[h=1]Should the NBA add a 4-pointer?[/h][h=3]Breaking down the pros and cons of instituting an additional shot type[/h]
By Tom Haberstroh | ESPN Insider
Rod Thorn, NBA president of basketball operations, didn't balk at the idea.
During a sit-down TrueHoop TV interview with our own Henry Abbott, Thorn was asked about the chances that a 4-pointer -- as outlandish as it may seem -- could be brought to the NBA at some point. In a Per Diem column last month, I advocated for the introduction of a 4-point line 28 feet away from the basket.
Turns out, Thorn didn't think the advent of a 4-pointer would be outlandish at all. Rather than reflexively squash the radical idea, as you might expect from a 72-year-old NBA lifer who has worn just about every hat in the league, Thorn seemed genuinely intrigued at the notion and revealed that the 4-pointer has "come up" in league discussions.
"Oh man," Thorn told Abbott, "Some of the players we have can shoot the ball from I assume it would be 30 feet? 28-30 feet. Somewhere in there. Some of the guys we have can shoot that as easily as a 23-, 24-foot shot." One of those players? Vince Carter. Thorn recalled a moment when he ran the New Jersey Nets from 2000 to 2010 as team president and general manager. As players tend to do at practice, Carter would showcase his shot-making abilities from far, far away.
"I remember when we had Vince Carter in New Jersey," Thorn said. "Well, he could shoot the ball from the
seats and make half of 'em."
Don't we want to see that? Players pushed to the limits of their abilities?
"It would be unbelievable," Thorn said. "But you know coaches would go crazy because now you've got another line out there. That's crazy."
Yes, it would be unbelievable. But you know what coaches also thought was crazy and could never work and would ruin the game and cause widespread global devastation?
The 3-point line.
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Change is good
There's a section in Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls," the essential book about the ABA, that is devoted to the 3-point line and how it came to be. NBA legend George Mikan, who served as the ABA's first commissioner, decided to adopt the rule that was first established in the American Basketball League because "it brought the fans out of their seats." The ABA sought to bring life to a sport that became stale in the NBA.
Of course, when the NBA and ABA merged in 1976, traditional NBA types hated the idea of a 3-point line. Change is scary, and many coaches predictably thought a 3-point line was crazy.
Chief among those early protestors: Red Auerbach, who was then serving as the Celtics' general manager. But he eventually came around and saw the value in it. Angelo Drossos, the owner of the San Antonio Spurs at the time, characterized Auerbach's sudden change of heart in Pluto's book.
"When the leagues merged, the NBA moguls didn't want the 3-point shot. Red Auerbach hated it and said the Celtics would never go along with it. He had everybody up in arms against the play. Of course, a few years later Red drafted Larry Bird and suddenly he was all for it."
This is how I imagine a post-4-point-line world would work. Some folks would be fired up about how it turns the game into a circus act until they have a player on their team who can shoot 4-pointers. And then it becomes a weapon, not unlike a strong post player or an expert passer.
Here's Hubie Brown's take in the book:
"For a coach, the 3-point play is a form of mental gymnastics. All your life you've been trained that a basket is worth two points. That was how you always played the game, how the game was always played, until the ABA made the 3-point play popular. ... [It] forced ABA coaches to be more creative and to give their players more freedom."
Of course, coaches wouldn't be on board at first. A 4-point line is a challenge, a wrench in the system. It would take away some of the control and predictability of every possession. The funny thing is that unpredictability, the same thing that coaches hate, is what fans love.
But it would also cause coaches to innovate and adapt to the modern basketball player, who is bigger, stronger, faster and more skilled than ever before. If the league isn't open to expanding the court, which may jeopardize precious courtside seat revenue, a 4-point line would unclog a court that right now, even with a 3-point line, feels compact. In recent years, coaches have actually had their players stand out of bounds, a strategy that has been since outlawed, in order to create space. The fact that league rules encouraged players to take themselves
out of the playing field is absurd.
Post-up players rejoice
A 4-point line would generate more space and give more room for the acrobatic basketball plays that set Twitter ablaze, just as the 3-point line did for the NBA. Hall of Fame coach Alex Hannum explained the effect of the 3-point line in Pluto's book:
"In the NBA, we just clogged up the middle and dared teams to shoot from the outside," Hannum said. "Nobody bothered to guard anyone 20 feet from the basket, but the 3-point play really did open up the middle. ... No other rule made the game more wide open and more fun to watch."
This is the whole point. More open game, more fun to watch. Sure, some players would excel at 4-point shots more than others (we'll get to that in a moment), but the idea that a 4-point line would somehow make big men obsolete doesn't hold much water.
With better spacing, a 4-point line would create more real estate for post-up players to work efficiently. Not unlike the interaction between bees and flowers, a symbiotic relationship exists between long-range shooters and post-up big men. Want to leave your guy at the 4-point line and double-team a big man in the post? Good luck getting there in time. If anything, big men would be big winners with the improved spacing that would come along with the 4-point line.
There's statistical backing here. According to Synergy video tracking, which team is the most efficient in post-ups this season? The Miami Heat -- the team that predicates itself on carving out space wherever possible. It's no coincidence that the Heat fire up the most corner 3s in the league and also have the most efficient post offense, generating over a point per post-up play according to Synergy. More spacing, more room for post-up work.
Looking across the league, you'll find that efficient post offenses tend to come from 3-point-slinging teams. The Miami Heat and Los Angeles Clippers boast two of the most 3-point-happy teams in the league, and they both rank top-three in post-up efficiency. Using corner 3 rates as a proxy for spacing, we find that of the bottom 10 teams in corner 3 attempts, six also rank in the bottom 10 in post-up efficiency (New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit and Utah).
You'll never get a perfect relationship, but the general trend is that more spacing means more efficient post play. The big anomaly here is 3-point-heavy Houston; the Rockets insist on feeding post-ups to Dwight Howard to keep their big star happy despite the awful results. According to Synergy, a total of 18 big men have used at least 250 post-up plays this season, and no one fares worse than Howard (just 0.748 points per play). As a result, the Rockets are the big outlier here, ranking No. 1 in 3-point frequency and last in post-up efficiency.
The Vince Carters
You might be wondering who is the Vince Carter of today's basketball -- the guy who would be a 4-point savant. The answer isn't a total surprise. It's Jamal Crawford.
Get this: Crawford has made 14 of 23 shots from 28-32 feet, basically the 4-point area that I've suggested. Yes, 61 percent. The league average from this distance is less than half that, 26 percent. (As I mentioned in the last 4-pointer column, a 28-foot line would be a less efficient option compared to a 3-point shot on average, but should improve over time as players train for it).
Who would be the other 4-point mavens? From the NBA StatsCube database, here are the shooters who have taken at least 10 shots from 28-to-32 feet this season and their conversion rates.
<!-- begin inline 1 -->[h=4]NBA's best long-range shooters[/h]*From 28-to-32 feet
| Player | Makes | Takes | Percent |
|---|
| Jamal Crawford | 14 | 23 | 60.9 percent |
| Kendall Marshall | 11 | 23 | 47.8 percent |
| Stephen Curry | 8 | 21 | 38.1 percent |
| John Wall | 6 | 19 | 31.6 percent |
| Jameer Nelson | 8 | 18 | 44.4 percent |
| Jordan Crawford | 4 | 16 | 25.0 percent |
| Damian Lillard | 9 | 15 | 60.0 percent |
| Jeff Green | 4 | 13 | 30.8 percent |
| Kyrie Irving | 5 | 13 | 38.5 percent |
| Kyle Lowry | 3 | 12 | 25.0 percent |
| Paul George | 1 | 11 | 9.1 percent |
| J.R. Smith | 0 | 11 | 0.0 percent |
| O.J. Mayo | 4 | 10 | 40.0 percent |
| Marco Belinelli | 5 | 10 | 50.0 percent |
| Nick Young | 1 | 10 | 10.0 percent |
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<!-- end inline 1 -->That J.R. Smith is 0-for-10 on these shots is just classic J.R. Smith. Elsewhere, Kendall Marshall, one of the most compelling stories in the NBA this season, has taken as many "4-pointers" as Crawford in about half the playing time, which is awesome. Let's see more of it. Again, why aren't we encouraging more players like Marshall, Crawford and Stephen Curry to showcase their talents from long range? We don't, and that's what's crazy.
