BARRAGE A TROIS
3-pointers behind NBA scoring rise
With the NBA season recently eclipsing the halfway point, certain factors are obvious. The Nets will have a tough time getting home-court in the f irst round of the playoffs. Russell Westbrook is good. And scoring is up. Way, way up. Again. So inquiring minds may ask, “Why?” Answers are obvious in some areas. Look at the Nets’ roster. Look at Westbrook when he plays. You have your answers. The rise in NBA scoring is a different matter. League-wide it was at 209.7 points combined points per game through midweek, up 7.3 points a game from last season — the biggest jump in over a decade. The reasons are more complex. “The 3-point line, 3-pointers and the 3-point line,” Knicks point guard Derrick Rose said. “Teams are shooting more 3-pointers than ever,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. OK, maybe it’s not all that complex. Consider this season: With the Rockets averaging 14.8 makes on an unheard of 40 attempted 3-pointers per game, there are nine teams averaging at least 10 made 3-pointers a game. When the 3- point shot was implemented in 1979-80, teams averaged fewer than one (0.8) make per game with an average of 2.8 attempts per — or what Houston’s James Harden seemingly puts up per minute.
Last season, five teams averaged double-figure 3-point makes, led by Golden State (13.1). Houston (11.4) led five teams in double-figure trifectas in 2014-15. Before that, just six teams averaged 10 or more 3-pointers a game. The first team to do it was Mike D’Antoni’s Suns in 2005-06 with 10. 2 per game.
The recent surges caused suggestions of eliminating the corner 3-pointer, the most playerfriendly shot of all. Dallas owner Mark Cuban last year called for moving back the 3-point line. But fans love the excitement of shootouts, so the distances stayed where they’ve been after they were readjusted for the 1997-98 season following a threeyear run with closer distances — which brought a huge spike in makes and attempts, starting with 1994-95.
D’Antoni now has the Rockets in their nightly 3-point frenzy. “It is always nice to know that you are not completely crazy when you are doing things. But a lot of people have been doing it before me, and a lot of people will do it after and do it better,” said D’Antoni, who employed the “Seven Seconds Or Less” offense with Phoenix. “That is just the way I thought we should play, the way the game should look. You do have to have the players and the talent and t he management. ... Everybody wants to play a certain way because it is different and it was weird, and now it is catching on a little bit.” The NBA always has been a copycat league. Teams wanted to be Boston in the half court. They tried to be Usain Bolt to emulate the Showtime Lakers before settling for the bare knuckles defense of the Bad Boy Pistons. They wanted to be like Michael Jordan and the Bulls, and in recent years, cast envious eyes at the beauty of the Warriors’ ball-movement offense and reliance on 3s.
“I don’t think we started a trend. The scoring trend has been going up over the last decade,” Kerr said. “But more and more teams are playing faster, playing smaller, shooting more 3s. The rules are geared for the offensive player as well. It’s definitely a trend. More and more teams are really looking to push the ball.”
Of course, it’s a heckuva lot easier to do when you have Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, who last season recorded the most (402, Curry) and third-most (276, Thompson) 3-pointers in a single season. Second most? Curry at 286 in 2014-15.
“You have to adapt to your own personnel, and so everybody is trying to acquire more shooting,” Kerr said. “Teams are scaling down. Instead of having a center and a power forward, they’re playing a power forward and a small forward together.
“It makes it harder to defend. You have to cover the whole court, and you’re dealing with a lot of speed and shooting. Defense has never been more difficult, I think, than right now.”
The reasons for the scoring surge overwhelm. You can’t slug opponents. Hand-checks are forbidden. Players practice and coaches emphasize shooting from the cradle. Post-up play? Scoring inside? Surely, you jest.
“It’s the style coaches want their teams to play,” said Rose, the 2011 MVP. “It’s systems and the way the officials are reffing. Old-school basketball would be tough to play now.”
Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek often has lamented the lost art of drawing fouls to induce foul trouble. And giving hard fouls? Yeah right.
“There’s not as many times when you’re right next to the guy and he’s getting that clear layup maybe that you foul him,” Hornacek said. “Sometimes it’s harder to play defense with the rules. That rule change with the hand-checking. There’s not a ton of illegal-screen calls. You’re basically playing 4-on-3 a lot of times. It makes it more difficult to stop guys, and guys are working on their shooting now because of the 3-point value.”
The average fan suggests defense simply is being ignored. It is a little more than that. Hornacek noted the younger guys entering the league. Usually the one-and-done types are as committed to defense as they were to studying calculus.
“It’s not that teams aren’t playing defense or aren’t trying,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “Coaches may be playing more offensive-minded groups. ... But whoever’s out there is trying to play D. The effort is still very high.
But the love and lure of 3s are even higher. So expect more. And more.
“As long as the rules stay the same and they referee the way it is,” D’Antoni said. “It changed when they started hand-checking and took that out [and] you couldn’t guard on the perimeter. … It is a combination of things. It is never one thing.”
“But [3-pointers] are becoming increasingly easier because players are getting better. Used to be you’re shooting 30 [attempts per game], now we’re shooting 37, and pretty soon they’ll shoot 40 and next year they’ll shoot 45 and it will keep going up. I don’t know what the limit is. But until they change something, the math is still the math.”