Dividing up the history of basketball into before and after the 3-pointer

[GOATcards]

More generally the theme might be, how to divide basketball history into distinct "eras" if that's doable. But this particular subject header seems more fun.

To get an idea of the role of the 3-pointer in basketball, we can look at the number of 3s taken per game, over the years: https://www.basketball-reference.com..._per_game.html

My question is, assuming we can define a "before and after 3s" mark, doesn't the frequency of 3s taken matter the most?

It's not like 3s were a major part of the game in the 1980s, the first full decade (in the NBA) of the 3 point rule being in effect.

And nowadays, teams take some 30+ 3s a game. That's up from the 18 mark or so of a decade ago (we might call it the Curry-Era Revolution), and the trend till then was relatively steady since reaching double digits (specifically the 13-3s-per-game level) in the late '90s after the 3 point line was moved back to its original 23'9".

But I also notice an inflection point in the early '90s, where the league average was around 6 three's per game, and then jumped up to 9 three's per game. What might be an event symbolizing this demarcation?

I'd submit it was MJ's 6-for-6 performance in Game 1 of the '92 Finals.

When MJ came into the league, he wasn't a distance shooter. He was known for his almost incredible explosiveness off the dribble to get many of his shoots at or close to the rim. It was later that he would develop his defense, his fadeaway jumper, and his distance shooting.

And in the '92 Finals he showed that a player not naturally gifted at distance shooting could end up going 6-for-6.

That performance probably changed the direction of the game from 2-focus to more 3-focus, more than anything, at least on a percentage basis. Within a few years, the league had essentially doubled the number of 3s it was taking per game. Nearly as impressive is the revolution of the last decade, with 3s taken going from 18 to 34 per game.

Perhaps the last decade constitutes its own era, the fully-mature-3-game era. From '92-12 would then be another sort of era where the 3 developed. Or we might treat these as sub-eras within a larger era. The 3 in its infancy/childhood was '79-92.

This subject came to mind as the recent Stephen A segment about Steph-vs-Magic as GOAT-PG ended up with "they played different eras." While 3s were legal all of Magic's NBA career, and he had the likes of Michael Cooper to kick out to on the perimeter, his game was still essentially centered on the 2. Even Larry Legend took but a few 3-pointers per game back then - because, hey, the 3 was still in its infancy.

As far as 3s are concerned, I'd divide it into the era where 2-ball was still the primary focus, and the era where 3-shooting become more primarily integrated into the strategy, with the last decade being its own sub-era or distinct era where the 3 is so fundamentally integrated into the game that it takes someone like a Joker shooting 66%+ from 2 to buck the general trend.

And as best as I can make out, that division least-unclearly happens just as MJ went 6-for-6.

[GOATcards]

Another era-division criterion I can think of as I take another hit of this Donny Burger strain (GMO x Han Solo Burger) is the "percentage of white players" one.

(Which also reminds me of a possible thread on the all-time White Guys dream-team, with Stock-Jerry-Larry-Dirk-Joker as the starting five. But it's kinda boring. Just take the all-time lists we're all familiar with, and just rank the white guys on them.)

[jcardstore]

we need a tldr. I could only manage like 5 words out of this salad

[hermanotarjeta]

The three point shot has always been the less injury-risk, lazier way to score. As soon as contracts got bigger and competition declined to reduce injury to mega contract players, the nba got softer and catered towards career preservation versus win at all costs.

It perfectly correlates with the ascension of millennials into the college and nba ranks. And now, you have a glorified WNBA regular season product that dominates play.

It represents the millennialization of America’s attitudes towards work and life. Any player born in 1981 on essentially shares this attitude - self-entitled and no respect for anyone who built the nba to where it is today.

[jcardstore]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

The three point shot has always been the less injury-risk, lazier way to score. As soon as contracts got bigger and competition declined to reduce injury to mega contract players, the nba got softer and catered towards career preservation versus win at all costs.

It perfectly correlates with the ascension of millennials into the college and nba ranks. And now, you have a glorified WNBA regular season product that dominates play.

It represents the millennialization of America’s attitudes towards work and life. Any player born in 1981 on essentially shares this attitude - self-entitled and no respect for anyone who built the nba to where it is today.

you old heads are insufferable lol

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by jcardstore

we need a tldr. I could only manage like 5 words out of this salad

You do you lol

Sent from my V350C using Tapatalk

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by jcardstore

we need a tldr. I could only manage like 5 words out of this salad

I'm sure Tallboy can decipher it all perfectly and demonstrate his value added to the group over yours. You're a starter on the heel team which means value added along a certain facet of entertainment value like the above jcard contribution, but it isn't in the MVP conversation like Tallboys expected contribution. Obviously.

Sent from my V350C using Tapatalk

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

The three point shot has always been the less injury-risk, lazier way to score. As soon as contracts got bigger and competition declined to reduce injury to mega contract players, the nba got softer and catered towards career preservation versus win at all costs.

It perfectly correlates with the ascension of millennials into the college and nba ranks. And now, you have a glorified WNBA regular season product that dominates play.

It represents the millennialization of America’s attitudes towards work and life. Any player born in 1981 on essentially shares this attitude - self-entitled and no respect for anyone who built the nba to where it is today.

Quite the contrary, the 3 has spread out defenses and created more versatile players.

Regarding the merits or drawbacks of the 3, you know only one side of the case, and surely you know what Mill (On Liberty) had to say about that epistemic vice

Sent from my V350C using Tapatalk

[asujbl]

This entire thread should be TLDR

[mrseanc1]

Corollary: % of game FGA from post ups

[JAMSC]

Pre-merger NBA should be viewed similar to the NFL pre Super Bowl era.

The ABA was more the predecessor to the modern NBA than anything in the pre-merger NBA was.

[jplarson]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

The three point shot has always been the less injury-risk, lazier way to score. As soon as contracts got bigger and competition declined to reduce injury to mega contract players, the nba got softer and catered towards career preservation versus win at all costs.

Your basketball takes are just as rational as the baseball ones.

I enjoy the consistency.

Never change.

[Makakilo Cards]

Illegal defense is the real reason nobody used to take 30+ 3s in a game. You literally HAD to put a body on everyone.

[Makakilo Cards]

I also think the league is starting to realize maybe the Warriors were just really good, and it's not some kind of magic formula they discovered. Seriously, the other championship teams have been the Nuggets, Bucks, Lakers*, and Cavs. None of them played that style of ball.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by Makakilo Cards

Illegal defense is the real reason nobody used to take 30+ 3s in a game. You literally HAD to put a body on everyone.

so the eras will have to be divided into before and after illegal defense? (i'm so ignorant i don't know when that rule changed. what do the 3FGA/game do after that change?

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

The three point shot has always been the less injury-risk, lazier way to score.

Originally Posted by jplarson

Your basketball takes are just as rational as the baseball ones.

I enjoy the consistency.

Never change.

i like how hermano knows only one side of the is-LeBron-GOAT debate, and it all basically comes down to how Bron is an entitled millennial

can we have a taste of your baseball takes pretty please hermano? jplarson highlights the "lazier way to score" part, so let's apply that to baseball. Did Babe Ruth popularize the lazy approach to scoring?

[hermanotarjeta]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

i like how hermano knows only one side of the is-LeBron-GOAT debate, and it all basically comes down to how Bron is an entitled millennial

can we have a taste of your baseball takes pretty please hermano? jplarson highlights the "lazier way to score" part, so let's apply that to baseball. Did Babe Ruth popularize the lazy approach to scoring?

Baseball millennials need to fight their way through three levels of minors to get to the show. They earn it.

NBA millennials place no priority on education and some even skip college altogether- the most entitled of the entitled.

[Makakilo Cards]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

so the eras will have to be divided into before and after illegal defense? (i'm so ignorant i don't know when that rule changed. what do the 3FGA/game do after that change?

2001 I believe. The big jump was in the 2010s. So after the rule but not right after.

But yeah I would say illegal defense is just as significant as the 3 was for offense. They didn't play iso ball because they were un-analytical neanderthals. It was more effective when teams had to play man defense.

[jplarson]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

NBA millennials place no priority on education and some even skip college altogether- the most entitled of the entitled.

What's amazing is that there aren't any more new NBA millennials. All the new ones are Gen-Z aka Zoomers, a whole NEW generation to hate on call entitled. Can't even lazily blame one generation anymore.

I wonder if you think Moses Malone was entitled.

Back to the OP, I see it this way:

Start-1954 - Introduction of the shot clock
1955-1979 - Introduction of the 3-point line (feel free to group this one and the one above together since it's super long time ago and barely anyone remembers)
1980-2003 - The Rise and Reign of Michael Jordan and the end of hand-checking on defense.
2004-2009 - Medieval Times
2010-Current - 3 Pointers Are Good And Fun No Matter How Young The Player Is.

[imbluestreak23]

Kareem was the GOAT pre 3 pointer.

MJ the GOAT after

[Tallboy]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

More generally the theme might be, how to divide basketball history into distinct "eras" if that's doable. But this particular subject header seems more fun.

To get an idea of the role of the 3-pointer in basketball, we can look at the number of 3s taken per game, over the years: https://www.basketball-reference.com..._per_game.html

My question is, assuming we can define a "before and after 3s" mark, doesn't the frequency of 3s taken matter the most?

It's not like 3s were a major part of the game in the 1980s, the first full decade (in the NBA) of the 3 point rule being in effect.

And nowadays, teams take some 30+ 3s a game. That's up from the 18 mark or so of a decade ago (we might call it the Curry-Era Revolution), and the trend till then was relatively steady since reaching double digits (specifically the 13-3s-per-game level) in the late '90s after the 3 point line was moved back to its original 23'9".

But I also notice an inflection point in the early '90s, where the league average was around 6 three's per game, and then jumped up to 9 three's per game. What might be an event symbolizing this demarcation?

I'd submit it was MJ's 6-for-6 performance in Game 1 of the '92 Finals.

When MJ came into the league, he wasn't a distance shooter. He was known for his almost incredible explosiveness off the dribble to get many of his shoots at or close to the rim. It was later that he would develop his defense, his fadeaway jumper, and his distance shooting.

And in the '92 Finals he showed that a player not naturally gifted at distance shooting could end up going 6-for-6.

That performance probably changed the direction of the game from 2-focus to more 3-focus, more than anything, at least on a percentage basis. Within a few years, the league had essentially doubled the number of 3s it was taking per game. Nearly as impressive is the revolution of the last decade, with 3s taken going from 18 to 34 per game.

Perhaps the last decade constitutes its own era, the fully-mature-3-game era. From '92-12 would then be another sort of era where the 3 developed. Or we might treat these as sub-eras within a larger era. The 3 in its infancy/childhood was '79-92.

This subject came to mind as the recent Stephen A segment about Steph-vs-Magic as GOAT-PG ended up with "they played different eras." While 3s were legal all of Magic's NBA career, and he had the likes of Michael Cooper to kick out to on the perimeter, his game was still essentially centered on the 2. Even Larry Legend took but a few 3-pointers per game back then - because, hey, the 3 was still in its infancy.

As far as 3s are concerned, I'd divide it into the era where 2-ball was still the primary focus, and the era where 3-shooting become more primarily integrated into the strategy, with the last decade being its own sub-era or distinct era where the 3 is so fundamentally integrated into the game that it takes someone like a Joker shooting 66%+ from 2 to buck the general trend.

And as best as I can make out, that division least-unclearly happens just as MJ went 6-for-6.

The fact that there was such a massive delay between the implementation of the rule and the optimization around the rule really undermines are ability to make clean era distinctions with meaningful labels.

Were I looking to divide basketball into eras though, it'd go like this:

1. Pre-Paradigm (1890s-early 1920s) - many variations of the game exist - and the pro game evolves into "Cage play" where the court is surrounded by a net to separate players from fans - because the fans are drunk and often violent - which gets used to check opponents into hockey-style. The build of these players is more like a rugby players than modern basketball players.

2. Post-Cage Era (1920s-1940s) - the more gentlemanly non-Cage style of play typified by college basketball wins out, and strategies start coalescing with the Pivot Play of the Original Celtics reformatting both the pros and college around Pivots...who were not necessarily the team's Center. Quick passing ability is the critical skill of the era, and it is recognized that taller guys can see more, so Pivots tend to get taller.

3. Early Big Man Era (1940s-1960s) - giants with good coordination are found, Pivot/Center positions first merge, and then become scorers more than passers.

4. Mature NBA Era (1960s - 2010s) - modern-sized bigs become the norm, defense is recognized as the most valuable part of most big man's games, recognition that offense tends to be run best by "floor generals" on the perimeter gradually emerges until an equilibrium seems to be reached.

5. Pace & Space Era (2010s - present) - turns out, humans can develop enough skill to make decisions quickly and make shots from deep range, and since we made those shots worth 150% of the other shots, that's how we should have been playing in the '80s. Whoops!

[Tallboy]

Originally Posted by Makakilo Cards

Illegal defense is the real reason nobody used to take 30+ 3s in a game. You literally HAD to put a body on everyone.

I would disagree with that assessment.

I think you just have to go back and watch games from the past and see all of the times guys have the ball and an open shot beyond the 3-point line and they just stand there dribbling without even considering hoisting one up.

It's worth noting that back in the ABA, usage of the 3 actually went down with time rather than up. It was not at all obvious to folks in earlier times that 3's could be made at high enough percentage to make them a primary method of attack.

The removal of the illegal defense rule was meant to encourage the "pace" rather than the "space". The thinking was that if you made it harder to score in the half-court, offenses would be further incentivized to attract in transition, which was desirable primarily because fast breaks are way more exciting that one big man griding his ass against another big man while everyone else on the court stood around watching.

[mc1]

Jordan was a below 30% 3-pt shooter if you dont count the three years they moved the line in (94-95 to 96-97).

The line being moved was the reason for the increase in 3 pointers taken and made in the mid-90s.

[Tallboy]

Originally Posted by jplarson

Back to the OP, I see it this way:

Start-1954 - Introduction of the shot clock
1955-1979 - Introduction of the 3-point line (feel free to group this one and the one above together since it's super long time ago and barely anyone remembers)
1980-2003 - The Rise and Reign of Michael Jordan and the end of hand-checking on defense.
2004-2009 - Medieval Times
2010-Current - 3 Pointers Are Good And Fun No Matter How Young The Player Is.

Just ftr, the 3-point shot did not exist from 1955-1979 in the NBA.

3-point timeline:

1945 - the idea emerges and is experimented with in college basketball
1961 - officially used in competition in the rival league the ABL, which lasts a season and a half.
1963 - independent minor league EPBA adds 3 (would eventually become CBA, which the NBA then kills with the NBDL, now known as the G-League).
1967-76 - used by the next rival league, the ABA, until it is merged into the NBA.
1979 - NBA adds the 3
1980 - college conferences start start adding the 3
1984 - FIBA adds the 3

[Tallboy]

Originally Posted by mc1

Jordan was a below 30% 3-pt shooter if you dont count the three years they moved the line in (94-95 to 96-97).

The line being moved was the reason for the increase in 3 pointers taken and made in the mid-90s.

Indeed. They were really trying to get teams to use the 3-point shot more for a long time, and didn't stop after the short-line experiment, but they did pretty quickly decide that moving the shot in didn't give them what they wanted.

One of the things that's funny is that a shorter 3-point line means that less spacing is provided. Part of the beauty of 3-point spacing is that it makes it easier for scoring drives, which fans love, but if you make the line too close, you don't get that benefit.