Too Much Threedom?

Or is the long distance shot dialed in correctly?

You’ll recall this was to be the season of the 3-pointer, use of the shot sweeping every level of basketball. The bonusphere bomb has grown so prevalent in the NBA, Kevin Durant, one of the great, versatile stars of the game, speculated that a drop in league TV viewership was in part due to the stultifying effect of too many threes.

Writing for Basketball Network, Jonas Panerio agreed, citing “a decrease in variety and creativity on offense.” What’s more, he saw an overall decline in “flair” in the pro game because “players are more focused on spacing and creating open looks instead of driving to the rim for acrobatic layups and thunderous slams.”

Presumably those two approaches are polar opposites spanning the NBA universe.

“The three-pointer has made the game less exciting,” summarized a Basketball Network subhead to Panerio’s piece. As a steady diet, perhaps. But not as a maneuver integrated into normal game action. Even as the piece was published, SMU made an improbable imitation of Jason Williams circa 2001 at Maryland as the Mustangs hit a trio of 3-pointers, two by Boopie Miller, in the final 25 seconds to snatch a stunning win at Virginia last week.

Different leagues, different rules, different kinds of excitement, then. Give fans candy, but not so much it makes them sick.

“Maybe it’s gone too far,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said recently of the popularity of 3-pointers as an offensive staple. He expressed willingness to examine whether the rain of threes needs to be reined in. Silver worried that play has become homogenized, with team losing a sense of identify, a problem much less likely to occur in college where fans’ intense interest is critical to defining a program.

“It’s something we have to look at,” Silver said. Possible fixes offered went from expanding the shooting arc (again), introducing 4-point plays (Duke fans may recall Mike Krzyzewski mockingly illustrating arcs up to a 10-point shot on his weekly TV show in 1987), or excluding corners of the court from 3-point territory. ”It’s not just a pure basketball discussion,” Silver continued. “It’s also about what do fans really want to see.”

How dissatisfaction with the effect of an NBA 3-point blizzard will translate to college ball is unclear.

As for use of the three in the ACC, it hasn’t changed much this year, or recently.

League teams tried an average of 23.31 threes through 17 games by mid-January, compared to 22.33 at the same juncture in the 2024 season. Go back to the 2022 season, when Covid disruption had run its course, and ACC teams attempted 21.56 threes per game through about the same number of games.

And in 2019, a pinnacle season for the conference, when Virginia won the national title and ACC teams combined to win 15 NCAA tournament games, by year’s end league members tried 21.16 threes on average.

In other words, use of the 3-pointer in the ACC has seen only a modest climb overall in recent years.

But a few ACC teams, Duke and Louisville in particular, may be prospering in 2024-25 in part by trying at least four more 3-pointers per game than any other ACC squads. Through Jan. 17, when the accompanying chart was compiled, both were among the top teams in the league, with Louisville in the D-1 top 10 in threes launched per outing.

In this the ACC leaders emulated the NBA champion Boston Celtics, supposed trendsetters currently averaging 49.0 tries from long distance this year. Boston’s conversion rate is among the lowest in the NBA, but clearly it makes up for it in other ways.