This past Sunday, James Harden dropped a three-pointer that became a milestone that keeps proving that the NBA is changing for good. His shot became the 30,000th shot made from beyond the arc this season, which is now the fourth-consecutive year that this happens.
This figure had not been reached before 2021, but now shooting from range seems to be every team’s strategy. Just look at the reigning NBA champion in Boston, who are close to breaking single-season records for most threes attempted by any club in history.
The Celtics, who still have eight more games before the playoffs, have made 1,323 already this season, and are only 40 away from breaking Golden State‘s record set two years ago. There also attempted 3,574 so far, and are now 147 away from breaking Houston‘s mark made back in 2019.
Even though Adam Silver has already addressed this issue in the past months, he took things further this week when he appeared on Colin Cowherd’s The Herd this year and made it clear that the league is considering fundamental changes to keep things in check.
“What do we do to change it?” he started out. “I agree to the extent that you start to see very similar offenses around the league. Teams have brands, teams have identities, Joe Dumars is a colleague now at the league office, the Bad Boys, etc… the Showtime Lakers. So, I recognize that to the extent that offenses start to look very similar, we lose that.”
The NBA Commissioner is convinced that these so-called “revolutions” were bound to happen, as the modern basketball player is more versatile than before. “At the same time, the league is going through a transformation,” Silver said. “Just as you said, players like Victor Wembanyama, players like [Nikola] Jokic, are doing things that big men never did historically.”
“So I think we’ve just gotta be careful,” he acknowledged. “The one thing we don’t want to do is, I don’t want to just kneejerk 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 what changes we should make. To be honest, I wish it was as simple as just moving the 3-point line back, because then we would just do it.”
