Karalis: Random thoughts on eliminating corner 3's, COVID's impact, and Marcus Smart

We’re about to enter the final month of the regular season. This long, stupid season is about to wind down over the next couple of weeks. 

There will be plenty to talk about in that time. For now, it’s time to crack my skull open and pick out the few thoughts I have rattling around in there. 

What will it take for people to understand COVID-19’s impact on athletes? 

I’ll scream about this forever, but it’s especially bugging me this season. Explanations do not equal excuses. 

An excuse is when you find a plausible reason to justify something even though it might not be true. 

Excuse: 

“Why did John put on 20 pounds over the winter?”
“Well, his family has always had weight issues so it’s kind of easy for him, and he’s so busy it’s hard to get to the gym.” 

Explanation: 

“Why did John put on 20 pounds over the winter?”
“Well, he spends too much time sitting at a computer and by the time he finally gets around to thinking about the gym he has either no motivation or the night’s games have started. Plus, he loves pizza.” 

They sound similar, but the first one takes the burden off me. It gives me an out. The second one is just how it is. It’s a fixable thing. This is the reason, now get the solution.

And by the way, I’m working on it. I bought too many cool shirts before the winter that I want to fit back into. 

My point is that there are explanations for a lot of what’s happened to the Celtics this season. Some of it is in their control, some of it is not. But one of those explanations is COVID-19, but some people just don’t want to acknowledge that. 

Romeo Langford, for example, missed half the season recovering from wrist surgery. When he was about to return he got COVID. Now he’s back, but his play is up and down, and there is a segment of Celtics fans that are fed up with him. 

What is he supposed to do? 

This team is a bit of a mess with its inconsistency and somehow a second-year player is going to step on the floor after missing the whole year and after contracting COVID and suddenly just be good every time he goes out there? 

The same goes for Evan Fournier, who has shot terribly since his return. The team says he’s still “foggy” after coming back and he’s struggling to get caught up. 

I know people are upset about how the season is going, but this virus isn’t checking in with Wyc Grousbeck to find convenient times to impact the team. Fournier will just need time to get up to speed. So will Langford. And, frankly, Jayson Tatum might still be impacted as well. That’s just how it goes with this thing. 

Marcus Smart being Marcus Smart

I’m not sure what Marcus Smart said to get suspended last night other than the league’s statement of “threatening language” towards a referee. Danny Ainge, on his weekly radio appearance on Toucher & Rich, disagreed with the league’s decision to suspend him, though he did acknowledge Smart probably should have been better in that situation.

“Marcus is just a, he's just an emotional kid that plays with his emotions on his sleeve,” Ainge said. “He was very frustrated with a couple of calls he, I thought he should have been frustrated with. But ideally, we don't want him having conversations with the officials postgame as they're leaving the court.”

Smart has been another lightning rod this season. The term “regression” has been used a lot. Ainge disagrees and so do I. 

That’s not to say I think he’s been great or I think every shot he’s taken is great, but there is a noticeable difference in Smart’s game when a couple of other starters are missing and he has to shoulder a bigger load than when he can run more of the offense and just take some open catch-and-shoot shots. 

I think too much of the discourse around Smart still depends on whether shots fall. His old habits are still coloring people’s concerns. I don’t think it’s fair to turn every bad Smart shooting night into a “here we go again” parade of anger. 

“Marcus has grown a lot. He's been fantastic the last few weeks actually, and showing some leadership,” Ainge said. “I'm not going to make a bigger deal out of this than it is. It's another learning lesson for Marcus, but he's doing much better as a leader and inspiring his teammates on the court. And that's what's important.”

Man, the game has changed

I’m an old man. I fell in love with the NBA in the 80’s. Life is a lot different now, especially when I see Steph Curry finishing the month of April with 96 3-pointers. 

NINETY SIX!

That got me rifling through some numbers. 

Larry Bird made more than 96 3's in a single season only once, in 1988. In 1986, he led the NBA with 82 made 3's. In 1987, he led the league with 90.  

It took Curry 15 games to get to 96 this month. It took Bird 281 career games before he hit his 96th career 3-pointer in the 40th game of his fourth season.

Bird took 5 or more 3's 28 times in his career. His high was 8, twice. Curry has taken 8 or more 51 times just this season. 10 or more 41 times. He has one game with 20 attempts this season. 

Curry has taken 15 or more 35 times in his career. 

The game has changed so dramatically over 35 years. Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long for people to figure out the math that makes this many 3-pointers a thing now. 

If you and I each have a team that takes 100 shots, a team that makes 50 2-pointers will lose to a team that makes 34 3-pointers. That math was always the math. I’m not sure why no one really understood how much that extra point was really worth. 

The game is always evolving, and just like any other development in the game, the league needs to take a look at it and see whether the long-term impact is valuable or not. There has to be some level of forecasting in the league office to determine if hacks to the game will become part of its evolution or a historical footnote. 

Curry has helped reshape this era in an equal but opposite manner that Wilt Chamberlain once did. Eventually, the league widened its lane and created other rules to prevent dominant big men from being too good. 

The NBA can certainly look into this as well. The easiest way is to eliminate the corner 3 by just keeping the natural curvature of the arc and letting it connect to the sideline rather than going straight down into the corners. 

There have been more than 15,000 corner 3-point attempts this season. On a high-volume team, about a third to a quarter of their 3-pointers come from the corners, and eliminating those would change the entire spacing of the floor. Mid-range shots would become more valuable again as teams loaded up at the top of the arc to take away 3-pointers. 

It could spell the end of the 3-and-D guy as well. Elite defenders who develop a serviceable, 35-ish% 3-point shot had better work on their ball handling and passing in this scenario. 

I don’t want to legislate the Steph Curry’s of the world out of the game. He’s an absolute cheat code on the floor sometimes and I don’t want that to go away. However, I get that the shorter corner 3-pointer gives maybe a few too many guys too much opportunity to be too impactful. 

That extra point is a big deal. Possessions are extremely valuable in the NBA and to have to hit three 2-pointers just to match two 3-pointers is a bit much, especially if those are shorter corner 3’s that more and more guys can hit at juuuuust  a high enough rate to be dangerous. 

That line is there as a reward for guys who possess an exceptional skill. I want to keep that. But I also want to make sure that it’s rewarding guys with exceptional skill. Plus, I think the creativity that will be necessary on the two-point side of the line will be interesting.