Three Pointers Have Ruined Basketball

[Applause] white good clothes out by curry it didn't matter back to horford for the lead with the offensive rebound wide open smart cash back out to smart in rhythm for three splash brown on the baseline horford inside count it in one because this one might be over with that bucket question are three point shots worth too many points now i know that sounds a bit odd to even suggest i mean it's right there in the name three-pointer but what happens when too many players get too good at a shot that is worth too much blowouts insurmountable runs that determine the outcome of games before they really ever even get started and offenses with no real identity and only one goal in mind find the open three-pointer a shot that was created to specifically bring balance to a lopsided game has now become the most imbalanced mechanism of the game so is the three-pointer really worth too many points [Music] today's video is brought to you by seatgeek seedgeek is a ticketing app that makes buying tickets faster and easier than ever before and with the nba playoffs in full swing seat geek is here to get you in on the action just download the seatgeek app and use the promo code jimmy to get 20 off your first order by using their interactive map you can search through venues to instantly find the best deals if it's green then you're looking at a good deal red not so much i've been using sea geek for years and once you use it you'll never want to go back to anything else it's simple it's easy and it's a surefire way to get the best deals for your tickets whether it's a concert basketball game football baseball festival seed geek's got it all download the app use promo code jimmy and get 20 off your first order today on january 5th 1892 dr james naismith published the original 13 rules of basketball within these 13 rules was what dr naismith believed to be a perfectly well-balanced game fast forward 130 years and nearly every single one of these rules is no longer applicable the only one that still stands today is rule number one the ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands so a pass rule number three has long been eradicated from the game a player cannot run with the ball the player must throw it from the spot in which he catches it allowance to be made for a man who catches the ball while running at a good speed if he tries to stop [Laughter] yeah we don't do that anymore [Applause] it's clear that the game that was originally introduced to the world as basketball has been completely revolutionized reformed and transformed into the game we know and love today and the biggest change the game has seen in its 130 year existence is the three point shot added to the nba in 1979 the three-point line brought unprecedented balance to the game smaller or less athletic players that were once pretty much decorative pieces on offenses centered around the big men and athletic wings now had a new powerful weapon in their arsenal you no longer had to be a giant or a freak of an athlete to make a real impact on the game and for the first time in nearly a century shots that were taken from more than 15 feet out were worth taking all thanks to a new shot that balanced the scales of basketball in a way the world had never seen before the three-point line was and still is undoubtedly the greatest addition to the game in the history of basketball or maybe it wasn't i've never put too much thought into the idea of the three-point shot being far too valuable even to the extent of possibly being a broken mechanic of the game i mean it seems to be balanced but the other day i heard something that really warped my perspective on the three-point shots and just how broken it may be as i'm watching the game i'm going phoenix is so much better than them tonight but this was the argument for maybe actually an argument against three-pointers in the value the absurd value they have in relationship to the rest of the ways you can score three-pointer is worth way too much it just is every time it felt like dallas was about to get blown out they found a way to survive with three-pointers enough i thought it was a very good argument for is the three-pointer actually stupid because i felt like the separation between the two teams was so obvious and watching it but hey we have this we have this other thing that we can do we're just going to keep shooting threes the entire time and again this is not breaking news this is what the game is but i couldn't help but have those moments and watching that game going this is where the three-pointer argument like i almost don't like it because this is not a true definition of which team is better than the other one because they're surviving it's a crazy proposition i know but after hearing ryan say this i couldn't help but to ask myself are three pointers far too valuable clearly if you watch these games nba teams feel this way 76ers president daryl mori believes three-pointers provide such an unfair advantage that they shouldn't even be worth three points but instead only be worth two and a half points to him it's simple math the three point shot is by far the most efficient shot in basketball for the simple fact that if you can hit just 33 of your three pointers you're producing the same amount of points as if you hit 50 percent of your two pointers that one extra point that a player earns for making a three gives them far more room for error than any other shot on the court and for reasons i'll never understand it took the nba 35 years to figure this out when asked about three pointers in a 2021 interview mori said the bottom line is it is worth too much it skews the game and it makes it so there's really only one path to being a good team you have to be utilizing that at a high level others have suggested that the three-pointer is such a broken mechanism of the game that there should be a limit to how many a team can shoot in a game an absolutely outrageous take but one that'll really get you thinking there's gotta be some logic behind why some people truly think the three-pointer is far too valuable now if daryl mori and others are correct then it wouldn't be the first time in sports that one particular aspect of the game got so lopsided that a league had to step in and make an amendment on july 20th 1984 the sport of track and field was forced to change an event that has been around for hundreds of years all because of this guy track and field legend you a home who perfected the art of javelin throwing so well he literally broke the event here's a record that may never be broken ua hohn of east germany shatters american tom petronov's world record by over 16 feet 343 feet 10 inches watch where it lands just inside the stadium after this the weight of the javelin will most assuredly be increased the stadium are not big enough to hold the javelin anymore you see where that javelin landed now do you see where the landing zone ends the man threw his javelin so far that it nearly went out of bounds if this throw was any further it could have killed a man and it wasn't long after this throw that the weight and overall shape of the javelin was adjusted to prevent throwers from unintentionally spearing someone on the other side of the stadium now i'm almost positive that a three-point shot will never kill anyone at least i think but they may just provide a broken advantage to the game itself mori believes that the three-pointer is so valuable that he built an entire roster around it in the 2018 rockets this team was an incredible success winning 65 games while attempting far more threes in a single season than any other team in league history this team truly lived by the three and they would eventually die by the three because what daryl failed to consider was that basketball isn't math martin behind the screen and gordon puts gordon for three hart here's hot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] 27 missed threes in a row in game seven of the western conference finals the worst three-point shooting performance in nba history one in 186 141 the chances of the rockets missing 27 threes in a row according to this nba fan miraculously the rockets only lost this game by nine points if they had just made a few of those threes the rockets would have moved on to the nba finals and daryl mori's three point theory would have worked but they didn't and mori has yet to replicate this same level of success as a strong believer in the long ball so is the three pointer worth too many points does it actually provide a lopsided advantage to teams that shoot it well or is it a perfectly balanced mechanism of the game well objectively it's not broken at all at the nba level the three-pointer is so well balanced that it is nearly impossible to exploit in fact the three-point shot is such a well-tuned ingredient in basketball that it virtually has no advantage at all compared to other shots since the 2002 season the average number of three-point attempts per game for nba teams has climbed from just under 15 to 35 and yet over that same time span the average three point percentage league wide virtually hasn't changed at all players and teams are attempting far more threes but somehow despite all the attention put on the long ball nba players haven't gotten much better at shooting them when i saw these numbers for the first time it blew my mind how can a shot that's become so well executed at the nba level a shot that most players now possess within their bag find its way into the basket just as often as it did decades ago it's almost as if the people who introduced the three-point shot to the game of basketball knew exactly where to put the three-point line for it to be advantageous enough to attempt but not too advantageous to create an imbalance in the game but they didn't when abe saperstein and ray meyer first introduced the three-point line to the american basketball league in 1960 they didn't crunch any numbers to find out the right distance for it they didn't have any data to point them to the right spot on the courts they literally just picked a spot according to saperstein's son they just arbitrarily drew lines just two hall of fame coaches getting together and saying where would we like to see the line the distance they chose for their game-changing shot 25 feet now what i wouldn't do to see the absolutely atrocious shooting numbers from 1960s basketball players attempting three pointers nearly two feet further out than the current nba three-point line needless to say this shot served almost no purpose so the league decided to move the shot in to just 23 feet but as far as the evolution of the three-point line that's about it the only time the nba ever adjusted it was for three seasons in the 90s but that change didn't last long and it would eventually move back to where it stands today the men that created the three-point line had no idea where the game would go over the next 60 years they had never even seen a three-pointer in their life and yet somehow they managed to narrow down the perfect distance for the shots almost immediately but how how did these two men know within inches of where the perfect distance for a three-pointer should be any closer to the basket and it would have broken the game those three seasons in the 90s is proof of that but any further out and the shot wouldn't even be worth taking it's perfect and the numbers backed us up here's the average three-point percentage league-wide over the last 20 seasons as we spoke about before the nba as a whole pretty much hasn't gotten any better or any worse at shooting the three ball but you know what nba players and teams have gotten better at two pointers over the last 20 seasons nba players have gotten significantly better at shooting shots within the three-point arc now at a certain point if teams shoot two-pointers with enough efficiency then the two-point shot will surpass the value of the three-point shot and for the first time in 40 years we have reached that threshold see the moment a team becomes a good three-point shooting team everything begins to open up for them including ironically every other shot besides the three-pointer when an opposing team knows you can knock down threes they are forced to play up on you even when you're 25 feet out this creates space inside the three-point line this creates more opportunities for off-ball movements and the defense becomes so focused on stopping the three that they failed to stop or even recognize all other points of attack what daryl mori and other analysts forgot to include in their future projections of the three-pointer was how other teams would react to it sure in theory if you can build a team that is extremely efficient from three then you can just keep chucking up threes all game long and you should end up on top in theory if a team gets more points per shot attempt from three pointers then they do two pointers then there's virtually no point in attempting any shot outside of three pointers and the occasional easy layup but basketball is not a theory once other teams realize your team can shoot well from outside they'll just make adjustments they'll pick you up from 30 feet out and their priority becomes stopping three-pointers at all costs and this is precisely why the three-point shot is perfectly balanced if a team isn't efficient at shooting threes then three-pointers won't provide an unfair advantage if a team is good at shooting threes they end up getting easier shots from everywhere else on the court which results in that team being less reliant on the three ball regardless of how you get there it really all boils down to one thing shot value for the majority of the last 30 years the value of an average nba shot has virtually remained exactly the same one as in one point per shot attempt and throughout the last three decades the average three-point attempt did yield teams a more productive result three pointers on average being worth 1.03 points per shot attempt and two pointers being worth .96 points per shot attempt this is why many people believe the three-point shot provided an unfair advantage it is simply too valuable in comparison to two pointers and this was the case for a very long time that is until the secret got out teams made adjustments and this happened for the first time since the three-pointer was introduced to the nba the two-point shot has become just as valuable as the three-pointer and this season for the first time ever the two-point shot actually became more valuable than the three point shot somehow as the league was in a mad scramble to see who could sink the most threes they inadvertently turned two pointers into the most valuable shots in basketball but let's say we nerfed the three-point shots and made it worth just 2.5 points well then this graph would look like this and instead of being a weapon teams can use to balance their offense and keep the defense honest the three-point shot virtually becomes obsolete the risk of taking it would far outweigh the reward abe saperstein and ray meyer they were right all along they may not have known it at the time but they were right this arbitrarily length shot added to the game 70 years after its inception is somehow right where it needs to be and worth exactly as many points as it should be hope you all enjoyed and as always until next time [Music] you

Channel: JxmyHighroller

Views: 3,665,460

Keywords: LeBron James, House of Highlights, ESPN, NBA highlights, Jimmy Highroller, NBA trash talk, Buzzer Beaters, Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets, Ankle Breakers, Shannon Sharpe, NBA Finals, NBA Championship, Finals Highlights, Rebound, Flightreacts, Nick Briz, ballislife, Golden Hoops, Stephen Curry, Kyrie Irving, Lakers, NBA Playoffs, Boston Celtics, NBA MVP, nba championship, dallas mavericks, golden state warriors, stephen curry, 3 pointer, Jayson Tatum, Game 1 Finals

Id: Yw22uDHy8-Q

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022