points.
I agree, it is definitely a league problem and not a team/coach/player problem. The latter triumvirate are paid to win, and you can’t expect them to prioritize anything else. And I’d submit that fans of winning teams are still entertained by the winning alone even if it isn’t necessarily visually or esthetically pleasing.
It’s a league problem. And like MLB with pitch clock, or hockey with delay of game, it will require a rule change to alter the incentive structure.
The easiest seems to be to move the 3 point line back, (and also eliminate corner 3’s). People with Steph range would still be rewarded, as they should be. But once you take 3 pt shooting percentage below 40% for the average chucker, the math will likely shift away from that being the coveted shot.
I don't think coaches universally prioritize winning. There is a trend where coaches will play with the tactics that are in vogue for the best teams even if they're not the best for their own team. By doing so they show that they "get it" and are able to keep their jobs through poor results or get jobs with better teams in the future. Thus we get a lot of teams playing the same way with varying levels of success. Especially true in the NBA where a lot of teams don't want to win.
Yeah. Agree with this. The incentive is to keep your job — I’m unconvinced that a league with 30 teams is really a laboratory of analytically rigorous strategies. It takes a while to test out a new system! It makes more sense to me that the Boston system beat the previous status quo and nobody has the balls to figure out something new. (Caveat that I haven’t watched much basketball the last few years.)
Curious what you think of the 2014 Spurs. At the time they were specifically praised for being as far from hero-ball as possible, and I gather that the common wisdom is that their style presaged current day NBA play. But they were quite fun to watch, and the movement felt very creative even though it was very optimized. Is the difference-maker just the fact that they were the only ones playing that way at the time?
Though maybe my input on what makes basketball entertaining is irrelevant. I don't think I stopped watching because the play changed; I stopped watching because the NBA is the only entertainment in my life that is constantly interrupted by advertising, and so I'm just less willing to sit down for a game.
The 2014 "beautiful game" Spurs are my favorite NBA team. I think a huge difference between the style of ball they played (which as you point out is the precursor to the present game) is that the aim of all that ball motion was to create the best shot possible, *wherever it happened to be on the court.* They weren't looking primarily to create an open three, which is what the purpose of all the ball motion is today.
Which is the ultimate distinction. Ball movement used to be about creating the highest-% shot, which was the shot closest to the basket. Now, it's about creating the highest *value* offense:
40 three point shots = 120 possible points; @37.5% success (15 made), this is 45 pts
40 two point shots = 80 possible points, @55% success (22 made), this is 44 pts
So we get to watch teams/players miss 7 additional shots and be rewarded for it. It sucks. Misses suck. They suck to watch. The entire discourse should just be this: It sucks to watch individual professionals fail at their craft and be saved by a team strategy to game-theory the underlying mathematics of the scoring system.
I just want to agree that the 2014 Spurs were amazing. The beating that they put on the Heatles was brutal.
Something else that people should remember about them is that their leading scorer averaged 17 ppg in both the regular season and the playoffs. Their offense was unbelievably balanced.
Too many people forget that sports are showbusiness. As in, it's just for entertainment. If you take the fans away, it's just ten guys getting in some exercise. If the game isn't fun to watch, then what are we doing here? Why would people defend the right of the league to be not fun to watch?
That Kendrick Perkins complaint is weird. Almost every finals team has one starter that is worse than the other four. The 2007 Celtics had two clear Hall of Farmers on the team (Garnett, Allen) one who may get it (Pierce), and one guy with an outside chance who was fun to watch at the time (Rondo). Were the Jordan Bulls teams bad because Luc Longley wasn't exciting?
I've been harping about this to my NBA-loving friends. It's not so much the threes that are the problem, it's the fact that it's led to a lack of creativity elsewhere, and the on-the-court product has suffered as a result.. I think the ratings decline is due to something entirely different though: When the NBA crafted its new CBA, replete with various luxury taxes and whatnot to increase parity, it unwittingly killed the dynasties and rivalries that drive a lot of casual fan interest. There's no Bulls-Knicks, Spurs-Lakers, LeBron-Curry these days. No dynastic teams like the Bulls, Lakers or Warriors for fans to love or hate. For a league that is so personality-driven, this hurts the product, imo.
I think connected to this as well of that a lot of the recent European stars don't have the star power of a LeBron or Jordan among causal fans. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people think Jokic and Doncic are the same person.
I often wonder how the 03-04 Pistons defense would do in today’s game. They were holding teams to like 84 ppg. didn’t have a franchise player but Hamilton and Billups could run the iso. Hell, even Tayshaun Prince would do it every now and then. I loved that team.
I don't think that they could survive in today's game, they were built to stop the offenses of their era, like the Lakers who ran a very static triangle offense. They were also allowed to be much more physical. Defense still matters (at least since thy started letting them play defense midway through last season) but a great defensive team would look different.
This "culture war masquerading as sports debate" phenomenon is so tiring. I think another case is in soccer where Tottenham's manager insists on only playing an extremely aggressive style that creates a lot of scoring opportunities for both teams and, thus, a lot of variance in outcomes. With each game, the evidence becomes clearer that this isn't the best way to play. However, opinions on Tottenham's manager seem to map perfectly onto overall political leanings with conservative coded individuals and publications calling for him to be fired and progressives defending his style. There is no reason that a left leaning person should be opposed to pragmatic tactics or the inverse. People aren't actually analyzing the game, they're analyzing which position aligns with their tribe's outlook and defending it. It's BS.
Such a fun challenge for a game designer though. How to change the point system to recalibrate the dominant strategy? Solve this, reanimate one of the greatest games of all time.
As someone sympathetic to a lot of your grievances, I'll try to pitch you on the Knicks:
-Jalen Brunson is creative maestro. 48% of his shots are in the non-rim, non-3 area, and he makes them at an extraordinarily high rate using a combination of post moves (despite being 6'2", generously), dribble moves, fadeaways, and floaters.
-On Christmas, Mikal Bridges scored 41 points. He only took 9 3s and made it to the line all of one (1) time. It was ethical hooping and absolutely reminded me of the kind of pure shotmaking clinics McGrady, Kobe, etc. used to put on.
-KAT uses the 3PT shot as one of many weapons, but hardly goes overboard despite being a great shooter (yes, this has been the subject of some consternation among efficiency heads...despite him already being one of the most efficient high usage players in the NBA). Just 31% of his shots are from 3, with the rest being violent dunks, improvised midrange wizardry, and good old fashioned "I'm bigger and stronger than you" takes at the rim.
The team has the 2nd best offense in the league and may well finish 1st despite only being 22nd in 3PA! I'm biased, obviously, as a lifelong fan. But I've been enjoying them a lot this season specifically because they're very much a change of pace from, well, basically everything else you see around the league.
I returned to watching the Knicks after a 20-year hiatus (yes, judge me), and both last year’s defensive blanket and this year’s offensive explosion have been fun to watch, but the flow and passing from this year’s team is very special. Brunson’s 55 tonight to beat the Wizards is exciting in that old school way, but I like this team’s passing and cutting, even if it does lead to an open 3 :-)
And you didn’t even mention Anouby and Hart! Especially Hart, the professional pest every championship team needs.
I omitted Hart in the name of brevity, but yes he's absolutely an atypical, throwback player in his own right and I love watching him too.
Brunson's double-nickle was the epitome of what I was trying to describe here: he hit some 3s, but they mostly weren't falling so he had to resort to exactly the kind of old fashioned "fuck you, I'm better than you" mano-y-mano style Freddie accurately describes as a dying breed.
The Knicks are apparently the only team in the NBA that ranks in the top-5 in rim, midrange, and 3PT shotmaking this year (https://x.com/The_BBall_Index/status/1873418966028485040), and that absolutely comports with my eye-test.
Rather disappointing that solutions are not discussed. It’s easy to imagine rule changes that would de-incentivize three pointers (move the line back; eliminate the corner three; or just make it worth less than 3 points - with the limiting case being eliminating it entirely), but it’s harder to see what side effects this would have. Right now, if you look at a heatmap of where shots are taken, the density is split between the three point line and the paint. If you e.g. removed the three pointer entirely, would you then see a smooth gradient outward from the hoop? How steep would this be? What would the dominant play become? It’s not obvious to me.
Give me Showtime Michael, and Dr J, Bird and Magic, Barkley, the Mailman, etc. I loved 80s and 90s NBA. I can't watch now.
Full agreement. The point of comparison should not be Tracy McGrady hero-ball, which was often worse to watch than the current NBA.
You're absolutely putting your finger on why, throughout last year's playoffs, I didn't find the Celtics a compelling watch, but loved tuning in for the Mavericks--a team with two of the most inventive and creative stars in the league.
I disagree on the Kobe/McGrady approach but I only speak for me. But from its inception the 3 point shot was flawed because it is not 50% more challenging than a 17 footer. 3 points is too good a deal. The mystery is why it took Curry's arrival to crack the code when even Manute Bol knew the cheat code. As weird as MLB undervaluing OBP for its first 100 years.
People just used to like to watch and play games like they were, you know, games that are supposed to be fun to play and watch. It's not weird at all, just a relic of an extinct and better culture. Running sports with the same stat methods that runs banks ruins the product. People didn't do it because it sounded boring and shitty and they instinctively rejected it without thinking about it. They were derided as morons by the stat crowd, but they turned out to be right. Billy Bean is the bad guy in Moneyball.
As a point of semi-relevant comparison, slow pitch softball became utterly boring to play, as every player swung for the fences at all times. It got so bad that in some leagues, batters didn't run the bases after hitting a home run. New leagues formed that limited or prohibited home runs and those leagues became much more popular as they resembled the type of game that most people found fun and entertaining.
How about once a team misses X 3 pointers in a game, all subsequent 3 pointers count for 2 points.
I agree, it is definitely a league problem and not a team/coach/player problem. The latter triumvirate are paid to win, and you can’t expect them to prioritize anything else. And I’d submit that fans of winning teams are still entertained by the winning alone even if it isn’t necessarily visually or esthetically pleasing.
It’s a league problem. And like MLB with pitch clock, or hockey with delay of game, it will require a rule change to alter the incentive structure.
The easiest seems to be to move the 3 point line back, (and also eliminate corner 3’s). People with Steph range would still be rewarded, as they should be. But once you take 3 pt shooting percentage below 40% for the average chucker, the math will likely shift away from that being the coveted shot.
I don't think coaches universally prioritize winning. There is a trend where coaches will play with the tactics that are in vogue for the best teams even if they're not the best for their own team. By doing so they show that they "get it" and are able to keep their jobs through poor results or get jobs with better teams in the future. Thus we get a lot of teams playing the same way with varying levels of success. Especially true in the NBA where a lot of teams don't want to win.
Yeah. Agree with this. The incentive is to keep your job — I’m unconvinced that a league with 30 teams is really a laboratory of analytically rigorous strategies. It takes a while to test out a new system! It makes more sense to me that the Boston system beat the previous status quo and nobody has the balls to figure out something new. (Caveat that I haven’t watched much basketball the last few years.)
Curious what you think of the 2014 Spurs. At the time they were specifically praised for being as far from hero-ball as possible, and I gather that the common wisdom is that their style presaged current day NBA play. But they were quite fun to watch, and the movement felt very creative even though it was very optimized. Is the difference-maker just the fact that they were the only ones playing that way at the time?
Though maybe my input on what makes basketball entertaining is irrelevant. I don't think I stopped watching because the play changed; I stopped watching because the NBA is the only entertainment in my life that is constantly interrupted by advertising, and so I'm just less willing to sit down for a game.
The 2014 "beautiful game" Spurs are my favorite NBA team. I think a huge difference between the style of ball they played (which as you point out is the precursor to the present game) is that the aim of all that ball motion was to create the best shot possible, *wherever it happened to be on the court.* They weren't looking primarily to create an open three, which is what the purpose of all the ball motion is today.
Which is the ultimate distinction. Ball movement used to be about creating the highest-% shot, which was the shot closest to the basket. Now, it's about creating the highest *value* offense:
40 three point shots = 120 possible points; @37.5% success (15 made), this is 45 pts
40 two point shots = 80 possible points, @55% success (22 made), this is 44 pts
So we get to watch teams/players miss 7 additional shots and be rewarded for it. It sucks. Misses suck. They suck to watch. The entire discourse should just be this: It sucks to watch individual professionals fail at their craft and be saved by a team strategy to game-theory the underlying mathematics of the scoring system.
I just want to agree that the 2014 Spurs were amazing. The beating that they put on the Heatles was brutal.
Something else that people should remember about them is that their leading scorer averaged 17 ppg in both the regular season and the playoffs. Their offense was unbelievably balanced.
Too many people forget that sports are showbusiness. As in, it's just for entertainment. If you take the fans away, it's just ten guys getting in some exercise. If the game isn't fun to watch, then what are we doing here? Why would people defend the right of the league to be not fun to watch?
That Kendrick Perkins complaint is weird. Almost every finals team has one starter that is worse than the other four. The 2007 Celtics had two clear Hall of Farmers on the team (Garnett, Allen) one who may get it (Pierce), and one guy with an outside chance who was fun to watch at the time (Rondo). Were the Jordan Bulls teams bad because Luc Longley wasn't exciting?
I've been harping about this to my NBA-loving friends. It's not so much the threes that are the problem, it's the fact that it's led to a lack of creativity elsewhere, and the on-the-court product has suffered as a result.. I think the ratings decline is due to something entirely different though: When the NBA crafted its new CBA, replete with various luxury taxes and whatnot to increase parity, it unwittingly killed the dynasties and rivalries that drive a lot of casual fan interest. There's no Bulls-Knicks, Spurs-Lakers, LeBron-Curry these days. No dynastic teams like the Bulls, Lakers or Warriors for fans to love or hate. For a league that is so personality-driven, this hurts the product, imo.
I think connected to this as well of that a lot of the recent European stars don't have the star power of a LeBron or Jordan among causal fans. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people think Jokic and Doncic are the same person.
You hit the nail on the head. Great piece - perfect last line.
I often wonder how the 03-04 Pistons defense would do in today’s game. They were holding teams to like 84 ppg. didn’t have a franchise player but Hamilton and Billups could run the iso. Hell, even Tayshaun Prince would do it every now and then. I loved that team.
I don't think that they could survive in today's game, they were built to stop the offenses of their era, like the Lakers who ran a very static triangle offense. They were also allowed to be much more physical. Defense still matters (at least since thy started letting them play defense midway through last season) but a great defensive team would look different.
This "culture war masquerading as sports debate" phenomenon is so tiring. I think another case is in soccer where Tottenham's manager insists on only playing an extremely aggressive style that creates a lot of scoring opportunities for both teams and, thus, a lot of variance in outcomes. With each game, the evidence becomes clearer that this isn't the best way to play. However, opinions on Tottenham's manager seem to map perfectly onto overall political leanings with conservative coded individuals and publications calling for him to be fired and progressives defending his style. There is no reason that a left leaning person should be opposed to pragmatic tactics or the inverse. People aren't actually analyzing the game, they're analyzing which position aligns with their tribe's outlook and defending it. It's BS.
Angeball Forever. COYS
Such a fun challenge for a game designer though. How to change the point system to recalibrate the dominant strategy? Solve this, reanimate one of the greatest games of all time.
As someone sympathetic to a lot of your grievances, I'll try to pitch you on the Knicks:
-Jalen Brunson is creative maestro. 48% of his shots are in the non-rim, non-3 area, and he makes them at an extraordinarily high rate using a combination of post moves (despite being 6'2", generously), dribble moves, fadeaways, and floaters.
-On Christmas, Mikal Bridges scored 41 points. He only took 9 3s and made it to the line all of one (1) time. It was ethical hooping and absolutely reminded me of the kind of pure shotmaking clinics McGrady, Kobe, etc. used to put on.
-KAT uses the 3PT shot as one of many weapons, but hardly goes overboard despite being a great shooter (yes, this has been the subject of some consternation among efficiency heads...despite him already being one of the most efficient high usage players in the NBA). Just 31% of his shots are from 3, with the rest being violent dunks, improvised midrange wizardry, and good old fashioned "I'm bigger and stronger than you" takes at the rim.
The team has the 2nd best offense in the league and may well finish 1st despite only being 22nd in 3PA! I'm biased, obviously, as a lifelong fan. But I've been enjoying them a lot this season specifically because they're very much a change of pace from, well, basically everything else you see around the league.
I returned to watching the Knicks after a 20-year hiatus (yes, judge me), and both last year’s defensive blanket and this year’s offensive explosion have been fun to watch, but the flow and passing from this year’s team is very special. Brunson’s 55 tonight to beat the Wizards is exciting in that old school way, but I like this team’s passing and cutting, even if it does lead to an open 3 :-)
And you didn’t even mention Anouby and Hart! Especially Hart, the professional pest every championship team needs.
I omitted Hart in the name of brevity, but yes he's absolutely an atypical, throwback player in his own right and I love watching him too.
Brunson's double-nickle was the epitome of what I was trying to describe here: he hit some 3s, but they mostly weren't falling so he had to resort to exactly the kind of old fashioned "fuck you, I'm better than you" mano-y-mano style Freddie accurately describes as a dying breed.
The Knicks are apparently the only team in the NBA that ranks in the top-5 in rim, midrange, and 3PT shotmaking this year (https://x.com/The_BBall_Index/status/1873418966028485040), and that absolutely comports with my eye-test.
Rather disappointing that solutions are not discussed. It’s easy to imagine rule changes that would de-incentivize three pointers (move the line back; eliminate the corner three; or just make it worth less than 3 points - with the limiting case being eliminating it entirely), but it’s harder to see what side effects this would have. Right now, if you look at a heatmap of where shots are taken, the density is split between the three point line and the paint. If you e.g. removed the three pointer entirely, would you then see a smooth gradient outward from the hoop? How steep would this be? What would the dominant play become? It’s not obvious to me.
Looking forward to the fixes post! Great take. This is why Luka Doncic with a few more dunks is the future of the NBA.