Thinking Basketball is one of my favorite resources for basketball analysis. He recently made a video debunking myths about the modern game [1]. While yes, there’s far more analytics and knowledge in the game, it hasn’t lead to monotony or poor quality. It’s instead resulted in a Cambrian explosion of tactics, counter tactics, and really diverse team strategies. But the commentary and analysis in mainstream basketball hasn’t caught up, so your average viewer is watching a chess match but not even understanding the basic moves. Which leads to frustration and confusion.
> your average viewer is watching a chess match but not even understanding the basic moves
Your average viewer isn't tuning in to watch a chess match. You'll notice that professional chess doesn't have the same viewership as basketball.
Regardless of the mathematical strategies, it sucks to watch a bunch of three pointers getting missed. The NBA team average is 36% on 38 attempts per game. Thus, in an average game, there are 76 three-point attempts and 49 misses.
The worst is when they take and miss a three-pointer early in the shot clock, maybe even from the logo. Shoot, clunk, possession over, yawn.
> Green talked about a recent Warriors game against the Los Angeles Lakers and how it was "refreshing" to go against a thinker like LeBron James, who is notorious for finding weaknesses and exploiting them.
> "Every possession is some type of chess move," Green said. "You don't get that today in the NBA, often. ... You don't just get that on a regular basis. It's just who can run faster, who can hit more 3s. It's no substance. I think it's very boring."
I love the modern game. I just think the pendulum has swung a tiny bit too far toward 3s in the past 3-4 years, that's all. Just a nudge in the other direction.
My ideal would be to try changing 2s and 3s to 3s and 4s. But that will never happen.
I love thinking basketball but think he completely missed the point here. An apt quote is when he's talking about how much strategy the game has and says "its like high speed chess." The problem is that people dont want to watch high speed chess. The NBAs job is to be as entertaining as possible, not just as strategic as possible. Like it or not iso plays are entertaining even if theyre "bad basketball" in terms of winning. He says the only thing thats changed is that people take less mid range shots and more 3s as if thats a good thing but the league has replaced entertaining sets where you have to actually beat your defender with shooting contests(even if you have to run around a lot or step back to get the shot off) and the product has suffered because of it.
I think defense is a lot more interesting now and the media has done a horrible job capitalizing on that but end of the day people care more about offense.
This article presents a readable overview of today’s NBA trends, but IMO is too absolute in its judgment. Basketball is not a solved sport. There is still innovation, for example with OKC’s historically good defense that relies on playing 5 smaller but faster players. There are still good all-around players. There are still people that hit a lot of mid range shots. We have trends going the other way, sure, but they have their own set of tradeoffs and are neither a total solution nor totally embraced in the NBA. Teams will continue to evolve based on the talents of people at their disposal and their own innovative ideas.
In my opinion, the real problem with the NBA is that we no longer get the marquee matchups in the Finals that we used to during the 90s and 00s, mainly because the season is too long. An 82-game grind isn’t sustainable - it practically guarantees that stars like Giannis, Luka, or Jokic (or their key teammates) will get injured to the playoffs or not at all.
The fact that we’ve never seen Embiid vs. Giannis in the ECF, and that we’ll likely never get Giannis vs. Jokic, the two best players during the 2020s, in the NBA Finals says everything you need to know and it's a bummer.
Aside from 2021, I can’t remember another truly competitive finals where both teams had a real shot at winning. Maybe Boston wasn’t expected to fall so hard against Golden State, but matchups like DEN vs. MIA, BOS vs. DAL, or LAL vs. MIA felt lopsided—one team stacked with talent, the other never really standing a chance.
At this point, injuries, not players or teams, are deciding who moves forward.
"Only 3s and layups" is the current easiest strategy to build a proficient offense, but it's certainly not the only way.
You don't even have to look far for an example. The Denver Nuggets won a championship a year and a half ago while nearly attempting the fewest 3s in the league.
> In the past, the team built its roster around a big name like Shaq. Most of the offense were from the center. This has now changed...
Is the author not aware of Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, (Wembanyama... soon)? The winners of the last 6 MVP awards? If there were enough talented bigs to go around, every team in the league would be building around them because it works really, really well.
It seems like a very brief and abrupt article. I can understand the part about strategy of three pointers. But how does all the technology and analytics actually change the game, besides "improving form"? Has it allowed better calculation shots with the best odds for a given player? Has it discovered other team's weaknesses to exploit? Etc
When analyzing non-computing problems through a computer science lens, the human element merely muddies the path to a concrete answer. It’s best to avoid that ambiguity and complexity.
This reads as someone who looks at data but doesn’t actually play basketball, coach basketball or generally know basketball. Numbers can only tell you so much, and 2025 Celtics and the rise of Steph have led to more 3s but the sport of basketball is not as predictable as the author suggests. For example, look at the college game, which doesn’t reflect this trend as much as the NBA does.
It's basically just seems like a riff off of a Bloomberg article published yesterday, titled "The NBA Has Fallen Into an Efficiency Trap", without any of the details in the article, besides the 3-pointer trend chart, which is basically a carbon copy. I'm not even sure this article is suggestive of someone simply looking at the data. Given the close timing, they probably just read the Bloomberg article, or a different blog inspired by the Bloomberg article, as opposed to just coming to this conclusion as a NBA aficionado.
College players are much more inconsistent because they're younger and less experienced. There are not many 20 year olds you can depend on to consistently make 3s. There are also a lot more teams which spreads the talent pool around. In my opinion, it amounts to a more exciting product to watch, even if it's less polished.
I play and watch a lot of basketball and this article seems to be written by someone who doesn't do either.
The idea that players are more specialized is wrong. In the 90s there were plenty of defense-only players like Denis Rodman and Ben Wallace; they might not start in today's NBA, let alone make all-star teams, because they are too one-dimensional.
Disagree. Also watch and play a lot. And also think the article is poorly written, amateur analysis FWIW.
That said, Wallace was 2000s, not 90s, and they were specialists whose exception proved the rule. Basketball then was much more positional, so you did have specialists in that you expected your PF to rebound, your SG to shoot, etc. Considering the modern game is much more positionless, it is surprising that in relation that foundation, there is much so much more focus on specialized skills (3pt shooting, wing defense, paint protection, offensive rebounding).
Also agree that Thinking Basketball is a terrific podcast.
This blog post was likely inspired by an article published by Bloomberg yesterday, about how basketball had fallen into an efficiency trap, centered around avoiding mid-range shots in favor of threes and high percentage close range shots.
> Recently, teams have realized three-pointers have higher point value despite their lower scoring percentage.
This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?
Disclaimer: I have only extremely limited exposure to this topic (I worked in sports analytics, attached to a team, quite awhile ago), so take it all as heavy speculation:
1) It seems like there’s a natural resistance to change driven by loss aversion; you see a similar pattern in the NFL with decisions like punting vs. going for it on fourth down. Even if the expected value is positive, the failures are given far more weight than the successes.
2) In general, there's a lot of skepticism toward analytics until they reach a tipping point where they’re impossible to ignore, at which point they take over completely and introduce shifts like the ones shown here.
Moneyball, for example, has plenty of anecdotes about front office staff and coaches dismissing analytics in favor of “gut instincts”—and that was in 2002! In baseball, a sport which adopted advanced analytics far faster than others (obviously in no small part due to teams like that As roster).
Even today, plenty of NBA personalities push back against analytics—Reggie Miller, for example, has been pretty vocal about his distaste for them. He's obviously increasingly alone in that opinion, but it can be really hard to break old habits.
I'm guessing that it's more complicated than that. Possibly when the specifications for a basketball court were laid out, the 3-point line was intentionally drawn where it would be a risky shot. And the coaching/playing culture developed with that mindset.
But since then people have gotten at least a little bit taller. We developed more ways in which to train and grow our physical strength. Training got more intense, improving results. And more subtle changes along those lines, which are micro-changes that accrue over time, and often hard to notice.
It can take a while for someone, anyone, to realize that all the various changes have made what was intended to be a risky maneuver into a viable play. It seems obvious in retrospect, but until someone points it out, it's one of those avenues of thought requires you to shake off what you've known your whole life before you can accept it.
Could also be that none of that was relevant, but it's worth considering and keeping in mind.
One possibility is that there are more players who can make 3-point shots at a high enough percentage to make this true. Also, it depends on how good the defense is vs. 2-point shots; if that gets tighter, then the 3-point shot becomes more valuable.
Which also suggests how things may continue to evolve; the best defense vs. 3-point shots probably compromises your defense vs. 2-point shots, and eventually some team will "realize" that they can do better with _fewer_ 3-point shots.
Further complication comes from rebounds; the player taking the 3-point shot is less likely to be able to get the rebound if he misses, relative to a player trying to dunk it. So, the math is not trivial, and it depends on what the other team is expecting/guarding against, which might make it a non-linear system (i.e. constantly evolving over time).
There was a time when chess theory said that there was one perfect, optimal opening, and anything else was a mistake. It was sort of true, until everyone took it as a given, and then doing another opening meant your opponent wasn't as likely to be prepared for it.
No, because hand-checking was allowed back then. Smaller guards like Mark Price for example, would go off in some games but stronger, bigger defenders would ultimate shut them down because they could feel and follow their movements with their hands. Now, if you so much as think too much of a player, they call a foul - supposedly to help the offense and make the game more entertaining. The result? A watered-down product where any team can win on any given night, but no one cares because defense is nonexistent during the regular season.
The only basketball that really matters happens in the playoffs; the rest is irrelevant and says nothing about the true power rankings.
Coaches and owners are not rewarded for innovation. Fans strongly discourage taking bets that could fail.
And then there’s preparing for the strategy change. Training, practice, and coaching time is extremely limited. How much do you re-allocate to this new approach? You don’t just tell players to take more 3s, it’s more complicated than that.
So in traditional innovators dilemma fashion, it’s much easier to follow when you see that the new way works. It’s easier to convince everyone (fans, coaches, players, owners) to get on board when you can point to Steph Curry doing it right.
"Really basic math"? Do you think NBA coaches reached this conclusion like this:
1. A player can throw X 2-points in a game.
2. Or he can throw Y 3-points in a game.
3. 3Y > 2X, so we should just throw 3-points all the time.
It's absolutely not what happened. And the reason teams didn't discovery the current strategy decades earlier was absolutely not that they couldn't do basic math.
4th down attempts in American football come to mind. Twenty years ago they were rare; mathematically they should be common.[1] Coaches have shifted with the math but not quite as dramatically as it suggests.
It’s a bit of a dodge. In the 80s and 90s, there were a handful of players making 40% of threes and most shooters were closer to 30% so the math didn’t used to be the same.
Stolen bases in baseball is similar to this. In 2023, MLB made two rule changes with stealing being at all time lows (and them thinking fans love stolen bases): 1) Limiting the number of pickoff attempts by pitchers, and 2) Slight enlarging of the bases. Take a look at the jump[0].
It's been interesting to follow some changes teams have made the past two seasons where teams are figuring out how to better time steals when a pitch is thrown, and which players to go after. For example, pitchers with slow releases and bad catchers.
Base running aggressiveness that some teams have been doing as well. The value of going 1st to 3rd on a single is massive and getting speed, and judgement and wanting your players to do that will be more and more valued.
I actually searched "base running aggressiveness" to see what articles had to say, and two months ago Statcast put in a new stat called "Net Bases Gained"[1]. Crazy.
This mimics the changes in NBA talked about here, where value in players changes over times when new ways of playing show their value. It's kind of like the 4 minute mile though, where until someone went out and was able to run under 4 minutes / make all those 3s / run that aggressive on the base paths / go for it on more 4th downs, teams are scared to be the first.
I don't really understand the comparison. The game changes with the rules. The meta shifts with the analytics.
But stealing bases has long been a science. It was something I admired about college level development of players in the 2000's - stealing bases went from fundamental to advanced and well beyond "just let the fastest guys do their thing." UVA's coach had a saying like "every player on this team will be capable of stealing bases"
Ah, this is the current grouse about the league, that it is all pace and space and somehow the art is lost. Sports go through eras. I will simply assume the author was not alive to watch Pat Reilly’s Knicks play their version of juego bonito, but while the over reliance on threes can make individual games hard to watch, the league has more talent that I can remember and there are so many fun players. It is bold to declare basketball is now deterministic in Year Two of Wemby and with all the other people capable of doing things we thought unique a generation ago. Plus there are some great minds as coaches right now. I think Spolestra, Daigneault and Mazzula will have something to say about how the game is played.
E sports actually gave me a lot of insight into regular sports which decreased my interest. The real power is with the league, not the players. And they steer the sport to promote business engagement. If the sport is hyper optimized and boring they will change the rules. If teams from smaller markets keep winning they will do what they need to, to help other teams win.
Playing sports is a fun activity to get exercise, it’s not worth getting emotionally invested in teams or leagues.
I don’t think this is a particularly well written article, but I sort of agree with the sentiment. Basketball just isn’t THAT complex and the talent pool is homogenous enough that most teams can find these archetypes and build rosters that get you to the playoffs.
That said, trends are cyclical. Look at the role of the running back in the NFL. There will always be outlier players like Shaq who will buck the trends and exploit matchups.
“The NBA talent pool is homogenous” is the new worst hn take I’ve seen.
If “most teams can build rosters that get to the playoffs” is true it’s only because the NBA playoffs are so big. I’d assume it’s false based on any interpretation of “can build” you pick.
Realistically only a handful of teams compete for a championship in any given span of years.
While there is obvious winning strategy, rule changes around salary caps have already limited any one team's ability to dominate like GSW did for a couple years.
They mention Boston Celtics, but they are only a single time champion, and we can see plenty other teams with good chances to beat them.
And I'd argue we are moving further away from specialization: now centers are required to shoot 3 pointers at a high clip and high percentage, they have high number of assists (it's not just Jokic, look at Iannis, Sabonis...).
And centers need to defend smaller, faster players when switching, just like smaller players need to defend centers.
Danny Green is probably the father of [the 3-and-D] model, with his 40% career three-point field goal percentage and he also made into all-defensive team.
Obviously people shot fewer 3s back then, but as far as I remember, Bruce Bowen was really the first 3-and-D player back in the 90s.
Gone are the days of an all-around player. There is no longer a need for a player who does everything. Look at players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James (early career); they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Not sure how true that is. People sometimes call the modern style "heliocentric" - one star who makes the offense work, surrounded by a bunch of role players. These star players often do basically everything, albeit most are better at some things than others. But that's always been true, stars in the old days were not always perfectly balanced.
And stars these days have a ton of variability. Look at the best players in the league - Jokic, Shai, Giannis, Luka, Embiid (when healthy..) - those guys all play very different styles of basketball, and that's awesome!
But I do agree with the overall point of the article. I find it annoying when I'm watching a game and so many possessions there's just not much happening. A couple passes around the perimeter, someone jacks up a moderately contested 3, rinse and repeat. Not the most exciting basketball. That doesn't happen every play, and there's still plenty of exciting plays and players, but it happens a lot more than it used to.
One of my favorite ridiculous stats. Bruce Bowen had one year where he shot better from 3 than he did on free throws. He was a dreadful shooter, but somehow he taught himself to be passable at this one specific skill, corner 3s.
Danny Green is not the father of the 3-and-d model, he's like the great nephew. Not only Bruce Bowen but you also have Shane Battier, and can also go back to Michael Cooper.
Usage rates also show there is still plenty of heliocentrism so Copernicus remains happy
Yes. The season is so long it gets boring tbh. I never watch the season to begin with only the playoffs but a big reason is there’s so many games it’s not really interesting to watch that many games. But if it was half as long and half as many games in the season I probably would watch every one.
Not a particularly well written article, but I haven't ever really believed that jacking up threes is a global maximum in the basketball optimization problem.
For example, if you have a team that posts up in the middle, actually moves the ball around and not just around the perimeter, and utilizes the shot clock well, this is going to wear down a team by forcing them to play rough defense, reducing the effectiveness of the three point shot over the course of the game.
Part of the reason of the decline e of interesting basketball is the insane relaxation of rules. Offensive players can travel, carry, flop, ect. all the while knowing that defensive players are handicapped in the contact they can initiate.
I think this article doesn’t do the sport justice. Modern basketball is amazing and light years ahead of where it was even ten years ago. Watch “explain one play” on YouTube and you’ll begin to understand how much thought goes into even 5 seconds of normal basketball. The craziest part is how teams now days know how to punish a mistake, and virtually every point comes from very slight mistakes happening. Being too slow to close out, miscommunication on the dribble handoff, size mismatch, etc… in this way it’s like chess where you make threats but they’re just threats until your opponent commits an error. You still have to be able to punish the error.
A big conversation I see now days is what’s “wrong” with the modern nba, with too many 3’s being the most common refrain. That’s silly. I will tell you what’s actually wrong about the nba. They’re playing the most amazing basketball the worlds ever seen, but the entertainment ecosystem around them hasn’t changed at all. Literally they just talk about the stupidest stuff, like who’s the GOAT, instead of actually educating their audiences about the incredible level of play that exists now days.
You could argue that people aren’t interested in seeing that, but I don’t think we will ever know until it’s been tried. Instead, sports pundits are just being negative about the sport and filling the airwaves with low effort, toxic cliches while providing zero information about the brilliance we’re seeing. As to why I think people would actually care to know, I think it’s because once you’re exposed to this stuff it sticks and then you can’t unsee it. You start to notice the patterns and enjoy the game again.
So anyways sorry for the rant but it drives me nuts. Basketball is so cool right now once you start to get what you’re actually seeing and players can be so smart too. It’s amazing.
Wow, I hadn't watched basketball in ages, so I followed your recommendation and watched a random "Explain one Play" video [0].
The narration is excellent, and if all games contain amazing stuff like this one, I may just start watching NBA in the future (or at least follow that YT channel).
>A big conversation I see now days is what’s “wrong” with the modern nba, with too many 3’s being the most common refrain. That’s silly. I will tell you what’s actually wrong about the nba. They’re playing the most amazing basketball the worlds ever seen, but the entertainment ecosystem around them hasn’t changed at all. Literally they just talk about the stupidest stuff, like who’s the GOAT, instead of actually educating their audiences about the incredible level of play that exists now days.
100% agree on this. NBA coverage, especially on ESPN is garbage. Not to mention how expensive it is to (legally) watch the NBA. If they actually had better coverage explaining different facets of the game, and analyzing it, maybe people would appreciate what they're seeing more.
I agree. As someone who watched Magic, Bird and MJ in their prime, I think the modern basketball is at much higher level of both skill and athleticism. The level of "4D chess" going on is incredible and very enjoyable to watch!
I do not like the bullying aspect of it though. Offensive players are ramming straight into defenders, shoving the them mid-jump to get a rebound etc.
I haven't looked at the NBA in more than 20 years and recently started watching it again. I was shocked. Not necessarily by all the three point shots, but more about the carrying of the ball, the multiple extra steps that players take before dunking or laying up, and getting extra free throws when it's the offensive players who rams into a still standing defender. If I want to watch rugby or ice hockey, then I watch rugby or ice hockey, this jumping into defenders has nothing to do with basketball if you'd ask me. And this Donkic trade to the Lakers because of gambling money, ughh... it's an ugly organisation.
Basketball rules will change. It's becoming a more widespread view that the corner 3 should be eliminated, and perhaps the 3 line moved back in general. In the meantime, threat of 3s makes proactive defense more necessary and that's exciting to watch. Defense has evolved so much since the Jordan era. Some matches are not exciting right now, though.
This article has reduced it too far. Yes, the game has gotten optimized... for the moment. However a few years ago the complaint was that it was only about 3s. Now it's about 3s... and defense... and floor spread... and layups... and small ball... and big men who can shoot the three... and rim protectors... and it goes on and on. There's no one thing and the number of combinations of tactics, players, and circumstances make it pretty dynamic.
If there's any problem with basketball right now it's that Adam Silver is trying too many radical things and leaving history behind in uncomfortable ways. I mean, he's talking about going to 10 minute quarters! That will invalidate basically every record ever. I could go on and on, but the NBA game itself is not broken.
Interesting to see this pop up on HN because this topic has dominated some sports circles over the last year- the NBA has become unwatchable for some, as teams like last year’s champion, the Boston Celtics, just throw up three’s constantly, regardless if they feel confident that they’ll go in.
This article was written by someone who has very little knowledge or appreciation of the history of the game. The NBA has always been a league of specialists revolving around a few superstars with a couple of “glue guys” thrown into the mix.
Honestly, this post comes off that way. Or you have a different timeline of what you consider always. Jordan basically invented the modern superstar. Sure, you had the Wilts and Dr J's back in the day, but they dominated based on their talent, not because the game was meticulously planned around maximizing their specific capabilities.
> but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
nobody who has watched basketball would say "guarded defense" or "caught rebounds". I saw "throw 3 pointers" elsewhere in this thread, which is similar, though I'm not sure if that's said by the article author.
Imagine if someone commented on the state of tech today and said that programmers "type code programs".
> In the end, it’s all about optimizing every ball possession.
While I partially agree with the article's stance, you can't optimize for this[^1] or this[^2] because they’re unpredictable—historically great outliers that defy averages and planning.
The point about 3 pointer shots being worth more than 2 pointer shots is generally true. However, in the playoffs, when the going gets tough, usually the jitters set in and the teams hit a lot less 3 pointers than in the regular season. Especially with the season on the line in endgames[1]. Which means: In those cases easy baskets and also mid-range shots (from people who are used to making those) regain their importance. Thus, if you have your playoffs in mind, don't forget to plan for those middies!
[1]the worst were the conference finals 2018 game 7s: Cavs (9/35); Celtics (7/39). Rockets (9/44); Warriors (9/33).
> However, in the playoffs, when the going gets tough, usually the jitters set in and the teams hit a lot less 3 pointers than in the regular season.
Is that stats based or anecdotal?
Link to random person on reddit, but it seems like shooting percentage overall drops due to getting rid of bad teams in the playoffs. And 3pt and fg are affected equally. By about 1% - ie not that much.
This has many "not even wrong" observations, and if it was, is so surface-level as to be meaningless regardless. It'd be like reading how software engineering has evolved into a game of prompting AI.
> The Golden State Warriors, led by Stephen Curry, probably jump-started this trend with 34 three-pointer attempts per game in the 2018-19 season, twice as much from five years ago.
No, it was Daryll Morey's Houston Rockets around the James Harden era, who started advanced analytics player selection and shot selection. They started with enormous video analytics and Morey runs the yearly Analytics Sports Conference.
Moreyball was way more advanced than Moneyball. You go by the three and die by the three. He still didn't win a championship though.
I find basketball (College and NBA) incredibly hard to watch. Beyond the basic necessary ball handling skills, the games are largely decided by the acting for the refs.
I much prefer the street ball route: make it a contact sport and stop the flopping.
This happens at times in all sports. The NFL is a prime example. QBs were lighting up big, heavy defenses with deep passes. Then teams ran two high safeties to prevent this. This year, offenses adjusted again to run more against the smaller linebackers and nickel/dime packages.
With the quantification of sport, it has becoming increasingly common for people who only look at the statistics to assume that some global strategic minima has been achieved. In reality, in every competitive invasion-based game strategies adapt.
The adaption varies by sport - without going into the weeds, basketball is less random than other invasion sports so there has been typically been a higher premia on player talent so you see high levels of strategic adaption to individual players...by contrast, you don't see this in soccer to the same degree, apart from the top one or two players - but it happens all the same. For some reason, the assumption is that without quantification none of this stuff would be obvious...but if you look at the history of almost every invasion sport there have been strategic adaptions over years/decades/centuries because this stuff is obvious to people playing it.
To be clear, this doesn't happen in non-invasion sports. There is no strategic adaption so you see interesting things like the ability to compare statistical records over long periods (to a certain degree, over very long periods the rules often change and there can be adaption due to generally increasing physical capacity of athletes).
In other words, there is always someone who wants to spoil the fun. The beauty of invasion games is that there is no global minima (and there is a profound lack of joy in non-invasion sports when someone has a higher level than the competition, and just annihilates everyone every match).
Maybe the solution is with a different type of 3D model, namely the Wilson 3D printed basketball. It has more drag than the regulation basketball, making long shots more difficult. This could restore the balance between long field goals and shots near the basket.
Teams try to win, but basketball as a sport is entertainment. The opposing teams actually work together to put on a great show for the fans. If those fans don't want to see an endless series of 3-point shots, basketball will indeed change its rules.
We see this a lot in football as well. Some say it's "lost its flair", I still can't tell if it's rose tinted glasses or if truly something was lost in with the omnipresence of data-driven optimisation. I tend towards the latter.
Professional athletes are freaks of nature being given millions of dollars to optimize for the problem. If you give them an unopposed chance to score, you're going to have very unfun sports.
The same problem is happening in baseball pitching and football kicking.
Even if true this has nothing to do with the value of the sport to the spectator or the competitor. Seeing world-class athletes push themselves to their physical limits is intrinsically exciting even if everyone is on the same page on how to win.
Nothing to do? If that were true, Olympic weightlifting would be a primetime sport.
The strategy, drama, and player celebrity are all part of what makes a popular spectator sport. Lots of casual viewers found the recent Superbowl to be boring because of the early runaway score, despite lots of great athleticism on display.
And of course it's a tautology that "true fans" will always find something to enjoy.
You mean, a free throw is a chance shot that when missed awards the defense?
Seems like that would have a huge impact on end of game strategy.
It would change the “in the paint” strategy—maybe defense would foul earlier to avoid the 2+1? Hoping instead to split the 2, 1-1 with a miss. Of course, the centers and forwards, who typically aren’t great free throw shooters, are gonna get the ball less. Where does the play go? 3pt land, where it’s way more risky to foul.
I read something about Go - that very unusual (maybe even considered bad) playing could beat the super-AIs. They are so tuned to opponents in a "typical" style, that they don't know how to beat a player outside this distribution.
Maybe an NBA team will come up with something like that.
I'd be interested in seeing a link to this. Decades ago, playing defensive "computer chess" used to be a relatively optimal strategy against Chess AIs.
However, I believe Kasparov famously tried to employ this tactic against Deep Blue but by that time it wasn't particularly viable.
I can't speak for go, but I've seen beginners get an edge in other strategy games by playing a very unusual strategy. The trouble is, it doesn't tend to last - it turns out either that their strategy really is weak, or that it's viable but they don't have the ability to follow up on the early edge they gained. I can imagine a similar thing might happen with sports strategy.
i forgot what year but the year the spurs won the championship against lebron would be unusual today. tons of passing not necessarily for the 3 but to just dislodge the defense enough for a guaranteed bucket
The author does not know basketball, either watching or playing, which is evident from their claims and from their language.
> Players are no longer do-it-alls; they are now given specialized roles.
> they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Anyone who even watches games would instinctively use different language. Nobody in basketball speaks this way.
As far as the veracity, I'd really need to see some data.
First, nothing in cutting edge, 3-and-D basketball says to stop playing defense. Defense is the D in 3-and-D.
As just one counter-example to the author's claims, big players - centers and power forwards - have become more generalized. Instead of just playing near the basket on offense and defense, many now handle the ball, pass, and also shoot from outside - the old-style guys who lack those skills have taken big pay cuts. The primary ball-handler for the author's local Golden State Warriors is Draymond Green, their center. The best player in the world is a center renowned especially for their passing, Nikola Jokic.
Wing players (small forwards and shooting guards) do it all. The local Golden State Warriors also have Steph Curry, the best shooter ever and an excellent ball-handler and passer. And they recently acquired Jimmy Butler, an all-star all-around player; here is the coach:
"Jimmy, he's a real deal," Kerr said. "I mean, just a complete basketball player, methodical, under control all the time, plays at his own pace, never turns it over, sees the game and then can get to the line frequently. Great closer, not in the traditional sense where he's going to be Kevin Durant and make four straight midrange jumpers, but it's more of a complete game. Get to the line, make the right pass, get somebody else an open look, get a defensive stop, get a rebound. He's a fantastic player."
What's changed in the NBA is that 3-point shooting has become more valued, partly supported by analytics, partly because Steph Curry redefined what is possible for 3-point shooting for both playing and for being a star: Before Curry, every kid wanted to be Michael Jordan or others who made miraculous drives to the basket through crowds; after Curry, kids were heaving up shots from ridiculous distances, just like their hero.
You won't be surprised to learn that many people say, 'it's not like the old days', and are debating changing the rules to make everyone play like they did 20 years ago.
> Hi, I'm NT (Nabaraj T), a full-stack engineer in Northern California. ... ten years of professional experience
> Besides software development, my interests are in embedded circuits and astronomy. I have started my startup to research space technologies. When not tangled with 1s and 0s, I usually watch football, cheering on Chelsea.
I wouldn't be that pessimistic. Just like Stephen Curry discovered the value of the three-point shot, someone will come along and spot an opportunity by going against the grain of today's paradigm. Perhaps an AlphaGo for basketball will help to find it.
I don't think that will happen broadly, there will be physical freaks like Wembanyama or players with extreme talent like Jokic that will create teams with unique edges, but the mid range jumper is dead and it's a game of 3 pointers and dunks forever now.
Wish OP had presented some data beyond "people are shooting more threes". From the bit of basketball youtube I've watched, there seems to be a bevy of data. I roll my eyes a bit at announcements like "he's the first person ever to have X points, Y assists and Z steals in 3 quarters" but they are pulling that data from somewhere.
Would be really interesting to read about team records when they field a bunch of specialized players vs generalized players (due to injuries or foul trouble). That would be far more convincing.
hardwaregeek|1 year ago
[1]: https://youtu.be/fp4but75EjY?si=YdOqZZ5-sH6lQHd9
lapcat|1 year ago
Your average viewer isn't tuning in to watch a chess match. You'll notice that professional chess doesn't have the same viewership as basketball.
Regardless of the mathematical strategies, it sucks to watch a bunch of three pointers getting missed. The NBA team average is 36% on 38 attempts per game. Thus, in an average game, there are 76 three-point attempts and 49 misses.
The worst is when they take and miss a three-pointer early in the shot clock, maybe even from the logo. Shoot, clunk, possession over, yawn.
Draymond Green just said that the modern game is rarely a chess match. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/43860581/no-substance
> Green talked about a recent Warriors game against the Los Angeles Lakers and how it was "refreshing" to go against a thinker like LeBron James, who is notorious for finding weaknesses and exploiting them.
> "Every possession is some type of chess move," Green said. "You don't get that today in the NBA, often. ... You don't just get that on a regular basis. It's just who can run faster, who can hit more 3s. It's no substance. I think it's very boring."
bballfan133|1 year ago
1) That people who don't enjoy what they see are just unsophisticated.
2) That today's basketball is better because players have more skill and plays are more complex. I don't think that's the point at all.
I've personally found it hard to sit through games this season - it feels like there isn't much at stake.
What happens in the first quarter is a mere blip. And even in the fourth, it seems like just which shots happen to go in by chance.
I feel like the Thinking Basketball approach might be exactly what's unenjoyable - devaluing individual moments for the sake of theory.
gfunk911|1 year ago
My ideal would be to try changing 2s and 3s to 3s and 4s. But that will never happen.
HDThoreaun|1 year ago
I think defense is a lot more interesting now and the media has done a horrible job capitalizing on that but end of the day people care more about offense.
ecocentrik|1 year ago
bongodongobob|1 year ago
meisel|1 year ago
atmosx|1 year ago
The fact that we’ve never seen Embiid vs. Giannis in the ECF, and that we’ll likely never get Giannis vs. Jokic, the two best players during the 2020s, in the NBA Finals says everything you need to know and it's a bummer.
Aside from 2021, I can’t remember another truly competitive finals where both teams had a real shot at winning. Maybe Boston wasn’t expected to fall so hard against Golden State, but matchups like DEN vs. MIA, BOS vs. DAL, or LAL vs. MIA felt lopsided—one team stacked with talent, the other never really standing a chance.
At this point, injuries, not players or teams, are deciding who moves forward.
PpEY4fu85hkQpn|1 year ago
You don't even have to look far for an example. The Denver Nuggets won a championship a year and a half ago while nearly attempting the fewest 3s in the league.
> In the past, the team built its roster around a big name like Shaq. Most of the offense were from the center. This has now changed...
Is the author not aware of Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, (Wembanyama... soon)? The winners of the last 6 MVP awards? If there were enough talented bigs to go around, every team in the league would be building around them because it works really, really well.
epolanski|1 year ago
But still data-lization is taking the fun out of basketball, that's for sure.
anon84873628|1 year ago
chefandy|1 year ago
dang|1 year ago
jordanmorgan10|1 year ago
TeaBrain|1 year ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-14/forget-do...
bdangubic|1 year ago
there is absolutely no sport today that is as predictable as nba. check this next thursday 2/20, boston is playing philly
- boston will score between 108 and 125 points
- they will attempt between 48 and 58 3's
- they will make betwee 19 and 25 of them
I can make another 5 of these, they will be true as it is always all the same these days
wsatb|1 year ago
College players are much more inconsistent because they're younger and less experienced. There are not many 20 year olds you can depend on to consistently make 3s. There are also a lot more teams which spreads the talent pool around. In my opinion, it amounts to a more exciting product to watch, even if it's less polished.
deeg|1 year ago
The idea that players are more specialized is wrong. In the 90s there were plenty of defense-only players like Denis Rodman and Ben Wallace; they might not start in today's NBA, let alone make all-star teams, because they are too one-dimensional.
A good counter to these arguments is made on the Thinking Basketball podcast. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fp4but75EjY
darkerside|1 year ago
That said, Wallace was 2000s, not 90s, and they were specialists whose exception proved the rule. Basketball then was much more positional, so you did have specialists in that you expected your PF to rebound, your SG to shoot, etc. Considering the modern game is much more positionless, it is surprising that in relation that foundation, there is much so much more focus on specialized skills (3pt shooting, wing defense, paint protection, offensive rebounding).
Also agree that Thinking Basketball is a terrific podcast.
TeaBrain|1 year ago
m2024|1 year ago
[deleted]
Xenoamorphous|1 year ago
This was such an eye-opener for me. A high-stakes sport like basketball/the NBA went on for decades without realising the simple math that three pointers are more valuable than two-pointers if you just do the basic math. How many areas in our lives are yet to be optimised with really basic math?
BoxFour|1 year ago
1) It seems like there’s a natural resistance to change driven by loss aversion; you see a similar pattern in the NFL with decisions like punting vs. going for it on fourth down. Even if the expected value is positive, the failures are given far more weight than the successes.
2) In general, there's a lot of skepticism toward analytics until they reach a tipping point where they’re impossible to ignore, at which point they take over completely and introduce shifts like the ones shown here.
Moneyball, for example, has plenty of anecdotes about front office staff and coaches dismissing analytics in favor of “gut instincts”—and that was in 2002! In baseball, a sport which adopted advanced analytics far faster than others (obviously in no small part due to teams like that As roster).
Even today, plenty of NBA personalities push back against analytics—Reggie Miller, for example, has been pretty vocal about his distaste for them. He's obviously increasingly alone in that opinion, but it can be really hard to break old habits.
ysavir|1 year ago
But since then people have gotten at least a little bit taller. We developed more ways in which to train and grow our physical strength. Training got more intense, improving results. And more subtle changes along those lines, which are micro-changes that accrue over time, and often hard to notice.
It can take a while for someone, anyone, to realize that all the various changes have made what was intended to be a risky maneuver into a viable play. It seems obvious in retrospect, but until someone points it out, it's one of those avenues of thought requires you to shake off what you've known your whole life before you can accept it.
Could also be that none of that was relevant, but it's worth considering and keeping in mind.
rossdavidh|1 year ago
Which also suggests how things may continue to evolve; the best defense vs. 3-point shots probably compromises your defense vs. 2-point shots, and eventually some team will "realize" that they can do better with _fewer_ 3-point shots.
Further complication comes from rebounds; the player taking the 3-point shot is less likely to be able to get the rebound if he misses, relative to a player trying to dunk it. So, the math is not trivial, and it depends on what the other team is expecting/guarding against, which might make it a non-linear system (i.e. constantly evolving over time).
There was a time when chess theory said that there was one perfect, optimal opening, and anything else was a mistake. It was sort of true, until everyone took it as a given, and then doing another opening meant your opponent wasn't as likely to be prepared for it.
atmosx|1 year ago
The only basketball that really matters happens in the playoffs; the rest is irrelevant and says nothing about the true power rankings.
teej|1 year ago
Coaches and owners are not rewarded for innovation. Fans strongly discourage taking bets that could fail.
And then there’s preparing for the strategy change. Training, practice, and coaching time is extremely limited. How much do you re-allocate to this new approach? You don’t just tell players to take more 3s, it’s more complicated than that.
So in traditional innovators dilemma fashion, it’s much easier to follow when you see that the new way works. It’s easier to convince everyone (fans, coaches, players, owners) to get on board when you can point to Steph Curry doing it right.
raincole|1 year ago
"Really basic math"? Do you think NBA coaches reached this conclusion like this:
1. A player can throw X 2-points in a game.
2. Or he can throw Y 3-points in a game.
3. 3Y > 2X, so we should just throw 3-points all the time.
It's absolutely not what happened. And the reason teams didn't discovery the current strategy decades earlier was absolutely not that they couldn't do basic math.
unyttigfjelltol|1 year ago
[1] https://malteranalytics.github.io/nfl-4th-down/
tclancy|1 year ago
jackschultz|1 year ago
It's been interesting to follow some changes teams have made the past two seasons where teams are figuring out how to better time steals when a pitch is thrown, and which players to go after. For example, pitchers with slow releases and bad catchers.
Base running aggressiveness that some teams have been doing as well. The value of going 1st to 3rd on a single is massive and getting speed, and judgement and wanting your players to do that will be more and more valued.
I actually searched "base running aggressiveness" to see what articles had to say, and two months ago Statcast put in a new stat called "Net Bases Gained"[1]. Crazy.
This mimics the changes in NBA talked about here, where value in players changes over times when new ways of playing show their value. It's kind of like the 4 minute mile though, where until someone went out and was able to run under 4 minutes / make all those 3s / run that aggressive on the base paths / go for it on more 4th downs, teams are scared to be the first.
[0] https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/SB_leagues.shtml [1] https://www.mlb.com/news/breaking-down-statcast-s-new-baseru...
ramoz|1 year ago
But stealing bases has long been a science. It was something I admired about college level development of players in the 2000's - stealing bases went from fundamental to advanced and well beyond "just let the fastest guys do their thing." UVA's coach had a saying like "every player on this team will be capable of stealing bases"
tclancy|1 year ago
grandempire|1 year ago
Playing sports is a fun activity to get exercise, it’s not worth getting emotionally invested in teams or leagues.
beoberha|1 year ago
That said, trends are cyclical. Look at the role of the running back in the NFL. There will always be outlier players like Shaq who will buck the trends and exploit matchups.
relaxing|1 year ago
If “most teams can build rosters that get to the playoffs” is true it’s only because the NBA playoffs are so big. I’d assume it’s false based on any interpretation of “can build” you pick.
Realistically only a handful of teams compete for a championship in any given span of years.
epolanski|1 year ago
Not really, it's still 16/30 (I don't like playoff formats btw, so American).
necovek|1 year ago
They mention Boston Celtics, but they are only a single time champion, and we can see plenty other teams with good chances to beat them.
And I'd argue we are moving further away from specialization: now centers are required to shoot 3 pointers at a high clip and high percentage, they have high number of assists (it's not just Jokic, look at Iannis, Sabonis...).
And centers need to defend smaller, faster players when switching, just like smaller players need to defend centers.
streptomycin|1 year ago
Obviously people shot fewer 3s back then, but as far as I remember, Bruce Bowen was really the first 3-and-D player back in the 90s.
Gone are the days of an all-around player. There is no longer a need for a player who does everything. Look at players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James (early career); they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Not sure how true that is. People sometimes call the modern style "heliocentric" - one star who makes the offense work, surrounded by a bunch of role players. These star players often do basically everything, albeit most are better at some things than others. But that's always been true, stars in the old days were not always perfectly balanced.
And stars these days have a ton of variability. Look at the best players in the league - Jokic, Shai, Giannis, Luka, Embiid (when healthy..) - those guys all play very different styles of basketball, and that's awesome!
But I do agree with the overall point of the article. I find it annoying when I'm watching a game and so many possessions there's just not much happening. A couple passes around the perimeter, someone jacks up a moderately contested 3, rinse and repeat. Not the most exciting basketball. That doesn't happen every play, and there's still plenty of exciting plays and players, but it happens a lot more than it used to.
gfunk911|1 year ago
The_Blade|1 year ago
Usage rates also show there is still plenty of heliocentrism so Copernicus remains happy
lawgimenez|1 year ago
owlninja|1 year ago
mnky9800n|1 year ago
bmitc|1 year ago
For example, if you have a team that posts up in the middle, actually moves the ball around and not just around the perimeter, and utilizes the shot clock well, this is going to wear down a team by forcing them to play rough defense, reducing the effectiveness of the three point shot over the course of the game.
Part of the reason of the decline e of interesting basketball is the insane relaxation of rules. Offensive players can travel, carry, flop, ect. all the while knowing that defensive players are handicapped in the contact they can initiate.
asimpletune|1 year ago
A big conversation I see now days is what’s “wrong” with the modern nba, with too many 3’s being the most common refrain. That’s silly. I will tell you what’s actually wrong about the nba. They’re playing the most amazing basketball the worlds ever seen, but the entertainment ecosystem around them hasn’t changed at all. Literally they just talk about the stupidest stuff, like who’s the GOAT, instead of actually educating their audiences about the incredible level of play that exists now days.
You could argue that people aren’t interested in seeing that, but I don’t think we will ever know until it’s been tried. Instead, sports pundits are just being negative about the sport and filling the airwaves with low effort, toxic cliches while providing zero information about the brilliance we’re seeing. As to why I think people would actually care to know, I think it’s because once you’re exposed to this stuff it sticks and then you can’t unsee it. You start to notice the patterns and enjoy the game again.
So anyways sorry for the rant but it drives me nuts. Basketball is so cool right now once you start to get what you’re actually seeing and players can be so smart too. It’s amazing.
Cockbrand|1 year ago
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwp-NAPFqAo
nortonham|1 year ago
100% agree on this. NBA coverage, especially on ESPN is garbage. Not to mention how expensive it is to (legally) watch the NBA. If they actually had better coverage explaining different facets of the game, and analyzing it, maybe people would appreciate what they're seeing more.
branko_d|1 year ago
I do not like the bullying aspect of it though. Offensive players are ramming straight into defenders, shoving the them mid-jump to get a rebound etc.
rambambram|1 year ago
darkerside|1 year ago
Agree on offensive players drawing fouls.
RugnirViking|1 year ago
1123581321|1 year ago
anon84873628|1 year ago
bentt|1 year ago
If there's any problem with basketball right now it's that Adam Silver is trying too many radical things and leaving history behind in uncomfortable ways. I mean, he's talking about going to 10 minute quarters! That will invalidate basically every record ever. I could go on and on, but the NBA game itself is not broken.
sylens|1 year ago
pfisherman|1 year ago
bdangubic|1 year ago
darkerside|1 year ago
xdavidliu|1 year ago
> but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
nobody who has watched basketball would say "guarded defense" or "caught rebounds". I saw "throw 3 pointers" elsewhere in this thread, which is similar, though I'm not sure if that's said by the article author.
Imagine if someone commented on the state of tech today and said that programmers "type code programs".
atmosx|1 year ago
While I partially agree with the article's stance, you can't optimize for this[^1] or this[^2] because they’re unpredictable—historically great outliers that defy averages and planning.
[^1] Luka Doncic WCF G5 against the Twolves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3bGEXk3GA
[^2]: Giannis Antetokoumpo scoring 50p in G6 of the 2021 NBA Finals (featuring 17/19 FTs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHPLeWsAQw4
Tarsul|1 year ago
[1]the worst were the conference finals 2018 game 7s: Cavs (9/35); Celtics (7/39). Rockets (9/44); Warriors (9/33).
BoiledCabbage|1 year ago
Is that stats based or anecdotal?
Link to random person on reddit, but it seems like shooting percentage overall drops due to getting rid of bad teams in the playoffs. And 3pt and fg are affected equally. By about 1% - ie not that much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/12luk37/oc_how_does_pl...
refulgentis|1 year ago
rurban|1 year ago
No, it was Daryll Morey's Houston Rockets around the James Harden era, who started advanced analytics player selection and shot selection. They started with enormous video analytics and Morey runs the yearly Analytics Sports Conference.
Moreyball was way more advanced than Moneyball. You go by the three and die by the three. He still didn't win a championship though.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
layer8|1 year ago
xdavidliu|1 year ago
This is the first time I've ever heard this.
> they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
This is also the first time I've ever heard the phrases "guarded defense" and "caught rebounds".
exabrial|1 year ago
I much prefer the street ball route: make it a contact sport and stop the flopping.
threemux|1 year ago
skippyboxedhero|1 year ago
The adaption varies by sport - without going into the weeds, basketball is less random than other invasion sports so there has been typically been a higher premia on player talent so you see high levels of strategic adaption to individual players...by contrast, you don't see this in soccer to the same degree, apart from the top one or two players - but it happens all the same. For some reason, the assumption is that without quantification none of this stuff would be obvious...but if you look at the history of almost every invasion sport there have been strategic adaptions over years/decades/centuries because this stuff is obvious to people playing it.
To be clear, this doesn't happen in non-invasion sports. There is no strategic adaption so you see interesting things like the ability to compare statistical records over long periods (to a certain degree, over very long periods the rules often change and there can be adaption due to generally increasing physical capacity of athletes).
In other words, there is always someone who wants to spoil the fun. The beauty of invasion games is that there is no global minima (and there is a profound lack of joy in non-invasion sports when someone has a higher level than the competition, and just annihilates everyone every match).
Mountain_Skies|1 year ago
Maybe the solution is with a different type of 3D model, namely the Wilson 3D printed basketball. It has more drag than the regulation basketball, making long shots more difficult. This could restore the balance between long field goals and shots near the basket.
zoklet-enjoyer|1 year ago
sandworm101|1 year ago
andrepd|1 year ago
legitster|1 year ago
The same problem is happening in baseball pitching and football kicking.
krustyburger|1 year ago
anon84873628|1 year ago
The strategy, drama, and player celebrity are all part of what makes a popular spectator sport. Lots of casual viewers found the recent Superbowl to be boring because of the early runaway score, despite lots of great athleticism on display.
And of course it's a tautology that "true fans" will always find something to enjoy.
Animats|1 year ago
11101010001100|1 year ago
nabaraz|1 year ago
paulcole|1 year ago
apgwoz|1 year ago
(Not that people bank off the backboard, but hit the rim, backboard, in, type accidents)
littlestymaar|1 year ago
Yet Wemby is the most hyped young player since LeBron because of his incredible versatility.
brm|1 year ago
thakoppno|1 year ago
apgwoz|1 year ago
Seems like that would have a huge impact on end of game strategy.
It would change the “in the paint” strategy—maybe defense would foul earlier to avoid the 2+1? Hoping instead to split the 2, 1-1 with a miss. Of course, the centers and forwards, who typically aren’t great free throw shooters, are gonna get the ball less. Where does the play go? 3pt land, where it’s way more risky to foul.
I still like the idea.
ks2048|1 year ago
Maybe an NBA team will come up with something like that.
vunderba|1 year ago
However, I believe Kasparov famously tried to employ this tactic against Deep Blue but by that time it wasn't particularly viable.
bigstrat2003|1 year ago
pepa65|1 year ago
sharps_xp|1 year ago
waderyan|1 year ago
deeg|1 year ago
Another proposal would be to widen the court so the 3 point line would be a complete half circle.
hyperion2010|1 year ago
chasd00|1 year ago
mmooss|1 year ago
> Players are no longer do-it-alls; they are now given specialized roles.
> they not only scored but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
Anyone who even watches games would instinctively use different language. Nobody in basketball speaks this way.
As far as the veracity, I'd really need to see some data.
First, nothing in cutting edge, 3-and-D basketball says to stop playing defense. Defense is the D in 3-and-D.
As just one counter-example to the author's claims, big players - centers and power forwards - have become more generalized. Instead of just playing near the basket on offense and defense, many now handle the ball, pass, and also shoot from outside - the old-style guys who lack those skills have taken big pay cuts. The primary ball-handler for the author's local Golden State Warriors is Draymond Green, their center. The best player in the world is a center renowned especially for their passing, Nikola Jokic.
Wing players (small forwards and shooting guards) do it all. The local Golden State Warriors also have Steph Curry, the best shooter ever and an excellent ball-handler and passer. And they recently acquired Jimmy Butler, an all-star all-around player; here is the coach:
"Jimmy, he's a real deal," Kerr said. "I mean, just a complete basketball player, methodical, under control all the time, plays at his own pace, never turns it over, sees the game and then can get to the line frequently. Great closer, not in the traditional sense where he's going to be Kevin Durant and make four straight midrange jumpers, but it's more of a complete game. Get to the line, make the right pass, get somebody else an open look, get a defensive stop, get a rebound. He's a fantastic player."
https://abc7news.com/post/warriors-draymond-green-calls-new-...
What's changed in the NBA is that 3-point shooting has become more valued, partly supported by analytics, partly because Steph Curry redefined what is possible for 3-point shooting for both playing and for being a star: Before Curry, every kid wanted to be Michael Jordan or others who made miraculous drives to the basket through crowds; after Curry, kids were heaving up shots from ridiculous distances, just like their hero.
You won't be surprised to learn that many people say, 'it's not like the old days', and are debating changing the rules to make everyone play like they did 20 years ago.
Supporting my theory of the author, here is their bio (https://nabraj.com/)
> Hi, I'm NT (Nabaraj T), a full-stack engineer in Northern California. ... ten years of professional experience
> Besides software development, my interests are in embedded circuits and astronomy. I have started my startup to research space technologies. When not tangled with 1s and 0s, I usually watch football, cheering on Chelsea.
ano-ther|1 year ago
fullshark|1 year ago
mooreds|1 year ago
Would be really interesting to read about team records when they field a bunch of specialized players vs generalized players (due to injuries or foul trouble). That would be far more convincing.
timewizard|1 year ago
Is that why I don't enjoy watching it at all anymore?