So I agree that more complexity is not better and there’s a real risk of alienating fans with complicated schemes. But chess has made real inroads by providing good commentators and analysis. You can’t make teams play dumber but you can teach fans to be smarter.
As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage. And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups. The pace has also dramatically increased, leading to more swings in scoring, which is pretty exciting.
Thinking Basketball is great. The people who complain about the 3s in basketball probably didn’t watch the NBA in the older days. Horrible defense and far less skill — and that’s the era I grew up and loved.
I have two major complaints about the game nowadays: (1) intentional fouling to get an advantage. It’s the only major sport where fouling can often work to your advantage.
(2) The block call is so inconsistent it might as well be a coin flip.
The end of a basketball game feels almost completely unwatchable for me when they devolve into constant fouling, stopping the game every couple of seconds.
There are possessions where the defense has the sole objective of ignoring everything other than fouling as fast as possible, which feels boring and can stretch 30 seconds of in game clock time to 5+ minutes of back to back stoppage. I get that it might be the mathematical best play because it forces the winning team to take free throws and then turn the ball over without taking any clock time, but they could architect the rules to avoid it.
I totally agree with the block call being a coin flip.... I'd extend it to almost every other call. NBA reffing seems like it absolutely sucks for such a large scale professional league. Basketball is a fast paced game so I know they can't catch everything, but when you're watching on TV you see so many things that are so inconsistently called. Those calls end up changing the outcome of the game when one team has 20 more ft chances than the other.
> (1) intentional fouling to get an advantage. It’s the only major sport where fouling can often work to your advantage.
nitpick: This happens in soccer as well. Oftentimes it's late in the game and you see the opponent has a counterattack that has a high probability of scoring. In that case, it's better for you to tactically foul them by taking them down before they reach your box and take the yellow card.
Came here to say this. It doesn’t have to be late in the game. The whole time tactical fouls is a valuable tool for defense. You try to make it non-violent enough and, when it’s a counterattack, early enough so the referee might not interpret as a foul to prevent a counterattack, so you don’t get a yellow card.
Also, exchanging a certain goal for a penalty+red card is a very common defense tactic. Check Uruguay vs Ghana, World Cup 2010.
The defense was much more on point back in the ‘90s because the defenders were allowed to be more physical without fouls getting called left and right. Nowadays it’s all a travesty, you’ve got scoresheets like 145-135 and nobody blinks an eye about it.
Horrible defense? You're kidding, right? Check out the mid-80's - 90's - early 2000's Bulls, Knicks, Celtics, 76'ers, and Pistons, or basically any team east of the Mississippi. The 95-96 Bulls were the best defensive team in NBA history. No one's played defense in the NBA for 20 years at least. And yeah, the 3 has completely changed the game into something more resembling NBA 2K1, which is exactly what the league wants.
Completely agree, but I would add the incessant need for counting, 3 seconds, 8 seconds, 24 seconds. But the current fouling situation really needs to be fixed urgently.
besides 7-footers chucking 3’s what “skills” do these new nba players have? there are maybe 10 that have any skills, the rest can shoot and that’s about fucking it.
90% of today’s players would play in D league two decades ago
Are you thinking the salary cap hasn't changed from the 90s? The MLE is 12.3m this year, and that is a high-end role player. If one plays at that level for 8 years, they make that amount you're complaining about. And the cap is expected to go up significantly over the next few years (would have gone up more drastically, but the KD to Warriors situation convinced teams to adopt smoothing).
It is true that in general, super stars are underpaid, and role players are overpaid.
> As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage.
I'd much rather watch NBA players miss 3's than watch a 23 minute YouTube video of someone talking about missing 3's. ;-) But the NBA FG% in 2025 is 46.5%, while it was 49.1% in 1985, so I'm skeptical that 3 pointers are simply replacing long 2 pointers with equal percentages. Obviously the % would go down the farther you get from the basket.
> And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups
Crowding is not necessarily bad. A contested shot is interesting; an uncontested shot, not so much. Even uncontested dunks are less interesting than contested dunks.
That's not a huge difference. 3% is like an average of 3 extra misses, which is probably not even that noticeable with variance. 3 pointers are not replacing 2 pointers with equal percentages, but they are creating opportunities for higher percentage 2 pointers.
> Crowding is not necessarily bad. A contested shot is interesting; an uncontested shot, not so much. Even uncontested dunks are less interesting than contested dunks.
That's because you're thinking of a really cool dunk, not a big man backing down his man for like 20 seconds and throwing up a clanker that gets rebounded into another 20 second post possession. Realistically that's what a lot of offense was like back in the day. There's just selective nostalgia for the really cool plays.
> That's not a huge difference. 3% is like an average of 3 extra misses
More like 5 extra misses per game.
And we're getting more uncontested misses today.
> a big man backing down his man for like 20 seconds and throwing up a clanker that gets rebounded into another 20 second post possession. Realistically that's what a lot of offense was like back in the day.
But this clearly wasn't happening 64% of the time.
The irony is that contemporary players are better shooters. Yet their overall shooting % is lower, because they're consistently taking longer, harder shots.
If shooting and defense got better simultaneously, then all other things equal, overall shooting % should have stayed about the same, not gone down.
Also, as hardwaregeek mentioned: "And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups."
The 3’s are not replacing 2’s at the same shot percentage. The 3’s are slightly lower percentage, but they are high enough that the overall value is higher than the long 2’s they replaced. They came to the conclusion that the long 2 was a high risk play so they replaced it with a comparable play with a higher reward. It’s common sense. Frankly, it’s the long 2 that’s a stupid play.
The video is worth watching and I’m not even a basketball fan. It shows parts of 3 games from 3 eras back to back and it’s really interesting. Personally, I find the modern game to be the most engaging.
The skill level of the guys who aren’t superstars is clearly much higher than the old days. Outside of the stars, you had guys with certain body types that were pretty much one dimensional. It was neat seeing a big guy like Jokic in the video making ridiculous passes and hitting 3’s. Twenty years ago, all he would have done is hang out 4 feet from the basket.
I remember seeing part of a game in about 1985. IIRC, it was the Jazz against the Knicks. Utah won, something like 86-82. The Knicks offense was laughably bad. They came down the floor, wound up standing around the perimeter of the key, all five of them, each with a defensive player in front of them. They passed the ball around that perimeter. Nobody moved; they just stood there. Eventually somebody shot.
I know it was late in the game and people were tired. The shooting percentage may have been reasonably high. I don't care. That's terrible offense. And horrifically boring.
As for missing, the video I linked debunks that. 3 pointers are replacing long 2 pointers which also had a low percentage. And in turn, the game has become less crowded and more spread out, leading to a higher percentage on dunks and layups. The pace has also dramatically increased, leading to more swings in scoring, which is pretty exciting.