Steph Curry made 3s cool.
Until they weren’t cool, and fans got so sick of watching them being attempted at record volumes they stopped tuning into the NBA.
3-point attempts are at record-highs but television ratings are way down and many believe there’s a direct correlation between the two.
TV viewership for the entire NBA is down almost 50 percent since 2012, and while there are many potential reasons for that, the prominence of the 3-point shot is arguably the biggest.
The ‘you shoot, we shoot’ philosophy from beyond the arc has become a painful watch, with the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls recently combined to miss a staggering 75 three-pointers, tied for most in a regulation-length game in NBA history.
Nobody wants to see that on a nightly basis, with some suggesting the only solution is to move the 3-point line further back to deter players from taking so many ill-advised shots.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has heard the concerns and plans to make a change.
During a Wednesday appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Silver claimed changes are coming to address the amount of 3s being taken. Silver accepted that changing the 3-point line is a viable option for The Association, although not necessarily the open goal some think.
“I don’t want to knee-jerk move the three-point line,” he said.
“We’re going through a process now, seeing how these players are adapting to the new rules and figuring out whatever changes we should make.
“I wish it were as simple as just moving the three-point line back because then we would just do it. Part of the concern from the basketball folks is that if you move the three-point line back, you’ll end up clogging up this area under the basket and that’s not such attractive basketball either.
“I think this is doable by examining the game and seeing where this is going… I assure you, we are on it. I think it’s a very fixable issue. As stewards of the game, we’ll tweak it. We will correct those issues.”
However, Silver stressed that there’s a balance of play at work, and he’s reluctant to doing something so drastic that it ruins the entire spectacle of the league and various brands of basketball.
“I agree to the extent that you start to see very similar offenses around the league,” he went on.
“Teams have a brand, teams have an identity, Joe Dumars is a colleague now at the league office. The Bad Boys, I think the Showtime Lakers.
“So I recognize that offense can tend to look very similar we lose that at the same time, the league is going through a transformation.
“Players like Victor Wembanyama, players like [Nikola] Jokic, are doing things that big men have never done historically. It wasn’t that long ago that we would bemoan the lack of skill among some players, that there was a sense there was too much physicality around the game.
“You had the Hack-a-Shaq era. You had big men who just couldn’t shoot free throws but there are no big men anymore who can’t shoot. So I think we just gotta be careful.”
It’s not just fans who have complained about the state of the modern NBA.
Basketball legend and Inside the NBA fan favorite Charles Barkley said that games of late have been ‘awful to watch’.
Load management and a lack of effort on defense are certainly partly responsible for the wave of apathy surrounding the NBA, but it’s impossible to ignore the impact of the trey ball on fan engagement.
When Silver took over as NBA Commissioner during the 2014-2015 season, the league averaged 22.4 3-point attempts per game.
A decade later, teams are jacking up an average of 37.6 3s per game.
The defending champion Boston Celtics are among the biggest proponents of the 3-point shot.
During their title run last year, they averaged 42.5 3s per game. This year, that number is up to 49.3 attempts from deep per game.
Shooters got better and teams worked out the easy math that 3s are worth more than 2s, and so put a greater emphasis on perimeter shots.
It’s no coincidence that a league-wide rise in 3-point attempts has coincided with Curry‘s ascendancy to the summit of basketball.
The Golden State Warriors great has made the most three-pointers in NBA history (3,889 and counting) and once set the mark for consecutive games with at least one 3-pointer (268).
In many ways, the man universally regarded as the greatest shooter in history broke the NBA with his almost limitless range and efficiency from beyond the arc, something the league is now seemingly desperate to try and fix.
