In 2011’s Moneyball, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and his assistant, Peter Brand, use a sabermetric analysis method to evaluate underrated players to cobble together a competitive Major League Baseball team on a shoestring budget. The film somewhat faithfully captures the beginning of baseball’s analytics boom, during which numbers and formulas unseated much of the settled wisdom about what makes a successful team. As Brand, who is largely based on Bill James devotee Paul DePodesta, tells Beane’s character: “Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions.”
If baseball’s analytics boom began with that 2002 Oakland A’s season, basketball’s began just a bit later and can be tied to the rise and dominance of the Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors in the 2010s. For baseball and Moneyball, the “right question” focused on getting on base: Get on base more, score more runs. In basketball, the equation was even more simple: 3 points are more than 2.
Facile as that observation might seem, the numbers bear it out. The 3-point line has been in the National Basketball Association since the 1979-80 season, when the league opted for a trial run of the scoring delineator used by the American Basketball Association, which it had acquired a few years earlier. As basketball analytics expert Stephen Shea points out, at the time, many thought of it as a publicity stunt or gimmick. Five years into its tenure, teams were only averaging 2.4 3-point attempts a game.
Last season, that number was up to 35.1. The Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks, the two teams that made last year’s NBA Finals, ranked first and second in the NBA in 3-point attempt rate. Every NBA team last season had a 3-point attempt rate greater than the 2014-2015 Golden State Warriors, the year the “Splash Brothers,” Curry and Klay Thompson, won their first NBA title behind a then-record-breaking 484 combined 3-pointers in a season.
As Zach Kram writes over at the Ringer, “From 2016 to 2020, as the league responded to the Warriors’ dominance and analytics gained prominence, the NBA’s collective 3-point attempt rate (the proportion of shots that are 3s) increased from 28 percent to 38 percent. Then that steady long-range growth plateaued; from 2020 to 2024, the 3-point rate rose from 38 percent to just 39 percent.” So far into this young season, those numbers have jumped once again, climbing to 42% of all shot attempts. The Celtics are averaging a staggering 51 3-point shots a game. More than two weeks into the 2024-25 season, 27 different players across the league are shooting at least eight 3-pointers per game.
The 2010s Warriors changed the NBA, as Kram notes, because teams found that their behind-the-arc philosophy was not only replicable but efficient. Analytics and “advanced stats” metrics such as Box Plus/Minus, a box score estimate of the points per 100 possessions that a player contributed above a league-average player, translated to an average team, and effective field goal percentage, a weighted field goal percentage that adjusts for the fact that 3 points are more than 2, arrived to show teams and front offices that launching more 3s was the highest-value strategy for any given possession.
Fathers, for years, have been lamenting the “lost art of the mid-range jumper,” but over the past decade, the game has evolved in a way to completely diminish the non-free throw, non-layup 2-pointer. This mindset was typified by then-Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle, who told reporters after a playoff loss, “The post-up is just not a good play anymore. It’s not a good play for a 7’3” guy. It’s a low-value situation.”
And, statistically, he’s not wrong. On his podcast with LeBron James earlier this year, Los Angeles Lakers head coach and college 3-point legend JJ Redick gave a glimpse into this analytical mentality. As Reddick explains, in 2014-2015, the average team for the season took 322 total 3-point shots in the first six seconds of the shot clock. Only five teams attempted below 200 total 3s for the season within those first six seconds of the shot clock. Last season, that average number rose to 420. More than half the league attempted 400 or more total 3s in those first six shot-clock seconds. For those attempts, Redick tells a skeptical James, the average effective field goal percentage was a whopping 55%.
“It’s a good shot,” he concludes. “Not all 3s are created equal. But in some ways, the types of 3s that offenses are generating are created equal. They have essentially the same value.”
What this means in practice is that a lot of plays in every game for any team look the exact same: A team gets a stop on the defensive end, its guards float out to the 3-point line or beyond on the other end, one pass, and then a transition 3-point attempt. It doesn’t matter if you set up the offense or lose possession within four seconds of getting a rebound — statistically, you had a good look.
The problem is, for many, “oops, all 3s”-style basketball is boring. While big 3-point baskets are exciting — just look at Team USA’s fourth-quarter victory in the gold medal game in the Olympics earlier this year — high-efficiency offense can actually reach a point of diminishing returns in terms of how enjoyable it is to watch. When every shot is a dunk or a 3-pointer, it’s less basketball and more playing H-O-R-S-E.
League scoring has inflated to such a point that the common sentiment among fans is that the defenses are bad across the board — they aren’t, at least statistically — and nothing matters until the final two minutes of any given game. Rampant injuries and the prevalence of “load management,” that is, the intentional resting of star players during regular season games to save them for the playoffs, have further soured the average viewing experience.
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NBA ratings have declined steadily over the past few seasons, even excluding the odd COVID-19 “bubble” year, a trend that has continued into the first month of this season as well. According to Clutchpoints, “Viewership to begin the 2024-25 NBA season has not been what the league expected. Although opening night was a success … the same cannot be said for the rest of the games. The first doubleheader of the season on ESPN last Wednesday declined roughly 42% compared to last year, according to Sports Media Watch. Thursday followed a similar trend, as TNT’s viewership declined by over 30 percent.”
The NBA is in a time of generational shift, as older, marquee stars such as Curry, James, and Kevin Durant begin to enter the final stretches of their careers and fresh, younger players such as Anthony Edwards, Victor Wembanyama, and Ja Morant take center stage. The parity and talent level across the league has, quite literally, never been higher. It’s a shame it all just feels the same.
J. Grant Addison is the deputy editor for the Washington Examiner.