Steph Curry, 'Moreyball' and the NBA's 3-point revolution

NBA teams have nearly tripled the number of 3-point attempts since the turn of the century. Fans now say it's hurting the game. Is the NBA taking too many 3s?

Kirk Goldsberry, NBA analyst at The Ringer. Former Vice President of Strategic Research for the San Antonio Spurs.

Mike D’Antoni, two-time NBA Coach of the Year.

Shane Sanders and Justin Ehrlich, co-authors of the 2024 paper “Estimating NBA Team Shot Selection Efficiency from Aggregations of True, Continuous Shot Charts: A Generalized Additive Model Approach.”

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: It’s game one of the 2025 NBA Eastern Conference Finals. The score is 98-to-113. The Indiana Pacers are down 15 points against the New York Knicks with just under 5 minutes to play. The Knicks have a 99.3% chance to win the game, according to ESPN.

That’s when the Pacers’ Aaron Nesmith takes off.

(CHEER) Nesmith hits the 3. / With Brunson—another 3 by Nesmith. That's the great equalizer in our game. / Nesmith 3, good! Got it. / —oh, as well. Nesmith 3, good! Another one from outside. / Nesmith again. 3, got it! He's a flame thrower. / Nesmith. It’s a 3. (Whoa.) It's a 2-point game. (Oh, my goodness.)  It's a 2-point game with 22 seconds to go. 

CHAKRABARTI: Over five minutes, Nesmith hit 6 3s to help cut the Knicks lead. After a few fouls to stop the clock and a few missed free throws by the Knicks, Indiana had possession … down 2 points with just 7.3 seconds left on the clock.

Indiana with it. Haliburton. He'll take it. He'll backpedal a 3 for the win and—oh! He got it! (LAUGHS) 

CHAKRABARTI: The shot—by Pacers’ star Tyrese Haliburton —bounces off the rim, leaves the sight of the camera, and swishes in.

Now, that shot was actually a 2-pointer. Haliburton’s foot tiptoed the 3-point line. But the Pacers took the game in overtime.

This is On Point. I’m Meghna Chakrabarti.

The 3-point boom has been one of the biggest changes in the NBA over the last decade. NBA teams averaged 37.6 3-point attempts per game this past regular season. That’s a jump from 22.4 3s per game in 2015.

The 3-point shot can be a dangerous weapon, when they go your way like it did for the Indiana Pacers. But what happens when you miss? Well, ask the Boston Celtics.

The Celtics became the first team in league history to attempt more 3s than 2-point shots this season. But during the playoffs, the defending champions fell, at least in part, because of their favorite shot.

The Celtics took 40 3s. They only made 10. They're now 25 for 100 in these two games.

That’s Pardon the Interruption host Tony Kornheiser, after the Celtics’ Game Two loss against the Knicks. They ended up losing that second round series.

The question about whether NBA teams are taking too many 3s isn’t new. But as the league breaks new benchmarks for missed 3s and the sheer volume of attempts, there have been new murmurs around the league.

LEBRON: It's a bigger conversation. It's not just the All-Star game. It's our game in general. Our game is, it's a lot of [bleep] 3s being shot.

ADAM SILVER: The discussion around the 3-point shooting right now, and I've heard, you know, your commentary and others on it and it's something we're looking at closely, but I think it is important that it's a deliberate, deliberate process.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s NBA commissioner Adam Silver on “The Big Podcast with Shaq” this January. You also heard, of course, superstar LeBron James from last December.

So how did we get here? And is the NBA having a 3-point problem as some fans say it is. So today we're gonna take a look at how the 3-point revolution changed the NBA.

And joining us now is Kirk Goldsberry. He's an NBA analyst at the Ringer and teaches sports analytics at the University of Austin, Texas. He's author of several books on basketball analytics, Hoop Atlas and Sprawlball, and he joins us today from station KUT in Austin, Texas. Kirk Goldsberry, welcome to On Point.

KIRK GOLDSBERRY: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so for the uninitiated, tell us a little bit more about this 3-point revolution. I'll admit my attention was drawn to it when the Celtics absolutely tanked. So how have they actually trended over the last decade?

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah, you mentioned it in the open.

It's been an explosion in 3-point shooting for a variety of reasons. No matter where you start the measurement, like 3-point shots have become exponentially more popular now than they were 20 years ago, 30 years ago, wherever you start that. Now, the NBA added the 3-point line in 1979. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson's rookie year in fact.

Larry Bird's teammate Chris Ford made the first 3-point shot in NBA history as Larry made his debut. And back then, they only shot 2 or 3, 3-point shots in an entire game. And this year, as you mentioned in the open, an average team is shooting over 37. An average NBA game then has 75 3-point tries in 48 minutes.

And in many cases, we're seeing more 3s than 2s. And I always joke, why don't we call it the 2-point line in that case?

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) We'll get to that later, because I am wondering about it but the sports history is really fascinating on this. Why did the NBA first add the 3-point line? What was the need back then?

GOLDSBERRY: The ABA added it first. In fact, the ABA, the same guy who started the Harlem Globe Trotters, Abe Saperstein is credited, I think, with adding the 3-point line in this upstart league that just was trying to have gimmicks to get attention. So the ABA added it and when the NBA merged with the ABA.

It had become a popular element of this rival league. And it forced the NBA's hand to add it in 1979. And undeniably it's been a triumph for basketball. And I want to assert that right off the bat. It has opened up the game. It has made the sport better. It has made the sport more fun.

It has enabled perimeter skill to rival interior skill in a way that's diversified the action. But undeniably here in the middle of the 2020s, there are fair questions about whether we're seeing too many 3s in the NBA itself.

CHAKRABARTI: I hear what you're saying about it's opening up the sport, right?

Because there's so many more options and the creativity with plays can just skyrocket. But there's also a simple math here, right? A 3 is one and a half times the amount of the number two. But you are famed for your analytic prowess when it comes to basketball.

Are the volume of 3s that we're seeing simply driven by that basic math also?

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah, so I first started mapping shots like at the beginning of the 2010s, and when you look at the landscape of the basketball court, pretty much outside of four feet away from the hoop, the NBA percentage of shots that go in the basket, whether you're talking about a four foot shot, a six foot shot, or a 26 foot shot, it's somewhere between 30% and 40%.

And some of those shots outside of four feet are worth 3 points and some are worth two. And so when you do quick arithmetic, you arrive at a conclusion. Why would I ever take a 40% 2-point opportunity when I can have a 35% 3-point opportunity? That basic economic revelation and an explosion in long range shooting skill, I might add.

Has fueled coaches like the Great Mike D'Antoni to leverage the power. Hey, if we're taking jump shots, guys, let's take the smart ones. Let's take the ones that are worth a lot more points per shot than the ones that aren't.

I'm gonna say, you're sitting right across the table from him, aren't you?

CHAKRABARTI: Coach D'Antoni, we're gonna get to you in a second, but let me let Kirk continue to roll out his deep analytical knowledge here. Also, you get higher scoring games, and I'm just wondering from the fan perspective does that make it more exciting?

Yeah, and we opened the show with the audio of the great comeback that the Pacers had against the Knicks.

The Pacers have had many great comebacks and again, I just wanna say there's nobody I think who's questioning whether we should have a 3-point line in pro basketball in the mid of the 2020s. We should. I think the greater question, Meghna, is where it should be. And why, what are we trying to beget?

With the architecture. I don't think anybody's mad that the 3-point line has replaced the paint as the dominant tactical landmark on the chess board of basketball. I don't think anybody's mad about that. I think fans are reacting to games where we're seeing 50 missed 3s. And I think we're reacting to the tendency of many offenses around the league to not even penetrate the 3-point arc at all.

On a possession, multiple times in a row and just heave up another 3. What can we do to adjust that line, to beget an even better version of the product? So I land here, the 3-point line made the game better, but if we make the 3-point line even better, we can make pro basketball look even better and more exciting.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so before we talk about what better would look like, for those of us who aren't familiar with the chess board of the basketball court. Remind us exactly where is the 3-point line in NBA play? Because it's what different in international and Olympic play.

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah, great question. So the NBA 3-point line, generally speaking, is exactly 23.75 feet away from the center of the basketball hoop with two 14-foot exceptions to that.

The corner 3, the straight part of the 3-point line that everybody can picture in their heads, those shots are 22 feet away from the basket. So the corner 3, which now amounts to the most common shot away from the rim in the league.  That short corner 3 is 22 feet, but generally speaking, most above the break, 3s, as they're called, are 24 or longer feet away from the basket.

CHAKRABARTI: So it's obviously it's not a perfect semicircle. And is the top of the 3-point line, oh my gosh I'm so sorry. I should know this actually, but is it right at the top of the key or further away from it?

GOLDSBERRY: The arc itself is, the top of the arc is 23.75 feet away from. But increasingly, Meghna, what we're seeing is players that Mike D'Antoni coached and others not being afraid to be four feet behind that arc. And so the average 3-point shot above the break is getting deeper and deeper. And Coach D'Antoni's teams in Houston pioneered that depth.

So another thing to add is like people are shooting. One of the reasons we're seeing more and more 3s is guys are shooting from 27, 28 feet. For those who know Caitlin Clark. She's bringing this to the women's game. We're not putting our toes on the line anymore. The 23.75 is the shortest one, but we're seeing a lot of 26, 27, 28, even 30-foot 3-point shots today.

CHAKRABARTI: Wow. That's a long way away from the hoop. But for these guys, it's obviously, you know, it takes a lot of work, but they're, they make it look effortless. So where would you put it?

GOLDSBERRY: I don't think it's up for me to decide, but I am fueled by the idea that every other major basketball league in the planet, on the planet, including the WNBA, College Basketball, FIBA, the International Leagues, have all moved their line back in the last 25 years.

The only one that hasn't touched the line is the one with the best shooters in the world. So I'd ask the leaders of the NBA, why have all these other leagues done this, and why has the NBA been so reticent to adjust their line?

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: As I'm based in Boston here, and so my attention was drawn to this issue belatedly by the sound of tears and weeping and gnashing teeth all across Boston, across the Charles River at the Celtics' devastating loss and also the matching sound of hate and cackle from New York. When the Celtics very graciously, I should put, just in support of my hometown team, bowed out of the series.

But I asked our producer Jon Chang, okay, is this a thing? Is this worth looking at? And he's a brilliant producer and he says this issue's been going on in the NBA for a long time, but he turned this into a chef's kiss kind of arrow, and he told me there's a real story to be told about the development of this strategy and the deeper history of basketball.

So that's what we're gonna do for the rest of this hour, and one of the best places to start telling that story is with the Phoenix Suns in 2004.

I'd like to thank everyone for coming today. This is a terrific turnout and I think that when the floodgates of free agency opened up on July 1, we had one specific goal and one specific purpose.

And that purpose is sitting right next to me.

CHAKRABARTI: So back in 2004, Brian Colangelo was the Suns' general manager, and that purpose, sitting right next to him, was all-star point guard Steve Nash. [Nash] was a veteran known for his playmaking and efficient shooting, and after finishing second to last in the Western conference the prior season, the Suns were in dire need of a change.

So sons head coach Mike D'Antoni relied on the talents of his new star to revamp the offense.

With Nash, the suns pushed the pace, prioritizing speed over size.

They also went from taking fewer than 15 3s a game to a league leading 24.7 3s per game. Led by MVP, Steve Nash and Coach of the Year, Mike D'Antoni. The sons recorded a league best 62 wins. Now that offense is now known as the seven seconds or less offense, and it became the framework for the modern NBA offense we see today.

Here's former Sun Amar'e Stoudemire talking about its influence.

STOUDEMIRE: I think it was more so of us being positionless. Shawn was a natural small forward, but he played this power forward, sometimes guarded the centers. I'm a natural power forward. Maybe small forward, depending on my agility and quickness, but I played power forward and center back and forth, so we were able to somewhat transcend the game by not really having a position, but yet being able to be versatile within the game.

CHAKRABARTI: Since then, there's also been the influence of Stephen Curry with Golden State and Mike D'Antoni would eventually join the Houston Rockets, where General Manager Daryl Morey's data-driven approach helped bring about Moreyball. But we're gonna get to that in a moment because as we've been saying, Mike D'Antoni is also with us today.

He's two-time NBA Coach of the Year, also recognized as a member of the 50 greatest Euro League contributors in 2008 for his playing career in Italy, and he is with us as well from KUT in Austin. Coach D'Antoni, welcome to On Point.

MIKE D'ANTONI: Thanks, Meghna. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let me ask you about the story.

Take us back a little bit here. What was happening around that early 2000 times that made you really think that offense needed to be reshaped?

D'ANTONI: It started, excuse me, earlier in my career and I thought in Europe when I was coaching in Europe, that's the best way to play and was working.

Obviously then you come to the NBA, you have better players to do what I always thought that needed to be done. But again, a big driving force was Shaquille O'Neal was the center in Los Angeles, which is in our division.

And we always said among ourselves, you can't out Shaq Shaq. You can't just trot somebody out there and think you're gonna get the best of Shaq.

So we had to figure out a way to beat him. And that was to speed the game up, take more 3s and spread them out, and then they give us a chance to win.

CHAKRABARTI: That's so interesting. I had no idea that Shaq was that influential in shaping the way other teams played.

D'ANTONI: Yeah. He is actually the cause of the 3-point shot.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) So now we have someone to point the finger to. Okay.

D'ANTONI: Exactly.

CHAKRABARTI: So can you bring in your personal influence as a play or experience as a player as well, like how did that inform how you wanted to really speed up the offense?

D'ANTONI: Real quick, when I was a point guard at Marshall University, we played kinda with a center that was 6 ft. 5 in. A shooting forward that was like 6 ft. 10 in.

So we kinda were positioned us anyway and that was we overachieved that year. And from there stuck with me. Then as I played traditionally under other coaches, but I always had a sense that, you know what, if we could spread 'em out. Play more positions, it would be better.

And then players got better. Players kept evolving and they're the ones that pushed the dynamic ahead because now you need to play that way. It's the smartest way to play.

CHAKRABARTI:  Kirk Goldsberry, you wanna just jump in here and tell us your view of the Shaq effect.

Yeah, go ahead.

GOLDSBERRY: Shaq is as old as the sport. The game itself before the 3-point line was simply dominated by which team had the best athlete in the middle of the floor. Whether that was George Mikan or Wilt Chamberlain, or Bill Russell, Shaq was just a logical continuation of that and frankly, one of the more dominant versions in the early 2000s. When Mike is trying to figure out a way to compete in the Western Conference, Shaq was by far the most dominant force in the NBA.

And so the idea that jump shooting could win NBA championships was a crazy thought in the early 2000s, you can't go out there and just shoot jumpers and take out a Shaq type presence. So the NBA ran through the middle and I think what's happened here in the 2020s is it's running from the suburbs now and because of offenses that have been designed by Mike and the Indiana Pacers really epitomized this playing base, playing wide open, spreading the four with shooters.

The pacer center is not Shaq, he's Miles Turner who went to the University of Texas where I'm sitting right now, and he shoots the 3 ball very well. If you would've told NBA coaches in 2001 or '02, that their center could be firing 40% from 3, from 25 feet away. They would've told you, that's crazy.

CHAKRABARTI: So Coach D'Antoni, I mentioned this phrase, the seven seconds or less offense. Describe to me in detail what that actually is. As soon as you get possession, you want to complete a play within seven seconds.

D'ANTONI: That would be ideal. There's no really clock that we have, but every practice and every thought was how can we go faster?

And that's getting the ball in quick, getting all guys to believe in what we're doing to run the floor, spread 'em out and beat Shaq down the floor or beat any, big, down the floor. And as players got used to it, also a side effect of the other team having to play at that pace that they never practiced and they never did it.

Would have tired legs by the end of the game, and we were used to it. So we thought we had an advantage of there also. But everything, coaches sit around trying to devise systems that gives you a competitive chance to win, and that spurs all the innovation or everything. And it is a copycat league because some coaches don't have original ideas, and they have to copy.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) I've heard that's the sincerest form of flattery, sir.

D'ANTONI: You just try to figure out what is, how can your team play the best that they can play?

CHAKRABARTI: Did you have to, so any revolution or any like completely out of the box idea requires buy-in from the folks you're asking to do it.

D'ANTONI: Oh, yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Did you get that buy-in or did you have to work for it?

D'ANTONI: You had to work for it. And I got lucky because one, we got Steve Nash obviously, and we started off the season, 31 and I think 31 and 4. And I was asking Amar'e and Shawn Marion and everybody to play a different position, do different things.

If it was started off bad, then sure they would've griped and they wouldn't have bought in. But because we were winning and destroying people. Then it was an easier sell to the players. But then you have media that is always a little bit late to come to the party and they were killing us, back and forth.

But it was a constant wave of communication. Be able to tell the players what we're doing is the right way to go.

CHAKRABARTI: The media was killing you like by being critical of this.

D'ANTONI: Oh yes. Like now, okay.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

D'ANTONI: If you listen to a lot of the talk shows, ex-players, they play a certain way and they have certain ideas, which is not wrong, but that's how they think the game, and you're constantly battling.

Trying to get players, coaches talk to players 10 to 15 or a half an hour a day or whatever, and where they go home and their barber talks to 'em for that half hour or their family, their ex uncle who played basketball, they all know better. And so  you have to really convince the players this is the way to go.

CHAKRABARTI: Is there a NBA equivalent of Monday morning quarterbacking?

D'ANTONI: I would definitely think so.

CHAKRABARTI: Sounds like what you're describing, but Kirk, tell me a little bit more about Coach D'Antoni was talking about the NBA being a copycat league, but it actually makes perfect sense if all of a sudden there's this brand new offense coming in, it's smoking everyone, it's running players down because conditioning also suddenly becomes an a different kind of issue.

Why wouldn't coaches copy it?

GOLDSBERRY: There's no reason. And I think that's true in every game. If you find a good chess strategy or chess opening, that becomes canonical. But I think when I think about Mike and the revolution in the NBA. It was misconstrued as small ball for a long time when in reality was skill ball.

There was the idea that 3s were gonna become fours and power forwards were gonna have centers and the biggest guys on the floor were gonna get thrown out of the league. But one of the things we've seen, I think, Meghna, more recently is the revelation that it's actually just, we can't have unskilled guys.

Whether you're talking about the 2010 heat where Shane Battier and Chris Bosch were playing in the front court or you're talking about Nikola Jokić here in the 2020s. All five guys on the playing surface have to be skilled. They have to dribble, pass, and shoot. And that's one of the things that Mike's Suns teams and his Rockets teams really brought to the forefront. Is there weren't, there used to be these guys, almost like bar bouncers, like the typical five men in the NBA, the center position.

There was occasional Shaq's, but most of these guys couldn't shoot. They couldn't dribble. They couldn't pass. Those guys were gone. Those are the guys who've been the casualties, and that's why I say it's skill ball. Almost everybody who plays in the games you're gonna watch in the NBA finals can dribble, pass and shoot no matter what position they're listed at.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so gentlemen, we did actually ask On Point listeners, who are basketball fans, what they thought about the 3-point revolution, and here are a couple of answers that we got.

DEE: The NBA is taking too many 3-point shots and it is making the game worse. I'm not taking away any skill that it takes to make a 3-point shot, however it has taken priority over defense.

JOE: During the past NBA season, I have come to appreciate how the 3-point shot has changed the game dramatically. There is no lead that is safe and no deficit that is insurmountable.

CHAKRABARTI: So that second voice, there was Joe in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the first one, Dee in Atlanta, Georgia.

Coach D'Antoni respond to what [she] is saying. She says the offense has taken priority over, or 3-point-based offense has taken priority over defense. What do you think?

D'ANTONI: No, never takes priority over defense. Defense, every coach knows you have to have a good defense to win, but all offenses are designed to attack the weakest part of your defense.

So a lot of teams, like we played the Milwaukee Bucks and they had a center that hung around the rim. Or Rudy Gobert, who likes to stay back. And normally, so you're not, your offense is going to be designed to take a lot of 3s because they've clogged up the middle. They won't let you get to the rim, which is always the first priority of any good offense, is to make layups.

So you have to change up your philosophy or your point of attack. What I disagree with. I don't think it's made the game bad. It makes it exciting. There's a lot of, Steph Curry is Steph Curry, yeah. Becomes a 3-point shot, that would be a crime not to have him in the league or no lead is safe, which is a good thing. Or there's no repeat champions in the last five or 10 years because it opens the game up and gives everybody a chance to be that dominant team.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, Coach D'Antoni. I'm sitting here in Boston. So the idea of not having dynasties anymore is like sacrilege, sir.

D'ANTONI: You better get used to it.

CHAKRABARTI: But Kirk, Coach D'Antoni mentioned Steph Curry, and we should actually talk about him in more detail at Golden State. Of course. What's his impact on the rise or the continued rise of the use of 3-point shots.

GOLDSBERRY: It's massive. I think it's hard to overstate his influence, whether you're talking about the NBA, the WNBA, college basketball, youth basketball.

If you go to a playground in Boston or in Austin or wherever you happen to be right now, Meghna, you're gonna see kids shooting 3s. We used to want to be like Mike when I was a kid. I think a lot of the young players wanna be like Steph or be like Caitlin, on the playgrounds today.

And again, I don't wanna over exaggerate, but it changes what playground basketball looks like. I think that's the greatest tell of an influencer is they changed the base of the pyramid, not the top of the pyramid. And Stephen's definitely challenged pro basketball at the highest level too. But I think his influence is special because it's really changed how basketball's being played around the world at every level.

Opening, look, he changed the definition of what a bad shot was in the sport, some of the shots he takes, Mike would've benched players for 20 years ago.

CHAKRABARTI: Describe what you mean?

GOLDSBERRY: Dribbling up the court, not getting a pass off and just shooting from 30 feet. That would've been crazy.

You would, every college coach in the country would've benched a player for doing that. Some of 'em still do. But because of Stephen, more of these young guys, more of these 19-year-olds, more of these 22-year-olds. On both the men's, women's side, I might add Sabrina Ionescu and Caitlin Clark most famously.

Are doing that too. And he's changed the look and feel of the sport by helping us re-understand like where a good shot is and what it looks like. And I think that's totally profound.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, go ahead coach.

D'ANTONI: Excuse me. What Steph did in the Warriors and Steve Kerr, they validated that you can win with a heavy 3-point shooting.

And before there was always that question you can't win the championship, you can't do this with that kind of shooting, and now they validated. That's where the floodgates opened up and the rest of the coaches went after it because of Steph's ability to be able to make shots.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. And my producer Jon Chang also makes me sound a lot smarter than I am.

Because he pointed out to me that Golden State also had a terrific defense as well. And the combination is what led to their dynasty run.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Coach D'Antoni, hearing you talk about Shaquille O'Neal makes this little clip that I have makes so much more sense. So this is NBA Commissioner Adam Silver talking to Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett on the All the Smoke podcast last January.

SILVER: There was a point, I believe, probably in around the late '90s when the game became too physical.

And I think we lost some of the --

GARNETT: For our viewers you mean?

SILVER: Yeah. And I think for our fans from the aesthetic enjoyment of the game where it deemphasized the particular skill a player had, and maybe weighted too heavily physicality. Where a big, strong player could come in and prevent a incredibly skilled player from doing those kinds of things.

CHAKRABARTI: Kirk, let me ask you, were there also rules changes that went along with the offense revolution that Coach D'Antoni helped bring about?

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah, I think before Steve Nash won the MVP with Mike, there were hand checking allowances on the perimeter where perimeter defenders could simply put their hand on the hip of an offensive guard.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, okay.

GOLDSBERRY: And really slow down their progress and when that rule was changed, I wanna say 2004, after the Pistons absolutely suffocated Kobe Bryant with their legendary defense in those finals, it changed how guards and wings could attack the center of the floor.

And I believe that Mike's point guard Steve Nash will go down in history as the first person to really exploit that rule change and find new ways to create offensive efficiency with attacking point guard play. Which is now I think the bread and butter of most NBA offenses, a pick and roll, and a guard attacking the middle of the floor.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let's go back in time a little bit and listen to the one and only Michael Jordan. It's a comment that he made back in 1992 that's recently-ish resurfaced.

ANNOUNCER: In game one, Michael Jordan put on a 3-point shooting exhibition in a stunning performance, but taking too many 3s can hurt his overall performance. According to Michael.

JORDAN: My 3-point shooting is something that I don't want to excel at, because it takes away from all phases of my game. My game is a fake drive to the hole, penetrate, dish off, dunk, whatever.

And when you have that mentality, as I found out in the first game, of making 3s, you don't go to the hole as much. You go to the 3-point line and you start sitting there waiting for someone to find you. And that's not my mentality and I don't want to create that because it takes away from my other parts of my game.

CHAKRABARTI: Michael Jordan in 1992, coach D'Antoni. Obviously, none of that is true now. We talked about the myriad of skills which every player on the court has to have these days. But again, when you first introduce this idea of a faster, sharper offense that did take more 3s, did some of your players worry that would, as Jordan said, take away from other parts of their game?

D'ANTONI: I don't think they worried about it. I worried about it. It's something that, and I understand what Michael was saying, and it's a mistake, like anything, if you exaggerate something good too much, then it becomes a negative. So I get it, but at the same time, you don't eliminate the 3, or you don't take it or you don't think about it.

But every coach is looking for good shots and good shots, depending on your skill level, depending on who you are. And you try to stick in with that.

CHAKRABARTI: I have to say initially, when again, my attention was brought to this, I was, ugh, is this making the game more boring? But I'm coming around to the point of view.

Both of you are offering here, because it's really a different experience watching than what it used to be with a really big guy in the middle, under the basket, just like blocking anything from happening. But there are still some people who wonder about the aesthetics of the game.

So here is, again, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on the big podcast with Shaq.

ADAM SILVER: Not just the 3-point shooting issue, but there's a certain homogeneity in the game that it looks, that teams are copying each other's styles. I think that's less interesting for fans.

CHAKRABARTI: Kirk, is it less interesting?

GOLDSBERRY: I agree. And this is where we verge off the road of analytically just characterizing the massive transformation of the sport to my personal beliefs. And not everybody's gonna agree, but I think basketball is at its best when there's diverse ways to thrive. And that's why we have these five organically evolved positions in the sport and different ways to play offense.

And I agree with Adam too, was in the '80s and '90s, dump it down to the big fella. It got a little stale. And we needed a change and some of Mike's offenses in Phoenix and Houston and some of the other places in Miami and in San Antonio where we started to see a just ball movement and player movement.

And it was a huge breath of fresh air. So I wanna be very clear, the 3-point line, this pace and space has brought a lot of life into pro basketball. But where should that 3-point line be and why should it be there, I think is the question of the day. And the last thing I'd say is, Major League Baseball.

We've been copying baseball in this sport for a long time. And they had their own aesthetic crisis, analytics driven crisis earlier in this decade. And Theo Epstein deserves a lot of credit for looking at this issue analytically and making some small tweaks to the Major League Baseball rule base that have greatly improved the flow of that game, and brought some of the diversity on the playing surface back to that game.

So I shared the commissioner's idea that the sport is at its best when its diverse offensive plays, different kinds of superstars, different kinds of offenses competing against each other. And I do think that's a fair criticism of what we're seeing right now, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: Coach D'Antoni, I'd love to hear you on this.

D'ANTONI: I agree with Kirk. The thing is, players dictate the type of team you have or how the style of play and they will change over years. They evolve and we are now seeing, like last night watching Oklahoma City. SGA, in some of the things he was doing mid range, he was unbelievable.

And obviously a coach will encourage that more mid range shots, especially if he can shoot it like him. So now players will watch him, he's the MVP, and they will model the game after him, and it'll be more of that type of basketball as they did with Nash, as they did with Curry. And who knows where the next trend will be, but it's always going to lead to efficiency and the best way to win.

And if you're a great 3, 2-point shooter, floaters, mid-range, and if you become great at that, guess what? Then you'll shoot that, and they'll be encouraged. So I think people need to relax a little bit.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

D'ANTONI: The game will evolve.

I still think it's very exciting. The playoffs have been great, comebacks are great. And I don't think a lot of times be careful what you tinker with because you'll get something that's not expected.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Kirk mentioned, we've talked, we've said this word a lot. Analytics.

Analytics. And for, even for people who aren't even baseball fans, everyone's still heard of the idea of Moneyball, right, in baseball. And. Billy Bean having brought analytics to baseball. So Mike D'Antoni, what I'd love to hear is your story and your thoughts on what, what's called in basketball Moreyball.

Because when you when you went to Houston it was Daryl Morey, who you teamed up with, who was really influential to analytics in basketball. Can you tell me a little bit like that, what your conversations were like with him?

D'ANTONI: We were thinking on the same plane.

So that always works, when your general manager, the owner and coach and star players think the same way. Then it's easier to sell and it's much easier to get things done. Daryl was really good at being able to put the analytic part into the game. And actually, what it did for me, it gave me more confidence as a coach. When I go talk to a player before we really talked about analytics, it was more my gut, what I was thinking, and I had to convince a player that he needs to change his game to this.

Now with analytics, you have a tool that comes into play and I can show him what's just not what I think. It's what the numbers are telling us. And so the conversations are much easier. It gives me a confidence as a coach to be able to use that tool to make decisions that I think's right. But now with the numbers telling me, yes it is.

Go for it. Then instead of shooting 24 3s, which we did at Phoenix, we can go up to 40 or 50 with Houston. Because that's the way to go. And there'll be an exaggeration. Some themes exaggerate. Some themes only up 3s, because it might be the only way they could win. But I think for the most part, teams are super efficient now.

Basketball is better.

CHAKRABARTI: So Coach, let me just you a follow up there. Because you said that you had this sort of intuitive sense, but the data backed up that intuition. I actually really appreciate hearing that because I think, again, from a fan's perspective, maybe not all fans, but some fans' perspective.

It's like when things become too data-driven, does it take some of that like organic passion and almost unconscious understanding of the game? Like out of the experience?

D'ANTONI: Oh, definitely. Analytics will always be a great tool to use, but it will not be the tell all. It's not everything.

And the coach has to use his judgment on players, make up individual, their personalities and adjust to that. So it won't tell you the whole story, which is why you need the human input. Because basketball is more than just numbers.

CHAKRABARTI: Kirk, can we hear more about Daryl Morey and why he's so influential in analytics and basketball.

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah, Daryl is a sort of a leader of the analytics movement in pro basketball. I think one thing that's really interesting about Daryl's background is he worked with Bill James. Bill James famously started Saber Metrics in baseball which really sparked the Moneyball Revolution.

In fact, Bill James was a character in Moneyball. But Bill, James and Daryl have a very sort of analytical way of looking at how can we arbitrage efficiency and Moneyball really isn't a book about analytics. It's a book about how we can use financial thinking and financial reasoning to arbitrage efficiency on the playing surface and with our personnel to change how we evaluate baseball players.

And he brought it to basketball. And shot selection is the thing that team is always gonna be remembered for, that Mike coached more 3s than 2s. That kind of stuff. But Daryl really used that with personnel as well to identify the players that could play efficiently in that kind of system as a general manager.

And he's still doing that in Philadelphia today. But yeah, he's really, for me, the face of what Moneyball brought to pro hoop.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So this idea of arbitrage, finding arbitrage in the game of baseball or basketball, it's really interesting to me. Because of course, how large that margin is really matters.

So we spoke with Justin Ehrlich and Shane Sanders, their professors of sports analytics at Syracuse University, and Professor Sanders told us there's actually been a slight shift in the value of the 3-point shot.

SHANE SANDERS: NBA teams were taking more and more 3s since the advent of player tracking in 2013, '14, and they were right to do. There was a pretty strong 3-point premium. And this got them very far, all the way up to about 2018, '19. That's the first year that Justin and I find there is actually a 3-point.

CHAKRABARTI: Dispremium. Okay, so but how do you prove that? Professor Ehrlich says, with data you can literally calculate obviously, the number of points scored based on each shot attempt, and also consider how many points you score from the subsequent free throws if you get felled.

JUSTIN EHRLICH: So a 3-point shot is worth 1.09 points on average, and a 2-point is worth 1.17. For every 3-point attempt, you're losing 0.08 points. So they've only been focused on the 3s this whole time leaving these valuable 2s left alone. And so the most valuable shot is actually under the rim, but we're seeing even a decrease there of shots being made under the rim.

CHAKRABARTI: Kirk, what do you think?

GOLDSBERRY: Yeah I respectfully disagree with those professors at Syracuse.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS)

GOLDSBERRY: And I would say what they're seeing there is an artifact of something else, which is the absolute sort of diminishing mid-range shooting. Those 40%, 2-point opportunities that Michael Jordan is remembered for.

Kobe Bryant is remembered for, the fade away jump shot off the low block, the league has very rapidly moved away from 2-point jump shooting. And as that's happened, Meghna, and what we've seen is the efficiency of 2-point shooting relatively appears at that level to be more efficient. But that's 'cause everybody knows, and Mike's been coaching this, dunks and layups are the best shot on the board.

That has not changed, but yes. The second best shot in the league is the corner 3. And you're not gonna convince me otherwise. A 40% opportunity from the 3-point line is a great shot. That's wow. Why they represent one in nine shots in the NBA are from those corners. So I think what they're seeing there, respectfully, I disagree, is just an artifact of the loss of the 2-point jumper.

CHAKRABARTI: Having grown up in the era of the Bulls dynasty, a beautiful dunk will always make my heart soar. But, so we've got about a minute left. I'm so sorry. This conversation has gone up very quickly. But Coach D'Antoni, Kirk had mentioned at the very top of the show, okay, maybe the NBA should be open to some rules changes based on how good teams, the Celtics aside, are at 3-point shooting right now.

What about the area of the 3-point line that's actually closer, those side shots? Should those be banned? Is there some way to move the line there? What do you think?

D'ANTONI: Again, you can't move the line back from the corners because you have seats there, and most arenas are not able to do that.

That would cost a lot of money. And NBA owners will lose seat money, which they will not do. So you would have to have only an arc up on top and eliminate totally the corner shot. Don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing. Could be experimented with. The G League is perfect for that. That's one of the reasons that they try new rules in the G League, to see if it affects the game in a positive way.

So yes, we could tinker with it a little bit, move it back. I don't think that will bother most players 'cause they're so good at what they do. But the game will evolve and we'll see where it goes.

The first draft of this transcript was created by Descript, an AI transcription tool. An On Point producer then thoroughly reviewed, corrected, and reformatted the transcript before publication. The use of this AI tool creates the capacity to provide these transcripts.