Is the NBA’s Three-Point Frenzy Sinking Ratings?

Few individuals in NBA history loved the three-pointer more than the late Gene Shue. A pro coach for more than 20 seasons, Shue encouraged his players to hoist it from beyond the arc at a time when the shot was mostly seen as exotic. In 1979, the first year the league introduced the three-point line, Shue’s San Diego Clippers chucked 543 threes––121 more than the next-closest team. Shue scoffed at the prevailing wisdom of his peers, who believed that the three-pointer should be reserved as an act of desperation. “That philosophy,” he said, “is in the dark ages.”

More than four decades later, it’s safe to say the league has come around to Shue’s way of thinking. Two months into the NBA season, the three-point shot has never been more fashionable. Teams are averaging about 37.5 attempts per game, the most ever and roughly 15 more than the league average a decade ago. Defending champion Boston Celtics are setting the pace with a record average of 51.1 threes per game, which accounts for more than half of their total shot attempts.

“It used to be that jump-shooting teams couldn’t win a title,” says Dan Devine, a senior NBA writer for Yahoo Sports. “Now I don’t know if you can win a title if you’re not a jump-shooting team.”

The impetus for the NBA’s three-point boom comes down to math: With more sharpshooters in the league than ever before, teams have deduced that the most efficient way to generate points is to launch a high volume of shots from long range, rather than settle for attempts inside the arc. Three, after all, is more than two.

“If you can shoot from way farther out, way faster off the dribble, as opposed to needing somebody to pass it to you, and you can hit those shots at a super high level of accuracy,” explains Devine, “that is a more efficient pathway to offense than throwing it down to a seven-footer on the block and asking him to back down a guy for eight seconds and then maybe get fouled or something.”

But what makes for effective strategy does not necessarily result in an entertaining product. Some hoops fans have bemoaned the glut of three-pointers, which they argue has diminished several elements of the game. Low-post play does not figure as prominently as it once did. Fast breaks that once culminated in thunderous dunks now often lead to players spotting up for an open three. The midrange jumper is all but extinct. And while previous eras offered contrasts in playing styles, the current iteration of the league sometimes feels monotonous. In today’s NBA, everyone is Gene Shue.

The NBA’s sluggish television viewership has emerged as one of the biggest talking points to start the season. Everyone has a theory about the league’s ratings, which to date have dipped 20% relative to last year across its broadcast platforms, according to Nielsen. Conservatives argue that it’s due to the NBA’s social justice initiatives, citing them as another example of the public spurning a business that has gone too “woke.” Industry experts point to consumer trends such as “cord cutting,” which has led to a decline in cable television subscriptions. But others have sought on-court explanations, contending that viewers are tuning out the NBA because the abundance of three-pointers has made the game boring.

Viewership is “down because we’re looking at the same thing,” legendary big man Shaquille O’Neal said last month on his podcast. “Everybody is running the same plays.” Former NBA All-Star B.J. Armstrong likewise lamented last month on The Hoop Genius Podcast that today’s players play like “robots running up and down the court.”

“When I go watch the game, there’s no more creativity, there’s no more imagination,” Armstrong said.

The league, for its part, has reportedly attributed this season’s downturn in viewership to a number of factors, particularly the competition from both the presidential election and World Series, NBA commissioner Adam Silver told Front Office Sports. And after signing a new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal this past summer with the Walt Disney Company (parent company of ESPN), NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime, which will go into effect next season, the NBA isn’t exactly sweating over its ratings.

“Obviously, we just had three media partners enter into long-term agreements because of their belief in what our product offers, both on a national and global basis,” says Evan Wasch, executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics at the NBA. “But certainly some trend lines are pointing downward this year, maybe for one-off reasons that will turn around as the season progresses.”

Nor is the league worried, for now, about the nightly three-point shoot-outs. Silver, for one, flatly rejected O’Neal’s thesis. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the three-point shot,” Silver said last month while discussing the ratings dip with Cheddar. According to Wasch, the NBA’s internal research indicates that fans are, by and large, in favor of the league’s three-heavy style: “Our survey data shows overwhelmingly positive support for current gameplay.”

But Wasch acknowledges that the data may not tell the full story. And a cursory scan of social media on any given NBA night will reveal plenty of fans who aren’t down with the three-point revolution. Likewise, a growing number of individuals who cover the league have voiced support for either rule or structural changes that would curb the number of three-point attempts.

No such changes are under active consideration, but Wasch says that the league won’t hesitate to remedy the on-court product if fans grow disgruntled: “We are absolutely not shy about taking action when team incentives become misaligned with fan incentives.”

Joe Dumars has always dug the long ball.

A Hall of Famer who played his entire 14-year career with the Detroit Pistons, Dumars is still the team’s career leader in three-pointers. In 1994, he tied what was then a league record by draining 10 threes in a win over Minnesota, finishing the game with 40 points. “I love the three-ball,” says Dumars, who now serves as executive vice president, head of basketball operations for the NBA.

But when Dumars entered the NBA in 1985, few of his hoops brethren shared that love. “Coaches were literally saying, ‘Don’t take that shot. You can dribble in two or three more feet and get a better shot.’” Now, he notes, “It’s the exact opposite.”

A total of 26 players individually attempted at least 500 threes last season; in the 2013–14 season, only eight players cleared that threshold. Dumars finished third in three-point attempts in the 1997–98 season with 426, a total that would rank him somewhere in the 40s these days.

“For me, it’s probably been the biggest change that I’ve seen over the last 10 years, but it’s where the game has gone,” Dumars says. “I just think this has been an organic [evolution] of the game and teams feel like this gives them a better chance to win.”

The three-point explosion in the last decade has been brought on by a recalibration of offensive philosophy. Whereas Dumars’s coaches told him to move inside the arc, today’s NBA players are discouraged from settling for a midrange jumper––the type of shot that was Michael Jordan’s bread and butter.

“Essentially, 20, 30 years ago, roughly 50% of shots were taken from the paint, 40% of shots were from the midrange, and 10% of shots were three-pointers,” says Wasch. “Fast-forward to 2024, it’s still roughly 50% of shots being taken from the paint, but those latter two buckets have flipped. Now it’s 10% of shots being taken from the midrange and 40% from three-point range.”

The dynastic Golden State Warriors, which won four titles in six NBA Finals appearances from 2015–2022, are often cited as the progenitors of the NBA’s three-point revolution. Led by Steph Curry, the game’s greatest shooter ever, and fellow marksman Klay Thompson, the Warriors could score in flurries and put the game out of reach before opponents knew what hit them.

No one boasts a shooter of Curry’s ability, but other teams quickly replicated the Warriors’ blueprint––and then some. In the 2015–16 season, Golden State led the league in three-point attempts with an average of 31.6 per game. That would rank near the bottom in the NBA this season, and is about 20 fewer than the league-leading Celtics. Curry’s shotmaking remains captivating (watch the closing minutes of this summer’s gold medal game in Paris, if you need a refresher).

His offshoots, however, have been less awe-inspiring. On Friday, the Chicago Bulls and Charlotte Hornets combined to miss 75 three-point attempts, the most ever in a regulation NBA game. “Everybody wants to be Steph Curry,” O’Neal said on his podcast, “but everybody’s not Steph Curry, and that’s why viewership is down.”

But with teams placing a premium on outside shooting, players have had no choice but to adjust their games accordingly. Anthony Edwards, the ascendant superstar for the Minnesota Timberwolves whose game was defined by midrange pull-ups and rim-rattling dunks, has dramatically increased his three-point volume this season––much to the dismay of some of his admirers. “When the game incentivizes Anthony Edwards to play like Klay Thompson, something needs to change immediately,” sports commentator Bomani Jones said in a post on X back in October.

One oft proposed change is to move the three-point line back. The line is currently situated at 23 feet, nine inches, and 22 feet in the corners. Shifting the dimensions would increase the degree of difficulty and could eliminate the “corner three,” which has become one of the most common––and easiest––shots in the NBA.

Silver has said he’s amenable to moving the three-point line back, and the league has tinkered with that before. Prior to the 1994–95 season, in a bid to promote scoring, the NBA moved the three-point line to a uniform 22 feet around the basket, only to restore its current dimensions before the 1997–98 campaign.

Longtime basketball writer Marc Stein, who now publishes “The Stein Line” on Substack, believes that the NBA should use its developmental circuit, the G League, as a laboratory for any three-point reform. “When it comes to something as significant as the three-point line,” he says, “we need lots of discussion and testing of potential tweaks in the G League before they are implemented in the actual NBA.”

A more radical proposal that has gained steam this season would be to impose a cap on the number of three-point attempts a team is permitted each game.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to a limit on the number of threes,” says Ric Bucher, an NBA analyst for Fox Sports. “I totally reject the argument that, ‘Well, you’re screwing with history and now the statistical comparisons won’t be the same.’”

Bucher’s biggest concern with such a proposal is the burden it would impose on the NBA’s officiating crews: “The officials are already overloaded with things that they have to keep track of, and I don’t want any more technology introduced unless we’re going to expedite matters.”

Of course, there are defenders of the NBA’s three-point infatuation. Dumars notes that the shot has become an “equalizer” for middling and lower-tier teams. “It gives them a chance, man,” he says.

And as Stein points out, the ability of teams to shoot a high percentage from three-point land “means almost no lead is safe anymore.”

“So that’s at least one counter to the watchability talk,” Stein says.

The league has historically taken aggressive measures to improve the quality of games for fans. In 2001, the NBA responded to complaints that the game had become boring with a package of rule changes designed to increase scoring and quicken the pace. In 2017, the league’s board of governors made changes to the 2019 draft lottery in an effort to discourage teams from tanking for a higher pick. And last year, the NBA introduced new policies designed to curtail “load management,” the practice of holding players out of games for rest.

Wasch says the clearest sign that the barrage of three-pointers hasn’t reached a crisis point is that the NBA hasn’t yet intervened.

“To me, the fact that we haven’t done something significant in this space is just a testament to the belief that this isn’t negatively impacting our fans to the extent that we think that action is warranted yet,” he says. “It might get there at some point, but right now we’re really happy with where it is.”