How NBA Three-Point Shooting Has Ballooned Over The Years Using Data Visualization
I'm not here to tell you anything new. I'm just here to visualize what you already know.
And we all know three-point shooting is off the rails. Even the hardest nosed NBA heads are realizing it. Players included. Shaq's going off. Gilbert Arenas is going off. And so are TVs across America. Ratings are down some 28% from last year through November. This is bad because losing 28% from it's baseline of last year is like getting a D- on your homework graded on a curve where the top-student got 50% right. Things have been bad for a while, but at least the NBA head frogs are finally starting to realize they're boiling in the pot.
Three-point shooting is far from the NBA's only issue. But it will be the focus of this blog. I was interested in looking at how we got to where we are today. When did we go wrong? Let's let the data tell us. Maybe then we can figure out a way out of this. Or maybe we won't. But at least we can better understand how this league got so messed up.
Let's start at the team level. To get a sense of how absurd this season has gotten with three-point chucking, I ran the numbers on the all-time top-three point shooting teams in terms of attempts per game. Eleven of the top-31 are from this 2024-25 season. Eleven. So over a third. And none are even in the same stratosphere as the Boston Celtics. While Joe Mazzulla might watch "The Town" over and over again, he makes Boston Celtics fans watch "The Downtown" every game. 51.08 of them.
The difference between this year's Celtics threes taken per game vs the team with the second most in NBA history is the same difference between that team (2018-19 Rockets) and the 12th ranked 2019-20 Timberwolves. And here's the thing. The Celtics aren't even that great as a team in three-point efficiency. You might look at their 37.2% and say at least it's better than the two Rocket's seasons right below, but to put the proper perspective, this puts them on pace for 215th all-time in three-point percentage. Right behind the 1997-98 Cavaliers who averaged 9.7 threes per game. Not made. Attempted.
Speaking of the Cavaliers, at least this season's squad leads the league in effective field goal percentage and true shooting, so you could give them a pass for coming in at 31st all time (last team on above table) along with the fact that they have the best percentage of anyone listed above them. It's still boring to watch a monotonous three-point contest, but at least they're making them.
Meanwhile…
This was hardly a random piece of statistical noise either. Let's look at the 30,000 ft view on missed threes. There's probably no more boring of an outcome for an NBA possession than a missed lazy three. And there hasn't been a season in NBA history averaging more per NBA game than 2024-25 so far.
Please notice my creativity in combining three stock scatter point symbols in my data analysis program meshed together to somewhat look like basketballs
Similar story for percent of threes taken league-wide. Which, to be honest, you'd expect to go hand in hand with total number missed. But still, we're looking at about 30% of all field goals being threes in today's game.
That's about one three every three field goals. I think these two graphs give us some indication of when things went awry. The inflection point seems to be around the 2012-13 season in which threes really started to take off both in percent of total field goals and especially missed threes. But even though missed threes rose sharply, league-wide efficiency has been pretty flat around 35-36% since the late 90s/early 2000s. So the problem here is volume.
Let's dive a little more into volume. This is my favorite data dive I bet you haven't heard anywhere.
I think we all know at heart this isn't just a star-player isolated problem. This is an everyone problem. And the data is about to confirm this. I grouped the top three-point attempt shooter on every team in every season three-pointers were a thing and plotted how many attempts that player shot per season. Then I repeated this for every team's second most prevalent three-point shooter. Then third, fourth, and fifth. That's what you see below with each group separated by the group indicator.
Finally, I plotted a couple of the three-point GOATs (Ray Allen and Reggie Miller) to remind us where things were when three-pointers were exciting. And I think when you see where on the x-axis they gravitate towards in comparison to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, even some fifth options, you can really see how absurd this league has become.
Some thoughts.
- Across the board, there's a slight uptick in attempts from all groups spanning the early 1990s through about 2012-13. Then things start to skyrocket. Just like we saw in the prior graphs. The same inflection point. But not just for teams star three-point shooter, but even for the fourth or fifth most prevalent three-point shooters.
- Multiple team's fifth most prevalent three-point shooter last season shot in the same range of threes per game as prime Reggie Miller and Ray Allen. I don't know. This seems like too many campers like Payton Pritchard.
Given this - I don't think Shaquille O'Neal is right about one thing. I don't think we can just blame Steph Curry for starting this storm. But I get him being a prime suspect. The inflection point for when three-point shooting got out of hand not just for one team but the league overall was 2012-13. That was Steph Curry's fourth year as a pro. In his first three years, he shot threes at rates of 4.8, 4.6, and 4.7 per game at an insane 44% efficiency or higher. In 2012-13 those attempts jumped up to 7.7 and would only go up from there. But as we learned, he wasn't the only one that commuted to downtown. Everyone all the sudden started at the same time.
The real culprit is analytics figuring out that threes provide more points over the long haul of a game than post up jumpers, and for some people, Like Curry, even layup attempts. I blame the NBA taking away the hand check for this. Sure, it took a while for the league to adapt, but that's what led us to where we are now after the Pistons won in 2004. We all know what happened. Scoring was down, ratings were down, and the league blamed this on defense stifling the offense.
To me - until defense is valued and appreciated by the league again, the game is going to continue to be largely trash until the second round of the playoffs. Thank god I grew up in the 90s when I could watch the game at it's zenith. Even the two years without Jordan were enthralling and fiesty. That struggle is what makes team sports compelling. Not three-point contests. How many driving range contests get put on TV? Or bumper bowling leauges? We need some physicality back. Maybe not Bill Laimbeer Pistons level. But 90s Knicks seems about right. Until the NBA understands this it will continue to falter.