The NBA basketball season has just begun and, even without being great fans, every year we notice more – by watching some action of any game – how the teams set up their game to conclude the action with a 3-point shot, that is, that shot taken outside the 7.25 meter arc drawn on the ground. The 3-point shot, first introduced in the 1979-80 season, has long been a sort of “special weapon”, used by players particularly gifted at long range shooting, or by teams looking for a desperate comeback in the final minutes of the game, and used only sporadically. Today, however, the 3-point shot – with the influence of Stephen Curry, one of the best shooters in history – is the heart of most attacking actions in the NBA, continually discussed on social media and in “basketball” talk shows between those who argue that too many 3s are being shot and those who believe that this is the right progression of the game. The 38 3-pointers per game in the 2024/25 season compared to 16 20 years ago are not just a question of “good play” or fashion: it is a real revolution that passes through mathematics and tactics.
When basketball embraced science: the 3-point shooting revolution
To understand how we arrived at this game revolution, we need to go back to the early 2000s, when technological progress and the first “big data” silently began to intervene in the technical decisions of the main NBA franchises, with advanced statistics that called into question the tactical decisions of coaches.
The main protagonist of this transformation was Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, a graduate of MIT and convinced that in basketball, as in finance, you could win by exploiting numbers. His analyzes showed something apparently obvious but revolutionary if supported by the data: a 3-point shot is worth 50% more than a 2-point shot, an enormous amount, and even if it is missed more often, it is capable of producing more points in the long run than a 2-point shot made more frequently.
The data was clear: over the years, the percentage of 3-pointers made in a game had hovered around 35%. So if a team hits just over three out of 10 3-pointers, they average 1.05 points per shot. With a two-point shot made on 50% of attempts, exactly 1 point is generated for each attempted shot, but the average of two-point shots is actually slightly lower, between 45% and 48%, so each two-point shot generates 0.95 points on average. The difference seems minimal, but over dozens of possessions it can make the difference between winning and losing a game.
The explosion of triples and the influence of Steph Curry
This new game mechanism based on the 3-point shot put into practice by the Houston Rockets starting from the mid-2000s spread rapidly, and many began to talk about “Moreyball” (from the famous book published in 2003: Moneyball) referring to those who began to follow the style of play dictated by the Texan franchise. Teams began to build rosters based on shooters, to expand the game and to always look for the most “efficient” shot: either a triple, or a shot from under the basket. Everything in between, specifically the “midrange shot” that had been a hallmark of basketball legends like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, began to be seen as pure waste. The game became polarized: either you shoot from outside, or from under the basket. Everything in between becomes of little use to victory.
Starting in the early 1910s, Stephen Curry together with his Golden State Warriors gave the definitive push towards this new way of playing the game. The 3-point shot went from tactic to spectacle, with Curry starting to score from sidereal distances with disarming simplicity. In the 2015-16 season, in which he won the unanimous MVP award, he averaged more than 11 3-pointers per game, hitting them with more than 45% accuracy. The defenses were simply not ready to face something similar, and each team began to look for their own Curry and try to shoot more and more 3-pointers to imitate the success achieved by Golden State, which between 2015 and 2019 reached 5 consecutive Finals, winning 3 of them.
From the 2010-11 season to the 2018-19 season he went from averaging 18 3-pointers per game to 32, an increase of 78% in just 8 years. In the 2024-25 season, teams attempted just under 38 3-pointers per game on average. 20 years ago, in the 2004-05 season, there were 16, almost 60% less.
A change that did not only concern the numbers but also the performers who had to take to the parquet. Traditional centers like Shaquille O’Neal or Tim Duncan, who dominated under the basket using strength and centimeters, also had to be good shooters if they wanted to earn their place in the starting five. Nowadays, teams no longer just try to get close to the basket, but rather look for the best angle to release a shooter. Coaches talk more and more often about “spacing”, that is, the art of distributing players in the opponent’s half of the pitch so that each defender has to cover as much space as possible.
The other side of the coin: entertainment or monotony?
This evolution has made basketball faster and more “mathematical”, but not everyone considers it positive. Many former players and historic coaches – such as Charles Barkley or Gregg Popovich – argue that the game is becoming repetitive, that all teams play the same way and that the NBA has become a great 3-point shooting competition. Others, such as Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors and the US national team, believe that this is the correct evolution of the game of basketball. Fans are also divided between those who appreciate the speed of the modern game and those who prefer a more active game under the basket, full of individual and physical duels. As often happens, the evolution does not satisfy everyone, but this time the complaints from fans have reached the top of the NBA.
The NBA’s doubts and possible solutions
The league, after listening to the opinions of detractors of the new style of play, fears that an excess of triples could reduce tactical variety, make games monotonous and, consequently, lose audiences, in a period in which the NBA is already in great difficulty in the audience battle against football (NFL) and baseball (MLB).
Among the rumored hypotheses to prevent 3-point attempts in a game from reaching 50% of all attempted shots, there has also been talk of moving the 3-point line further away (today it is at 7.25m, compared to 6.75m in European basketball and FIBA competitions) or of inserting a new 4-point shot, or even of widening the field to create more insertion spaces, but for now these suggestions they remain so.
Adam Silver himself, NBA commissioner for over 10 years, has denied that these solutions can be put into practice in the short term, focusing instead on trying to keep the NBA attractive even during the regular season and not just during the Finals, with the recent upheavals of the All Star Game, which has been losing interest for years, and the inclusion of the NBA Cup, an intermediate tournament held between November and December.
For now, the solution is being sought by teams that cannot afford to continually shoot from beyond the 3-point arc, often bringing the medium-range shot back into vogue by exploiting the spaces that modern defenses allow.
