Kirk Goldsberry's Piece on 3-Point Shooting

[hwangjini_1]

It's an excerpt from his new book and it's about 3 point shooting in the modern NBA and how to "fix" it.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26633540/the-nba-obsessed-3s-let-fix-thing

I don't have a problem with the modern NBA. I think the league is in a great place. But if I had my druthers, I would do one thing: widen the court and make the 3-point line consistent all the way around.

Moving the line back in the corners would do 2 things. 1, it would make corner 3's a little bit more difficult which would probably mean it would get taken a little less. 2, it would move the player stationed in the corner a little farther from the hoop which means their defender would also be a little farther from the hoop which means the driving lanes would be that much wider and entice more players to drive on.

tp for posting an excellent article. i would love to see the 3 point line moved out to maybe 26 feet and the corner 3 disappear.

[Fan from VT]

I think for summer league and/or preseason, they should experiment with 2 different court arrangements.

First, widen the court to 53'6" instead of 50, and have the 3 pt be 23'9" everywhere.

Second would be, keep the court 50', but keep the 3 pt line 23'9" everywhere, giving guys in the corners less and less room to set their feet comfortably. Right now, there is 3 ft between the 3pt line and the corner sideline; Keep the 50' width and the 23'9" line and you end up with just 1'3" space at the furthest part of the corner.

Don't some of the larger players have feet longer than this?

Probably. Oh well. Some players are too short to reach the 10' rims.

[alt]

Changing the court size won't happen. It is standardized around the country in most high competitive basketball arenas. Changing the size, even a few feet could cost a lot of money for a large number of places.

I don't think this accurate. With a wider court, therefore a longer perimeter, there would be more of the very expensive seats to sell, that would make up for less total seats. There was some guy who did the math on Lowe's podcast a while ago. Don't remember the values he brought.

Not sure I understand the dilemma. Are the amount of attempts killing the game? If so, remove the line. It wasn’t there for many years, so take it away.

If you think the game NEEDS three’s because they can be as exciting as dunks, then live with the growing reliance on that shot.

Are strikeouts killing baseball? Maybe we should move all outfield walls back 40 feet and ban shifts so players try to hit singles and doubles.

No 3 point line wasn't too brilliant either, that's why they implement it in the first place.

The value the 3point line adds is not only, or primarily, the 3s and the excitement they bring per se, rather the fact they force defenders to stretch further away from the basket, opening driving/passing lanes that allow more dunks, etc.

There needs to be some sort of balance - the game needs 3s, but not too many.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

I think for summer league and/or preseason, they should experiment with 2 different court arrangements.

First, widen the court to 53'6" instead of 50, and have the 3 pt be 23'9" everywhere.

Second would be, keep the court 50', but keep the 3 pt line 23'9" everywhere, giving guys in the corners less and less room to set their feet comfortably. Right now, there is 3 ft between the 3pt line and the corner sideline; Keep the 50' width and the 23'9" line and you end up with just 1'3" space at the furthest part of the corner.

Don't some of the larger players have feet longer than this?

Probably. Oh well. Some players are too short to reach the 10' rims.

Quite true!

[Redz]

Just make it worth 2.5 points.  The problem is the mathematics of taking the 3 make too much sense.  If they make it harder players will just get better at that too. 

[nickagneta]

Changing the court size won't happen. It is standardized around the country in most high competitive basketball arenas. Changing the size, even a few feet could cost a lot of money for a large number of places.

I don't think this accurate. With a wider court, therefore a longer perimeter, there would be more of the very expensive seats to sell, that would make up for less total seats. There was some guy who did the math on Lowe's podcast a while ago. Don't remember the values he brought.

Logically it makes perfect sense. The overwhelming amount of arenas have a massive amount of their seats that can't be moved. There is only so much space to put the court and the seats that aren't permanently set. Increasing the space the court takes up instantly decreases the amount of seats you can put in that space.

For instance...A three foot widening of the court reduces the space you can put temporary seating by 285 or so square feet. If the average seating area is say 6 square feet 2' x 3' you have reduced the number of seats in that high end ticket price area by about 47 seats.

But you are only adding 6' of perimeter around the court. That's just 3 more seats per row being configured closer to the court and the money differential between the seats are minimal because those are all the most expensive seats.

That means less revenue at the gate every game.

Then there is the cost to changing the size of the court, meaning many places might need to replace the entire court. At a minimum it means redoing the surface of portions of the court at a minimum.

Then there is the tons of college arenas that are just basketball arenas and everything in those arenas are permanent. Making the court larger may mean taking out entire rows of permanent seating. Again, less seats less revenue and higher costs to remove the seating.

Increasing the size of the court is a non starter. It won't happen.

[johnnygreen]

Count me as another person intrigued about of idea of allowing goaltending on 3's. However, I would add one wrinkle. The defender blocking the shot, needs to have at least one feet out of the paint before the ball is released.

This would also add value to a player like Al Horford, who is a big man that can shoot the 3. Would it force his defender away from the basket any differently than they do now?

[PhoSita]

I'm in favor of moving the line back and eliminating the corner three.


I'm also in favor of ideas related to changing how we currently regulate activity near the basket, i.e. shrinking the lane, eliminating offensive and defense 3 seconds, eliminating basket interference after the ball initially touches the rim / basket area, etc.


I'm not a fan of the idea of allowing goaltending on three pointers; I think that's just too out there.


In general I agree that it has been to the game's detriment that less skilled, less talented spot up players are currently more valuable than more traditional forwards and bigs without three point range.



Whatever the solution, I think the league will be in trouble if they do nothing, because we're headed toward a league where the majority of the teams attempt 40-50% of their shots from behind the three point line.  In that kind of league, there will probably be a good number of teams that stretch toward the extreme of 60-70% of their shots from deep.

That will make the game more homogeneous, less surprising, less creative, and overall less fun to watch on a regular basis.

[gift]

I particularly found the idea about allowing goaltending on 3 point shots intriguing.

Then it wouldn't be a 3 pt game, it would revert to the "Giants game".
That seems like going away from your core fan base, right?

To some degree. Blocks are exciting though. We'd have more highlight-able plays that aren't jumpshots. I also don't think blocking 3 point shots will always be as easy as it sounds. But it will force shooters to consider the risk before launching.

I think it'd be relatively easy. 3 point shots tend to have long flying arches. And I believe it'd end up making players without a jumpshot even more unplayable because the price of allowing a big roaming near his defensive basket would be very steep. Maybe you're right and it'd be rare, would need to see it experimented.

I agree something needs to be done. I wish they'd start experimenting right away in Summer League/G-League.

I don't think 3pt goaltending blocks would be rare. I think there would be several per game (under the current volume of 3 pt attempts, fewer if this frequency decreases). But I don't believe they would eliminate all 3 pt shots. Players still have to defend other areas of the court and fight their way to the rim in order to meet a oncoming shot. These would be fantastic plays to watch and impact rebounding strategy as well.

[gift]

Count me as another person intrigued about of idea of allowing goaltending on 3's. However, I would add one wrinkle. The defender blocking the shot, needs to have at least one feet out of the paint before the ball is released.

This would also add value to a player like Al Horford, who is a big man that can shoot the 3. Would it force his defender away from the basket any differently than they do now?

I think if they enforce defensive three seconds it would be enough. You can't afford to have guys only trying to cherry pick 3 pt shots, because they won't be allowed to do the same on 2 pt attempts. For the most part, they will have to guard straight up and then fight their way to the rim for a block attempt, sometimes successful and often not. I'd like to see the strategies that emerge from this rule implementation. But blocks are cool. Let's have more of those and cut down on the effectiveness of the 3 at the same time. Or at least try it out.

[gift]

The main problem I see with allowing goaltending on three point shots is that you would have to allow players to goaltend based on the refs signal of whether the shot was a three or not. They can review three point shots, but they won't be able to reverse both a goaltending call and a three point call with one review, since one depends on the other.

[Big333223]

I'm in favor of moving the line back and eliminating the corner three.


I'm also in favor of ideas related to changing how we currently regulate activity near the basket, i.e. shrinking the lane, eliminating offensive and defense 3 seconds, eliminating basket interference after the ball initially touches the rim / basket area, etc.


I'm not a fan of the idea of allowing goaltending on three pointers; I think that's just too out there.


In general I agree that it has been to the game's detriment that less skilled, less talented spot up players are currently more valuable than more traditional forwards and bigs without three point range.



Whatever the solution, I think the league will be in trouble if they do nothing, because we're headed toward a league where the majority of the teams attempt 40-50% of their shots from behind the three point line.  In that kind of league, there will probably be a good number of teams that stretch toward the extreme of 60-70% of their shots from deep.

That will make the game more homogeneous, less surprising, less creative, and overall less fun to watch on a regular basis.

For the 3 bolded points:

1. I think the idea of shrinking the lane or eliminating 3 seconds is smart. Those rules were put in place the counter-act the dominance of bigs who weren't really skilled at basketball but were just big humans. Now, the balance has tipped toward a particular specialty (shooters) so the rules might not be necessary anymore. Go back on one or both of these rules and a big around the basket probably becomes more valuable.

2. I also agree the goaltending thing is a bad idea. Every team would just have 2 guys on their roster capable of swatting every 3-pointer.

3. You're of course right that there is an influx of less skilled, specialist shooters but I find this at least more interesting to watch than the less skilled specialist tall guys that were so prevalent when I started watching in the early 00's.

[Who]

Bring back hand-checking. See how the 3PT% changes when players have someone all over them. See if 3PT% is still so efficient relative to closer 2PT%.

[PhoSita]

I agree that I'd rather have too many spot up guys than too many large uncoordinated stiffs.

My feeling is the game should always reward talent, skill, and creativity and allow more limited players to be exposed or exploited.

Goldsberry is right to point out that the current state of affairs unduly rewards a type of shot that is very low difficulty while making almost obsolete an entire section of the floor that used to be the site of some of the most interesting individual plays.

[mmmmm]

Bring back hand-checking. See how the 3PT% changes when players have someone all over them. See if 3PT% is still so efficient relative to closer 2PT%.

I like this suggestion.  Least disruptive impact on the rest of the game and really, just means rolling the clock back a few years to the way it was not that long ago.   The hand-check rule change was 2003-2004.

The change was made to increase offense and boy, did it work.   Even though shooting percentages (FG% & 3PT% have climbed only marginally since then (from roughly ~44%/35% to ~46%/36%), per-game scoring has gone from ~95 points to ~110.  Three-point attempts per game have gone from ~15 per game all the way up to ~32!!.

Now, before the rule change, grabbing was common.  That should still, imho, be illegal, as should pushing.   But simple hand-contact on a ball-handler's torso shouldn't by itself be cause for a foul.  IMHO.

I think this could be rolled back somewhat with some clearly thought guidelines.