2015 All-Star Weekend Proves That Shooting Rules Today's NBA
The NBA's royal court still includes isolation artists, low-post scorers and, yes, even a smattering of mid-range specialists.
But three-point snipers are the kings of this castle, and the lineup for the 2015 All-Star Weekend only further cements that status.
Basketball fans dig the long ball, apparently every bit as much as their baseball counterparts.
Golden State Warriors sharpshooter Stephen Curry, the league's fastest player to 1,000 career triples, was the leading vote-getter for the All-Star Game. Of the 24 players slated to participate in Sunday's midseason classic, including the three injury replacements, six rank among the NBA's top 11 in three-point makes.
And this is hardly a new trend. Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal observed:
"Since the new arc debuted, there's been a steady increase in the frequency of triples made by the league as a whole. It's not one player or one team serving as a driving force, but rather the entire Association placing an increasingly elevated level of emphasis on the shot worth the most raw points.
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The NBA adopted the shot for the 1979-80 season. That year, the then-San Diego Clippers paced the league with 177 long-distance makes. San Diego's Brian Taylor led all shooters with 90 three-point bombs.
This season, which is barely past the midway point, the average club already has 414 triples. The Houston Rockets lead all teams with 625 makes from distance, while the Sacramento Kings bring up the rear at 266. Sixteen different players—including All-Stars Curry, Kyle Korver, Klay Thompson, James Harden, Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving—have made more than 100 threes.
"It's changed the game," San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said of the three-point shot, per Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press (via NBA.com). "It makes it tougher to cover that much room defensively on the court, so you do have to pay attention to it defensively. It's a heck of a weapon."
In a sense, it's a victory for the number-crunching analytical crowd.
It doesn't take the greatest mathematical mind to know that shots worth an additional point are ones worth seeking out. But it's not just about the points these long-range looks create. It's also about the undeniable impact a successful three-point attack has on an entire offense.
"There is a strong correlation between 3-point attempts and team scoring efficiency, and an even more specific correlation between the number of short corner 3s a team attempts and its overall points per possession," Grantland's Zach Lowe noted in December 2013.
It's no coincidence that there are a cluster of teams near the top right corner of the above graph, which is current through games played on Feb. 10. That group makes a lot of threes and executes efficiently on the offensive end. (For a more detailed view, hover over each circle to see where each team ranks in threes and offensive efficiency in that order, with the rankings separated by a decimal point.)
Obviously, three-point volume doesn't guarantee offensive success, and the lack of it doesn't mean a team is sure to struggle on that end of the floor. But checking off both boxes makes execution exponentially easier.
"The ball moves a lot better than it did 10, 11 years ago," Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle told USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt. "And now guys coming up through AAU, high schools and colleges know they have to be skilled at shooting long-range shots as well as being able to run, jump and dunk."
That's where things are starting to get scary. Lethal shooters are bringing more than their three-point cannons to the table.
Just look at this year's overloaded field for the three-point contest. It just might be the greatest group of shooters the event has ever featured:
"This is the best collection, the best group that's been in the 3-point contest since I've been in the NBA," Korver said, per NBA.com's Shaun Powell.
The words initially come off a tad hyperbolic, but the numbers say they are anything but.
Korver is currently working toward becoming the league's first shooter to hit 50 percent from the field, 50 percent from distance and 90 percent at the free-throw line in a single season. Thompson holds the NBA record for most threes made over the first three seasons of a career (545), and his current 44 percent perimeter success rate is a new personal best.
Curry ranks sixth on the all-time list with a 43.3 three-point percentage. Harden already has the 14th most triples of any 27-plus points-per-game scorer (140), and his Houston Rockets still have 29 games left on their schedule. J.J. Redick's 43.6 three-point percentage is the 18th highest of any player who ever attempted at least five such shots per game. Wesley Matthews sits tied for first with 161 made threes.
Marco Belinelli won this event last year, and Irving captured the crown in 2013.
"If the 2015 club is not the best ever now, it certainly can be," wrote Bleacher Report's Dan Favale. "If each of the eight contributors continues knocking down threes with historic frequency and accuracy, it only enhances the meaning and status of this year's contest."
This is a special group of shooters, but how many of them would actually be labeled as such?
Harden leads the league in scoring (27.4) and sits second in assists among non-point guards (6.8). Curry is one of only three players with top-10 ranks in both points (23.6, tied for seventh) and assists (7.9, fifth). Irving holds this season's high-water mark for most points in a game (55). Thompson punched his first All-Star ticket by expanding his offensive arsenal inside the arc and continuing to play lockdown defense.
These are all elite players who just happen to be great shooters. In today's NBA, those titles are commingling like never before.
Nothing moves the needle in this league quite like shooting. Of the NBA's top 50 scorers, only nine have attempted fewer than 50 threes. Conversely, 21 have launched at least 200.
The NBA's three-point revolution is real. It has been for a while now. All-Star Weekend will only help hammer that point home.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics are used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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