Sixers going to great lengths to upend the 3-point trend

PHILADELPHIA » The Boston Celtics’ season-opener in 1979 presumably was unfolding in typical NBA fashion when Chris Ford took a shot that would launch history.

Ford’s 3-point field goal try, the first since such circus acts had become legal, dropped into the Boston Garden net. From that point forward, a monster would grow.

In every NBA season since then, not one would see a reduction in the number of 3-point shots

NBA teams would average per game. It was a fourdecade annuity, guaranteed never to lose value. That first year, NBA teams would average of 2.8 beyond-the-arc shots per game. By last season, that figure had risen to 32.0. This year? Make it 33.7. So where does it end? How about the Wells Fargo Center?

How about there? Heading into a game Wednesday against the Miami Heat, the 76ers had permitted 748 3-point attempts, an average of 26.7 per game, lowest in the league. In recent games, the average was 26.3. In their most recent home appearance, the Sixers had allowed the New Orleans Pelicans to try just 24 and make only nine.

As they did, they were revealing a template for what pro basketball, and basketball in general, is destined to become.

“That’s one of the challenges when you play them,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was saying before the game. “They are a very good defensive team, as we saw the last time we played them here. We had less than 15 assists. It was a horrible game. But they are well-coached, well-schemed and they have unique length.

“They have size at every position so they are able to switch. They are able to take their fives in the paint.”

Before the season, Brett Brown encouraged a headline. The Sixers, he said with an obvious awareness that such a boast would not go muffled, would play “bully ball defense.” Given such bravado, the literal translation was not out of order, and so it was widely interpreted as a physical threat to any opponent with the courage to drive into the lane. There would be some of that. But it was also meant to announce the Sixers’ intent to limit second shots, and by Wednesday, they were leading the league in percentage of rebounds claimed at the defensive end.

Yet there was a third dimension to that plan, and in that victory over New Orleans, the Sixers had it on distinct display: They would use their size and reach to do something that hadn’t been done often enough around the NBA in recent years. They would deny 3-point attempts with another layer of passion.

“Listen, the dominance and the impact of analytics nowadays influences people to different degrees,” Brown said before the game Wednesday. “And the Holy Grail is, ‘Deny rotations, play two-on-two in pick-and-roll and stay connected to 3-point shooters.’

Go into any coach’s locker room and for the most part, that is going to drive most of our worlds.

“We are very influenced by Joel Embiid. I think he is the best defensive center in the NBA. It would make sense for us to be more willing to fan out. So, yep, we pay attention to the 3-point line. But I might not be so bold if you didn’t have something as unique as Joel behind it all.”

The Sixers are unique. They knew that heading into the season. They would plan to start the tallest starting lineup, one through five, in the league. And the key contributors springing from the bench, including a 6-5 rookie with a 7-0 wingspan in Matisse Thybulle, would be able to roam almost anyplace on the court and defend with success. Given that the Sixers also were built without a highly accomplished 3-point shooter, their motivation to limit long shots at their own end was heightened.

In the vacuum of one season, the Sixers are customdesigned to stump 3-point shooters. But as Brown often has said, the NBA is a “copycat” league. “Myself included,” he will quickly add. So how long will it take other coaches and general managers to surround a rim-protecting center with as much length as possible and begin to see their winning percentages rise?

Brown knows that the 2019-2020 Sixers are not going to reverse basketball history in the next six months. It’s why Elton Brand is almost certain to add a 3-point specialist before the trade deadline, easing the Sixers’ minute-to-minute urgency to return the sport to a battle of two-point shots.

“It’s soon going to be 2020,” Brown said. “And to think you are just going to have death by a thousand cuts, with twoball, two-ball, two-ball, it is hard for me to think that will allow you to win at a level that we want to win at.

“I feel we have shown the ability to make them.”

They will make some, or they will not contend for a championship. That’s the way the NBA is going to remain, at least for a while. But there will be a point where the year-to-year increase in 3-point attempts per game will be reversed. There will be a breaking point. The 3-point shot will have grown so common, and shooters will have continued continue to become so much more efficient that the only way to ever win a game will be to deny the 3-point shot at whatever risk of a highlight dunk.

The monster that began to grow with one Ford attempt in 1979 must at some point be stopped. With legendary length, the best defensive center in the world, and a unique twist to their game, the 76ers are showing how it eventually will be done.

To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery.