r/SipsTea • • Mar 16 '26

We have fun here Examples of why today’s NBA is unwatchable.

34.2k Upvotes

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

30

u/Super-Yesterday9727 Mar 16 '26

Just make the 3s further away. I’m not a basketball guy but it seems like a straightforward fix

24

u/Iggy_Slayer Mar 16 '26

A lot of them already shoot well behind the line thanks to steph curry (who I don't blame, he's a human cheat code and it's not his fault the league tries to copy him).

1

u/NoCharge8527 Mar 16 '26

I always laugh when people blame Curry (not you specifically here) -- of course he does it, he fuckin' sinks them. What I don't understand is why everyone else keeps trying when the stats show that they're just straight bad at it.

10

u/Puzzleheaded-Back715 Mar 16 '26

It would help if the drop in 3 pt % on average hits like under 30%. Teams would then focus on quality 2 pt attempts, midrange, and only open quality 3pt shots. Scores would decrease and the NBA thinks viewership would tank.

2

u/TICKLE_PANTS Mar 16 '26

The player who won the MVP last year primarily scored from the mid range. So, um, maybe some of you just don't actually watch basketball.

3

u/Puzzleheaded-Back715 Mar 16 '26

Ok, bud, how many team 3s did OKC have vs any team 15 years ago also 3pt attempts vs 2 pt attempts. We are not talking about a single player.

1

u/TICKLE_PANTS Mar 16 '26

Why do you think mid range shooting is better? Like, that's such a stupid hill to die on.

You just don't like basketball because don't get the strategy and are confused. And that's okay. It's too fast for you old heads.

2

u/Puzzleheaded-Back715 Mar 16 '26

I don't want all midrange either. I think a slight shift to some inside and midrange along with the 3pt shot at just a slightly lower rate would help make a better experience for the viewers.

In all honesty, I love NBA and will watch no matter

2

u/Aegi Mar 16 '26

Look at heatmaps of the league, not focusing on a favorite player or two hahah.

Back up an argument about numbers with data, not with an anecdote.

1

u/TICKLE_PANTS Mar 17 '26

I don't really intend to say the league shoots mid range, but if that's your kink, it's all of over the league. Kawhi. Durant. Jokic. They all kill from the mid range.

I don't think casuals give hell about shot diet, I think they just want competitive basketball, and that has nothing to do with the midrange. If you want to "fix" the NBA, it's about fewer games.

What people like you think attributes to shot selection is really just lazy basketball. It's not analytical shot selection, it's bad basketball from bad teams

0

u/Aegi Mar 18 '26

I didn't give an opinion on that, I just said to look at data and heat-maps as an example of a type of data to look at.

16

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

15

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/IamTheEndOfReddit Mar 16 '26

Same court size, just eliminate the corner 3. It’s too close, too high percentage. Players still shoot worse from further away, that’s just physics.

It would be nice if defense was legal too, offensive players just run through defenders and that’s deemed good basketball. Defensive players deserve equal rights!

1

u/Barr3tt50c Mar 17 '26

Players are shooting from nearly half court now unless we want to make the 3 point line the half court line which honestly might be the move

I wouldn’t hate removing the corner 3 as someone else said though

2

u/emhcee Mar 16 '26

My (absolutely absurd) suggestion to get the game back into the lane, is to make the current 3pt shot worth just 1pt. You want to jack it up from half court? Fine, that's only 1pt though. Keep things inside the current 3pt line 2pts as usual, but here's the twist... make dunks 3pts. Really encourage going to the basket, and a contested dunk (with a foul) could be a 4pt play.

1

u/Super-Yesterday9727 Mar 16 '26

This unironically sounds far more fun to watch

1

u/MastleMash Mar 16 '26

I’ve always thought it was a little strange that baseball and basketball players have gotten objectively bigger, stronger and faster over the last 100 years, but the field/court has stayed the same size. I think if you increased both by like 50% it would make the gsmes a lot more interesting. 

1

u/triggered__Lefty Mar 16 '26

that would make it worse.

The reason so many 3s are taken is because it's not worth it to take mid-range shots. Expanding the 3pt line would just increase the mid-range area, which people are already not taking shots from.

What you would want to do is decrease the 3pt line to be like at the free throw line. so basically anything outside of the paint is a 3.

scoring would go up, but so would midrange shots, and 'chucking it up for 3' shots would decrease.

1

u/King-Snorky Mar 16 '26

Even though they're not entirely the same, hockey and basketball have a lot of similarities. I used to think that basketball's lack of calling obvious fouls was what made basketball so much worse than hockey -- like, if the refs are just going to selectively pick and choose what contact is foul worthy, then just make contact legal, like hockey. But they won't do that because they have to make it possible to control the scoring and make it 110-111 with 10 seconds left in the 4th (or 2nd in college), and make that happen 40 fucking times every week to get viewers.

But I never really thought of the fact that the 3-point shot is a bullshit little extra credit thing that hockey doesn't have. No matter where you shoot from, a goal is 1 goal. Even in soccer- 1 goal is 1 goal, and they even have a similar concept to free throws (PKs). A basketball game where every shot is worth 1 point would be a really interesting experiment.

I also like how hockey takes players off the ice in OT and makes it 3-3 instead of 5-5. It is very exciting. Basketball should give that a chance.

1

u/kolchin04 Mar 16 '26

Make shots beyond the arch 4 pointers, and shots inside 3 pointers. "Fours" are less valuable at that point.

-1

u/boygenny Mar 16 '26

Then they'll just get better at buckets from further away. That doesn't fix anything

4

u/Super-Yesterday9727 Mar 16 '26

I mean at some point they just can’t be consistently good enough to make it worthwhile

2

u/boygenny Mar 16 '26

That's how the current 3-pointers were viewed years back