The defining story of the 2024-25 season NBA The season was marked by a fan backlash against the league’s 3-point shooting regimes. The long ball is not a new phenomenon, as 3-point success rates have been steadily increasing for two decades, but this season, 41.4% of the overall NBA the shots come from behind the arc.
The Boston Celtics just won a championship largely on their shooting, and they’re on track to become the No. 1 team in the NBA history of attempting more 3 than 2 over a full season. While fans initially marveled at the 3-point revolution, many have grown tired of the dominance that a single shot now seems to have over the league as a whole. While fans don’t want to abandon the 3-point game entirely, some are calling for more balance in the types of shots teams make.
This frustration is not limited to fans and has become a topic of discussion among the league’s most prominent figures. LeBron James grumbled that “there’s a lot of fucking 3s being shot” in a broader quote about the state of the league in December. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver also recognized that the league is aware of fans’ concerns and will take them into account when attempting to remedy the infraction from a rules perspective.
But his past statements only amounted to an acknowledgment. During an appearance Wednesday on The Herd with Colin Cowherdhe went further and made it clear that the league was seriously considering substantial changes.
“As commissioners of the game, Joe Dumars runs our competition committee here, we’re going to refine it, we’re going to correct these issues,” Silver said.
Silver also called league-wide changes to playing styles “doable,” but it was part of a longer, broader answer about offensive playing styles.
“What do we do to change this? I agree to the extent that you’re starting to see very similar offenses around the league. Teams have brands, teams have identities, Joe Dumars is now a colleague in the office of the league, the Bad Boys, etc….the Showtime Lakers So, I agree that to the extent that the offenses are starting to look a lot alike, we’re losing that.
“At the same time, the league is going through a transformation. Like you said, players like Victor Wembanyama, players like (Nikola) Jokic, are doing things that big men have never done historically. It wasn’t not so long ago, Colin, you remember the conversations you had with David Stern, you deplored the lack of skill of certain players, we had the feeling that there was too much physics around the game, that the game was under. the basket, which you had the hack-a-. The Shaq era, there were big men who couldn’t shoot free throws There are no more big men who can’t shoot free throws, just like there are. has a comparable from one generation to the next.
“So I think we just have to be careful. The one thing we don’t want to do is I don’t want to just reflexively move the 3-point line. We’re kind of going through a process now, see how these players adapt to the new rules and determine what changes we should make To be honest, I wish it was as simple as moving the 3 point line back, because then we would just do it in part. that concerns basketball people, is that If you move back the 3-point line, you’ll end up cluttering the area under the basket, and it’s not that attractive basketball either.
This last point is important, not only in itself, but as part of this overall conversation. Any rule change, no matter how small, has unintended consequences. Moving back the 3-point line, for example, would not only result in less than 3 points. This would change the entire geometry of the basketball court and fundamentally alter the conditions under which the game would be played.
This is a subject I have written about extensively. In December, I’ve covered 12 of the most popular ideas who have been suggested to limit volume to 3-pointers and what kind of impact these changes would have on the sport as a whole. None of these ideas are perfect. They would all change more than just shot selection.
The two things that became clear in Cowherd’s interview, however, are that Silver understands this problem exists and that the league is considering various options to resolve it, but nothing has been resolved yet. This represents progress.
The NBA sees what concerned fans see and wants to do something about it. It’s just going to take a lot of time, a lot of research and testing to figure out exactly how to do this.
