Have the NBA’s best players broken the game basketball?

The new season is in full swing and a glaring new trend has emerged over the first couple of weeks — teams are shooting more three-pointers than ever before.

Reigning champions the Boston Celtics are leading the way, taking more than half of their total shots (55.1 per cent) from behind the three-point line.

The Celtics equalled the NBA record for the most threes made in a game with 29 in their season opener, and they could have easily set a new mark if not for some wayward shooting late in that game.

Boston has perfected a game plan where all five players on the court can knock down three-pointers, spacing the court and making the opposition’s defence stick to each of their players.

One thing is clear in today’s NBA — players are virtually useless if they can’t shoot three-pointers at a decent clip.

So isn’t it a good thing? The rise in three-point attempts makes for higher scoring games and means big 20-30 point leads can be reeled in more easily.

Not necessarily. Many basketball fans believe the three-point creates a boring style of basketball, with long ricocheting rebounds making for a disjointed game.

Leading pundit Bill Simmons said on his podcast he doesn’t subscribe to the theory that “there is a sameness to all these styles now that it’s boring in the regular season”.

Simmons believes there are enough “aberration players” such as Ja Morant, Anthony Davis, Paolo Banchero and Alperen Sengun who don’t rely on three-pointers.

“It doesn’t feel like we’re just chucking up threes we’ll see who wins,” he said.

Other fans want to see more old school post-up play from the 90s when hulking centres dominated the NBA.

So-called NBA ‘alien’ Victor Wembanyama has been urged to take fewer three-point attempts and instead used his 222cm frame to bully his way to dunks and easy points near the hoop.

Why NBA trend is bad news for Aussie stars

The rise in three-point attempts spells trouble for Australia’s contingent of players in the NBA.

Veterans Patty Mills and Joe Ingles are still on NBA rosters and have made plenty of money from their three-point prowess, but the next generation of Aussie NBA stars aren’t as strong from downtown.

Josh Giddey became unplayable for the OKC Thunder in last season’s playoffs because he couldn’t hit wide open shots, and was a key reason why he was traded to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for the defensive minded Alex Caruso, who is a better three-point shooter.

Giddey made 4/4 three-pointers in Chicago’s win over Orlando last week, but it’s unlikely he’ll keep his three-point accuracy at the healthy 44 per cent he’s had to start the season.

There will always be a place in basketball for an old fashioned pass-first point guard like Giddey. But the NBA is increasingly become a shooter’s game.

Ben Simmons’ shooting yips are well documented, and Brooklyn Nets coach Jordi Fernandez has urged him to take at least 10 shots per game.

Simmons has made only five three-pointers in his career and none since the 2020-21 season.

Dyson Daniels has made an immediate impact early this season after being traded to the Atlanta Hawks, but mostly on the defensive end where he leads the NBA in deflections and has the third most steals. Daniels is 62 per cent from the free throw line over his career so far – a very low success rate from the foul line for a guard.

Dante Exum (Dallas Mavericks) and Josh Green (Charlotte Hornets) are solid ‘three and D’ role players who don’t shoot enough from three-point range to make them indispensable.

‘It’s time’: NBA urged to extend three-point line

The NBA first introduced the three-point line in 1979 — Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s first season in the league.

It took time for players to embrace the three-point shot. Reggie Miller and Ray Allen were the best long range shooters in the NBA before Steph Curry came along and revolutionised basketball with his quick release and lethally-accurate long range shots.

But times have changed and modern day NBA players are shooting more threes than ever, prompting calls for the three-point arc to be extended, making the shot even harder.

The '86 Celtics made 138 total 3s in 82 games.

The 2024-25 Celts have made 152 in 8 games.

— Kirk Goldsberry (@kirkgoldsberry) November 5, 2024

The NBA has a 22-foot three-point line in the corners and a 23-foot, 9-inch line elsewhere. The WNBA and the international FIBA game plays with a 20-foot, 6-inch line.

The NCAA men’s game has a 20-foot, 9-inch line while the NCAA women and high schools have a 19-foot, 9-inch line.

‘Corner threes’ have become a go-to spot for shooters, simply because the distance to the hoop is shorter than at the top of the arc.

Basketball stats guru Kirk Goldsberry believes it’s time for the NBA three-point line to be pushed further up the court.

“I’d love to see the NBA move the line,” Goldberry told the Bill Simmons Podcast.

“It’s time to move the line. I think the shot has become too easy for too many guys.

“I’d like to see it a little more difficult for the average player. It’s only going to make Stephen Curry or Damian Lillard more valuable – guys who can shoot from deeper will become more valuable when the shot’s harder. I think it celebrates those guys a little bit more.

“I always joke it should be called the two-point line, once we take more than half of our shots from behind it.

“Every other league on the planet that matters – the WNBA, college basketball, FIBA — they’ve all moved the lined back this century. The NBA’s the only one that hasn’t.”

Simmons added: “This is the first time I’ve started to think, ‘Do we have to fix the corner three a little bit?’

“Do you change the arc so when it goes right to the corner, maybe the line goes so that a corner three no longer exists.

“That would be the only thing I could see in five, six years from now, if they were going to tweak it.

“I could see the whole arc of the three point line, instead of a semi circle the way it looks now, being different so corner threes are gone, it goes up higher so the peak of it is 28 feet instead of 24 or whatever, maybe that’s where we’re heading.

“But I don’t know if that would help the product, because then it’s just guys heaving these long shots and long rebounds.

“I think that would cause too many unintended consequences. But could they experiment with (getting rid of) the corner three for pre-season? I wouldn’t be against it.”

Goldsberry revealed he was approached by NBA CEO Adam Silver in 2019 to discuss potential changes to the three-point line.

“We got it to the competition committee and we were going to try it in the (second tier) G-League, two or three different looks in the G-League,” he said.

“One (option) was to get rid of the corner three entirely, which is very drastic.

“In fact I think it was (former Celtics coach) Brad Stevens, who was on the competition committee, who was like ‘Hell no, you’ll never see a slam dunk again. This is going to ruin spacing’.”

If the NBA does change the three-point line, it would likely first be trialled in the second-tier G-League, pre-season or even February’s All-Star Game, which has been void of competitiveness in recent years.

Another option would be to restrict the maximum number of three-pointers a team could make in a game.

No Dunks podcast host J.E. Skeets said: “Why don’t we use the All-Star game to try out some of these crazy ideas? What if you limited a team to like 35 three-point attempts a game?

“Why don’t we implement it in the All-Star game and see if it has any bearing on the result. “We had 168 three-point attempts in last year’s All-Star game. That’s mind-blowing.”

“Maybe there’s a limit for threes,” Simmons suggested.

“Once you make 20, you can only make two-pointers from that point on. You’ve used up your 20 and that’s it. Maybe that’s where it goes.

“That would be awesome,” Goldberry said.

“It’s like, ‘Sorry that’s your last three. I hope you’re ready to post up (Kristaps) Porzingis for the rest of the game’. It would be wild to see how teams change their offence.”

“You have to see it, you have to see how the league reacts to these things because it could end up making the product worse,” Goldsberry cautioned.

“Some of these ideas might not end up being good ideas.

“I think the better one is to keep the corners where they are but extend the three-point arc, which is currently 23.75 feet, get it out to 25 or 26 feet.

“But again, does that mean we’re just watching more missed threes? The same number of threes but fewer makes, because that’s not great.

“I think we’ve got to see it in practice to see what it would look like before we would engineer the right product.”