The level of talent in the NBA is as high as it’s ever been, but questions have emerged this season on how to make the game more aesthetically pleasing in the wake of the conversation surrounding the league’s ratings.
Could one of those changes be an adjustment to the 3-point line in an effort to bring down scoring?
NBA commissioner Adam Silver appeared on Wednesday’s edition of “The Herd,” explaining the league’s position on potentially moving the 3-point line.
“I recognize that to the extent that offenses start to look very similar, we lose [distinct team identities],” Silver told host Colin Cowherd. “At the same time, the league is going through a transformation. Players like Victor Wembanyama, players like [Nikola] Jokic are doing things big men never did historically. It wasn’t that long ago that the conversations you had with [former commissioner] David Stern, we would bemoan the lack of skill among some players, that there was a sense there was too much physicality around the game.
“I don’t want to sort of knee-jerk move the 3-point line. We’re sort of going through a process now, seeing how these players are adapting to the new rules and figuring out whatever changes we should make.”
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Silver did push back on the idea that the 3-point line needs to be moved back, but he did acknowledge that there are ongoing conversations surrounding it.
“Part of the concern from the basketball folks is that if you move the 3-point line back, you’ll end up sort of just clogging up the area under the basket, and that’s not such attractive basketball, either,” Silver said.
“I assure you, we are on it. I think it’s a very fixable issue … we will tweak it. We will correct those issues.”
The reigning-champion Boston Celtics lead the NBA with 49.4 attempts from beyond the arc this season, while the Denver Nuggets are last with 31.1 attempts from distance; the Memphis Grizzlies lead the NBA with 122.9 points per game.
For perspective, the Houston Rockets led the NBA with 32.7 attempts from beyond the arc per game in the 2014-15 regular season, while the Golden State Warriors led the sport with 110.0 points per game. Moreover, the Phoenix Suns led the NBA with just 24.7 attempts from beyond the arc per game in the 2004-05 regular season.
While the NBA has traditionally leaned on its high-market and more successful teams like the Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls — and whichever team LeBron James is playing for — a great number of teams in second-tier markets from both media and population lenses have thrived of late.
Currently, the Cleveland Cavaliers (34-5) and Oklahoma City Thunder (33-6) boast the best records in the Eastern and Western Conference, respectively; the Rockets and Grizzlies are the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds in the West; the Nuggets are one season removed from winning the NBA Finals, with the Milwaukee Bucks beating the Suns in the 2021 NBA Finals.
Silver raved about the NBA’s current competitive nature.
“I don’t think it’s an accident that we’ve had six different teams over the last six years that have won championships, and, at the end of the day, we sell competition. … what we’ve done is, while we have a soft cap system, it’s become harder, and it has been more difficult once you have a fully loaded team to then add a great player on top of that … we’re coming off a season last year, and it’s continued this year, I think we have more competitive teams than any time in league history,” Silver said about competition in the NBA.
“I think the fact that now we’re selling competition in every market and from a television standpoint, too, whether it’s Oklahoma City, whether it’s San Antonio, whether it’s Salt Lake City, that those teams are in a position, when well managed, to compete in the same way the large markets can.”
The Celtics, Nuggets, Warriors, Bucks, Lakers and Toronto Raptors make up the previous six NBA champions. That six-year run comes at the end of the Warriors winning four championships in eight seasons and the teams that James played on winning four titles in nine seasons (Miami Heat twice, and Cavaliers and Lakers once).
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