NBA is shooting even more 3s
IF THERE is a limit to how much teams can rely on 3-pointers to drive their offence, the NBA has yet to find it. A season after seven teams cracked the top 10 for most team 3-pointers attempted per game in a season, it appears the list will be rewritten yet again.
While the uptick is universal, with the league at 2.5 more 3-point attempts per team per game than last season, the most amazing thing might be that three teams are in line to surpass the record for 3-point attempts per game – and none of them are the Golden State Warriors.
On Thursday night (7:30am this morning Cambodian time), the Warriors travel to Brooklyn to face the Nets, and they find themselves in the odd position of squaring off against a team that shoots 3s more often than they do.
The Nets’ average of 33.3 attempts a game is beating the season record, 32.7, set by the 2014-15 Houston Rockets. But the Nets are currently only third in the NBA in that statistic, behind the Rockets (38.9) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (33.6).
The Warriors, who last season set the record for most successful 3-pointers, are fourth (31.2).
It is not exactly a case of zigging when everyone else zags, but this season Golden State has increased its offensive efficiency, and its overall scoring, despite averaging 0.4 fewer 3-point attempts a game than it did last season.
The addition of yet another marksman, Kevin Durant, to a roster that featured Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, has, for whatever reason, resulted in the team shooting more 2-pointers, and with greater accuracy.
Accuracy has been foreign to the Nets. While they have shot a lot of 3s, they are making only 32.9 percent of them, good for 27th in the 30-team league.
It is realistic to estimate that the game will have 60 or more 3-point attempts between the teams, an unthinkable number in the recent past. But both teams pale in comparison to the Rockets, who attempted a record 61 3-pointers by themselves in a game last week and seem determined to establish themselves as the high-volume shooters of the NBA.
Reborn under coach Mike D’Antoni, Houston has solid leads in successful 3-pointers a game (14.6 a game) and attempts (38.9).
And unlike the record-setting 201415 Rockets, this season’s team has gotten a lot closer to the Warriors than the Nets in terms of accuracy, with a success rate of 37.5 percent, which helps explain the team’s sterling 21-8 record.
For his part, D’Antoni does not seem to think the team is doing anything unusual, chalking up the frequency simply to taking advantage of what shots are available.
“We’re just trying to take the right shots in the sense of either a 3 or a layup,” D’Antoni told reporters after the 61-attempt game against the New Orleans Pelicans. “Something has got to be there. A team has to choose. I really feel like we don’t force many.”
The style of the modern game, and its reliance on 3-pointers, may not be pleasing to the Charles Barkleys and Phil Jacksons of the world, but with the Warriors, the Spurs, the Cavaliers and the Rockets all on board with this way of playing, and with teams (other than the Nets) continually proving that accuracy can be maintained even as frequency increases, the NBA has most likely not reached its peak in terms of 3-point shooting.
So for the foreseeable future, it would be wise to just enjoy the show and list all the shooting records in pencil.