The 3-pointer has gone past revolutionizing the NBA. The weight of one extra point has thrown the game so far out of whack that the league is leaving the rest of the world stylistically and floating off on its own dislodged iceberg. The 3-pointer, specifically the corner 3, has pulled and twisted the game into a homogenous shooting contest.
It’s time for a change. It’s time to make the shot special again. It’s time to let the Steph Currys of the world cook and wow people with a special skill that takes much practice while making the rest of the league earn their keep somewhere else on the floor.
It’s time to eliminate the corner 3-pointer.
Let’s start with the obvious. The above-the-break 3 is 23 feet, 9 inches away from the hoop. Yet, in the corner, the distance drops to 22 feet. It actually makes no sense that a shot nearly two feet closer to the hoop is worth the same three points as those made above the break. If the goal is to reward someone with a unique ability to make shots from very far away, then that's what we should do. Set a distance and reward people for making shots from there.
Beyond that, the math behind three versus two points for a basket has turned the game on its head.
Trying to get 50% more points out of a possession makes sense. Today’s NBA is built on space, driving to collapse the defense, and finding shooters in the corner. Nearly every NBA team is trying to accomplish that goal. There are outliers who don’t have the shooters to pull it off, but most teams come in with a similar game plan.
ESPN ran a story last season with the headline “How the corner 3 became the easiest shot in the NBA.” It revealed that corner 3-pointers account for 19.6% of all NBA jump shots, and 10% of shots overall.
Further, the best corner snipers are scoring 1.5 points per possession or better while the average NBA layup nets about 1.17 points per possession.
Math has taken over the NBA, and it’s giving us more and more players passing out of layups in order to get clean looks at corner 3-pointers. The open corner 3-pointer has become so dominant in the league that anyone who sniffs the slightest contest of their layup is passing out to the corners for a long-range shot.
It’s an outrageous development.
Ten teams shot 40% or better from the corners last season (Boston was seventh) while the best non-corner 3-point shooting topped out at 38.9%. The Celtics shot 3% worse on non-corner 3-pointers, still good for sixth in the NBA and sixth on overall 3-point shooting last year (according to Cleaning The Glass, which filters out garbage time stats).
The league average on corner 3-pointers was 38.6% according to CTG, and 35.8% on non-corner 3s.
The corner 3 has thrown the league out of whack. Guys who probably should be out of the league are hanging on because this specialty makes them playable on offense.
PJ Tucker is the poster child for this phenomenon. Last year, the corner 3 accounted for 60% of his shot attempts. Early in his career, the corner 3 only accounted for about 25% of his shots, but that steadily grew as the league evolved and he got older. He shot 40% from the corner last season according to CTG, and 25% on non-corner 3-pointers.
Bigs around the league, including Al Horford in Boston, are hanging on thanks to this shot. And while it’s nice that guys are seeing their careers extended, it comes at the expense of younger, more dynamic players who don’t specialize in that particular shot.
Congrats to them for finding their niches, but the time has come to put more basketball players and fewer specialists on the floor.
The value of the corner 3 has thrown the entire game out of balance. I propose just continuing the 23 foot, 9 inch line to the sidelines and ending it when it hits the out of bounds line. Hit from above that and get rewarded with the extra point. Enter the 2-point zone and you’d better be able to set a pick, cut, and finish through contact.
Changing the line isn’t unprecedented. The league obviously operated without a 3-point line until 1979 and they spent a few years in the 90’s with a cheap 22 foot 3-point line that made everyone think they were a shooter. They have moved it before and now they should do it again.
The percentages show the focus on getting those shots is already ridiculous and it will only get worse. Fans don’t want to see 50 and 60 3-point attempts every night where the outcome is simply a matter of who got hot and who didn’t. And if the league doesn’t do anything about it, this is where we’re headed.
Joe Mazzulla is actually on the forefront of this movement. When he looked me in the eye and told me “3-point rate is the most important stat in basketball,” I knew he was going to push the boundaries to their limits.
And honestly, I don’t even care about the volume of 3-pointers being taken nowadays. I understand the value of them and why that extra point is worth so much. But we’re at a tipping point.
I want the 3-pointer to stick around, but I want it to be special. I want the league to have its few snipers that can make a team pay from there just like I want to see a few guys get to the rim and dunk on someone. The 3-pointer was always meant to be the reward for an incredible skill. Let’s make that skill special again and bring some strategy and movement back to the 2-point game. Let’s make size important again. Let’s bring some post play and interior passing back.
The overall game will be better with more diversely skilled players on the floor. Ditch the corner 3, and balance will be restored to basketball.
