The NBA has fallen into an efficiency trap

NEW YORK – A few weeks ago, when news broke early on a Sunday morning that the Dallas Mavericks had traded

Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers

in a deal that sent All-Star power forward Anthony Davis to Dallas, it was a reminder that the National Basketball Association (NBA) can still turn heads.

The trade was so shocking that LeBron James, now a teammate of Doncic’s, initially thought it was a hoax. Over the next few days, the deal inspired conspiracy theories that the Mavericks’ owners were looking to pull a Major League and sandbag their own team to ease a move to Las Vegas.

Or that NBA commissioner Adam Silver had engineered it to help one of the league’s marquee franchises. Pundits speculated about Doncic’s fitness and commitment to defence. Mavericks fans protested outside their own team’s arena. One thing was clear: When it comes to generating intrigue off the court, the NBA still has it.

Grabbing attention is one thing. Holding it is another.

When it comes to what fans see when they tune in to games, the league is on shakier ground. Earlier this season, after a couple of months of sub-par TV ratings, armchair analysts shared their takes about what was wrong with the NBA.

Players were too woke, too chummy or too coddled. Most of it made little sense – and conveniently ignored endemic declines in TV viewership – but there is a theory the league should heed: NBA players shoot too many three-pointers.

Over the past two decades, the prevalence of the three-point shot has risen dramatically. In the 2004-05 season, teams shot about 16 per game. This season, they are on pace for a record-setting 37. Last year’s champions, the Boston Celtics, are hoisting a league-leading 48.

For a while, the three-point revolution was fun. Since then, steady progress in both skill and strategy have made the three-pointer mundane.

“It’s too much. The shot has become too easy for too many. People aren’t impressed by it any more,” said Kirk Goldsberry, author of the bestseller Sprawlball, which mapped the NBA’s shifting shot landscape.

This is a matter of opinion. Some people still like three-pointers. And who’s to say how many is too many? But it is hard to argue that anyone enjoys watching two teams combine to miss 75 threes in a game, which the Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets have done twice against each other this season. 

Silver is aware of the complaints.

“I’m listening to the critics. I don’t want to overreact, but I think there are potentially some adjustments we can make,” he told reporters in Paris, where the San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers played a pair of games in January.

Teams have fallen in love with threes for good reason. On average, NBA players make 36 per cent of them. That is a return of 1.08 points per attempt. For mid-range shots – basically, everything inside the three-point line that is not a lay-up or a dunk – the rate of return is a little more than 0.8 points. Over the course of 90-plus shots per game, that is the difference between winning and losing.

“The two-point jump shot is death. There are two places on the basketball court where efficiency lives. One is near the hoop. The other is behind the three-point line,” said Goldsberry, now executive director of the Business of Sports Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

The NBA has fallen into an efficiency trap: Teams pursuing the optimal strategy for winning are doing damage to the quality of the product.

The situation will be familiar to baseball fans. During the Moneyball revolution, front offices became obsessed with home runs, walks and strike-outs, the so-called three true outcomes. Games became stagnant without the bang-bang action of line drives, bunts and steals.

The good news for the NBA is baseball also provides a road map out of such doldrums. In 2023, Major League Baseball (MLB) introduced a set of rule changes, including pitch clocks, bigger bases and a ban on a defensive strategy known as the infield shift, intended to inject excitement back into the game.

So far, it has helped, leading to shorter games, more steals and increased attendance. The roll-out of these changes should serve as a model for the NBA.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred understood that the same forces that had sapped the fun from baseball could restore it. He hired Theo Epstein, a leading moneyball practitioner who had led the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs to World Series victories, to help incentivise teams to play small ball again.

The league surveyed fans about what they liked, asked employees to think creatively about possible interventions and tested rule changes in its farm system – all tactics basketball can copy.

In 2019, Goldsberry presented the NBA’s competition committee with ideas about how to end the tyranny of the three-pointer, including getting rid of corner threes (which are shorter than shots from beyond the top of the arc) and moving the arc from its current 23 feet, 9 inches (7.24 metres) to 25 feet.

The league opted not to try either, even in its developmental G League. Three-pointers had made Stephen Curry a household name and the Warriors a ratings dynamo. As defenders moved away from the basket to guard against them, space opened up for slashing drives and dunks. Why mess with success?

Since then, the volume of three-point attempts has crept only upwards. The NBA risks becoming the proverbial frog in boiling water. It is not uncommon now to see five offensive players standing outside the arc, waiting for their chance to shoot.

Maybe this is not a problem. The league’s ratings for this season rebounded on Christmas Day. Last summer, it signed a new set of TV rights deals to bring in US$76 billion (S$102 billion) over the next 11 years. Franchise valuations continue to rise. There is no obvious crisis.

Yet the history of the NBA is one long series of interventions, from the shot clock to the expanded key, designed to keep the game flowing and to keep up with the players’ skill and athleticism.

The three-point line itself was an innovation added in 1979 to encourage perimeter play and make the last minutes of games more exciting. Let us not wait until Victor Wembanyama starts making three-point lay-ups to move it back. BLOOMBERG