The 2-point shot is less and less
utilized in the NBA. The debate about whether that's good rages on
 [February 26, 2025]
By TIM REYNOLDS
The NBA is on the cusp of accomplishing something that it hasn't
seen before. The jury's still out on whether it's a good thing.
With about seven weeks left in the season, 2-point shots are
accounting for 49% of scoring. And if that stat holds up — there's
no indication that it won't — this will be the first season in which
2-pointers make up less than half of the league's point production.
The current breakdown: a record-low 49% of scoring comes from
2-pointers, a record-high 36% comes from 3-pointers, and a
near-record-low 15% comes from the foul line. Those numbers are just
more proof of how the 3-point shot continues permeating the game,
and that's why plenty of people are wondering aloud if the league
has a real problem on its hands.
“I don’t have any problem with guys and teams shooting a lot of 3s,”
said Golden State's Stephen Curry, the league's all-time leader in
3-pointers and someone closing in on 4,000 such makes for his
regular-season career. “Obviously, that’s the way that I play, and I
love that factor in the game. But you’ve also got to put the work in
behind the scenes to take full advantage of it.”
This isn't a new phenomenon.
Barring some sort of major shift in how the game is played over the
next seven weeks, the league is on pace to break the record for
3-pointers in a season (it’ll be the 15th consecutive season in
which the 3s-per-game record falls) and 3-pointers attempted in a
season (a new mark will be set there for the 19th time in the last
22 seasons).
Boston is leading the 3-point assault this year, though the Celtics
are hardly the only 3-happy team. But the defending NBA champions
are clearly more reliant on the shot than anyone else, with 46% of
their points this season coming from beyond the arc. They'll almost
certainly become only the third team in NBA history to finish a
season with more points from 3s than 2s, joining the 2018-19 Houston
Rockets and 2020-21 Utah Jazz.
“Everybody can’t play the same way," Celtics All-Star forward and
two-time Olympic gold medalist Jayson Tatum said. "You've got to
have the right personnel. But, you know, the way we play works for
us. So, we play to our strengths.”
The Celtics are the only franchise in NBA history to have eight
different players make 100 3s in a season; they've done it in each
of the last two seasons and are on pace to do it again this year.
For them, the 3-pointer is the golden ticket; they're 33-6 this
season when they make at least 17 3s, and just 8-10 when they don't
make that many.
They had five 3-point shooters on the floor together last season and
the result was an NBA championship. It was, at times, impossible to
guard. Golden State rode the brilliance of Curry and Klay Thompson
to four NBA titles in their years as the Warriors' “Splash
Brothers," a duo that helped usher in a new era of 3-point reliance.
And the math is simple: shooting 40% on 3s gets you more points per
attempt than shooting 50% on 2s does.
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Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves reacts after making a 3-point
basket against the Portland Trail Blazers during the second half of
an NBA basketball game in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025.
(AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer)
“Right now, I think the defense has to catch up and
maybe NBA teams will shoot less 3s,” San Antonio star Victor
Wembanyama said at the All-Star break, before he was shut down for
the year with deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder. “But
analytics back it up, so it makes sense.”
Wembanyama was averaging 8.8 3-point tries per game this season, the
most of any center in the league, and his 403 attempts on the season
from beyond the arc is still more entering this week than some of
the game's best shooters — a list of players that includes Phoenix's
Devin Booker, the Los Angeles Lakers' Austin Reaves and Miami's
Duncan Robinson.
But the numbers say it's a good shot. So, Wembanyama took them. A
lot of them. The Spurs, for years, were a team that didn't
prioritize the 3-pointer. And now, it's a weapon for them and
everyone else in the league.
“The game has evolved,” said Golden State coach Steve Kerr, an elite
shooter in his playing days.
It keeps evolving. Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month
that he listened to an off-the-record conversation between Kerr and
broadcaster Bob Costas at the tech summit during All-Star weekend,
the keynote address of sorts for those who were invited to that
event. Silver later shared that Kerr conceded there may be a bit too
much 3-point shooting in today's NBA, but that he liked the current
state of the game and wouldn't recommend any changes.
Silver thinks it's all cyclical. He said when the All-Star weekend
last came to the Bay Area in 2000, “many people were saying it was
too physical, we were too dependent on the dunk, that players
weren’t sufficiently skilled as they were than in the old days.”
It's all very different now.
“The fact now that you can’t play in this league unless you can
shoot, that even 7-footers have to be able to shoot these days and
have to be able to shoot at long range, I actually think that’s a
beautiful thing,” Silver said.
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