South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Arc not lost in NBA
But increasing reliance on 3-point shots not necessarily what’s best for league
MIAMI — Before Pat Riley and before there was winning or misery, in the days when the Miami Heat mostly were in the business of selling basketball as entertainment rather than championship potential, there was Kevin Loughery as coach.
And with Loughery as coach, based on foundational beliefs developed during his successful tenure with the ABA’s New York Nets, was the core tenet that “there are two things fans want to see: the slam dunk and the homerun ball.” The latter was the 3-pointer, an element imported by the NBA from the ABA.
That was then, when the athleticism wasn’t quite where it is today, making Loughery’s star forward Julius Erving mustsee basketball viewing. It also was when the 3-pointer came in limited doses.
When Loughery took over from Ron Rothstein as Heat coach in 1991-92, NBA teams were attempting 7.6 3-pointers per game, making 2.5. Such shots were moments to be savored.
Fast-forward to where the game stands today, with 36 3-pointers, on average, attempted per team per game, with 12.3 conversions per team.
Allow that to marinate: During the course of a typical NBA game this season, 72 3-pointers are being hoisted. The exception has become the rule. In the Heat-Celtics game Thursday night, there were 82 such attempts.
Even when the tide turned, Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Dale Ellis were the outliers. They were unique. Today, they would be Joe Harris.
Against that backdrop, before he took his place at the broadcast table for the Heat’s Tuesday visit to Dallas, Miller was asked whether he felt he had been at the inflection point of when the extraordinary became ordinary.
“I don’t think it’s watering down the game. It’s just a different approach,” he told the Sun Sentinel, instead putting the ball in Stephen Curry’s court. “Because of how Steph, to me, has changed the game, shooting those deep 3s and opening up the floor, the same with Darryl Morey [during his tenure as Rockets general manager] and the Houston approach, all 30 teams adopted it.
“When I played in the late ’80s and ’90s, you played through your big men — Rik Smits, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson — and you played inside out. And now you play outside in. It’s just a little bit different.”
Too different?
The artistry of the game even during Loughery’s ABA days and through Miller’s time with the Indiana Pacers was the precision of advancing the ball closer to the rim. Now a 28-foot pullup during the initial ticks of the shot clock has created all or nothing.
So as a basketball purist, a Hall of Famer, what must it be like for someone like Miller, who played with a floor general like Mark Jackson, to see players open at the rim instead spraying out for 3-point attempts?
“I’m not a basketball purist; I was a scorer,” Miller said with a smile. “I was going to take the bucket.
“So if I have an easy lay-in, I’m going to take the lay-in. And then if a 3 opened, I’m going to take the 3.”
The analytics are on the side of the 3-pointer, to a degree that it now stands as more than 40% of all NBA attempts.
“We might have averaged 18 3s,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said of the start of his playing career as he spoke ahead of Tuesday’s game against the Heat.
“That would be unheard of in today’s basketball world. There’s 30-plus 3s being taken, so you’ve got to be able to guard it and you have to be able to make them.”
Even though attempts are averaging an all-time high, 3-point-shooting percentage during these opening three weeks of the season ranks only 27th in yearly average.
That, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, means being able to find a way to score when the 3s aren’t falling, something the Heat already have done in multiple victories this season.
“I think the most important thing is your offensive efficiency,” Spoelstra said. “Well, two things: Are you getting to your strengths and are you doing it efficiently? And that’s regardless of whether you’re getting it from the 3-point line or free-throw line or at the rim.
“We have a team that has an aggressive bent by nature, so we’re going to play to that. And then as teams’ defenses start adjusting, we have the 3-point spacing and shooting that, when it’s needed, there might be some games where we shoot 45, 50 attempts to keep the defense honest.
“We just have to take what’s given.”
But for most teams, it’s take, take and take again, to the degree that the 3-pointer, when not taken from Curry-, Damian Lillard- and Trae Young-type distances practically has become mundane.
And it has gotten to the point with players — almost Ben Simmons like — deciding that being open at the rim requires second thought.
The 3-pointer at one point helped elevate the game.
The risk now is that it could be drowning the sport.