NBA Teams Might Genuinely Be Taking Too Many 3-Pointers Now
It's not just an aesthetic argument — the efficiency of 2s has surpassed the efficiency of 3s.
The ongoing discourse about the state of NBA basketball — specifically, its disappointing TV ratings, and how prevailing playing styles might contribute to that — remains a subject of heavy debate in media circles. On ESPN last week, Brian Windhurst said the NBA was “out of balance” due to the proliferation of 3-pointers in the game today. And here’s “Inside the NBA” talking about the matter last Thursday night:
For years, the argument against teams taking so many threes has been aesthetic: whether through retired players lamenting stylistic changes since their era, the (somewhat dubious) assertion that every team is running the same offense, or just that a heavier dose of 3s automatically creates more missed shots1 — which is admittedly a bad look for the best hoopers on the planet.
The argument for the three, however, was simple: It’s math.
The simple fact is that teams need only shoot 33 percent on 3-pointers to break even (in terms of points per shot attempt) against 50 percent on 2-pointers. With the “nerds” gaining more and more influence in front offices — and that influence filtering down into coaching decisions — this math began to rule the tactics of the sport. And for good reason! If the goal is winning, and efficiency drives winning, it makes no sense to risk your job by doing sub-optimal things just because some crusty old-heads on TV with no skin in the game said to.
This is why 3-point attempts have taken over the game in recent years. To show how much, I’ll re-print my chart from last week’s story:
But nothing stays static for long in professional sports. As the league’s brain trusts encouraged more and more threes, the efficiency of each shot type changed — and while 3-pointers have averaged a relatively steady level of points per field goal attempt for nearly two decades now, the 2-pointer has rapidly become more efficient, to the point that it has caught up to (if not surpassed) the efficiency of a 3-pointer:
This is even more the case when we consider that it’s much easier to get fouled attempting a 2-pointer than a 3-pointer. According to data from PBPstats, teams are drawing approximately 16.4 free throw attempts per game on 2-point shots this season, compared with just 1.1 per game from 3-point shots. That’s why, after accounting for free throws, the league’s True Shooting Percentage on 2-pointers (58.4 in 2024-25) is significantly higher than on 3-pointers (54.3 percent) — a gap that has been growing for more than a half-decade now:
There are still other considerations to think about when judging the merits of the typical three versus a two. The defense tends to rebound missed 3-pointers at a higher rate (76 percent this season, versus 68 percent for a missed 2-pointer), but opposing offensive efficiency after missed twos is higher than off of missed threes. (Then again, when the offense rebounds a missed two, it scores with higher second-chance efficiency.)
We can account for all of these by breaking down the share of 2- and 3-point attempt possessions that fall into each type of outcome — made shot, foul, miss with an offensive or defensive rebound — and track both the offense’s efficiency across those situations, but also the opponent’s efficiency on the next possession based on how it begins. Here’s a plot of average NBA net rating across those possession pairs for both 2- and 3-pointers:
Both sets of net ratings look extremely high — higher than any team in the league this season, in fact — but remember, this only looks at possessions conditional on a field goal attempt being tried. Turnovers are impossible for the offense under those conditions, while subsequent opponent possessions include every outcome. The league’s average non-turnover offensive rating this season is 129.1, compared with an average overall offensive rating of 113.1. (Incidentally, this is a good illustration of why the impact of turnovers shouldn’t be minimized!)
Anyway, with that disclaimer out of the way, we see that the average net rating from a 3-point attempt is down significantly over the past decade (if slightly up in recent years), while the net rating from 2-point attempts has been rising since 2017-18 and is currently at its highest level since at least 2000-01.
The big takeaway seems to be that, no matter how deep we want to drill down, the average 2-point shot is currently more efficient than the average 3-point attempt.
Of course, now we get to talk about all of the fun nuances around that trend.
It’s probably no coincidence that the rise of 2-point efficiency mirrors the uptick in 3-point attempts as a share of all field goal attempts. There is a good argument to be had that spacing the floor with 3-point threats has enabled twos to become far more efficient than they were in an earlier era of the game. There’s also the discussion of where the twos went away from:
The data is clear that all of the extra 3-balls in today’s NBA came, to a large degree, at the expense of inefficient long 2s — not close-range shots. Attempts within 3 feet of the basket are only slightly down this season from where they were in 1999-2000, and they were higher than that level as recently as a half-decade ago. Meanwhile, shots between 10 feet and the 3-point line have gone from occupying 39 percent of all field goal attempts to just 14 percent in the span of a quarter-century.
So finding the right balance between 2- and 3-pointers isn’t an easy task. Just as transitioning from twos to threes involved mostly the low-hanging fruit of turning long twos into threes, asking teams to dial back on the threes and start taking more twos would probably require adding more of those old inefficient shots — quickly killing the two’s newfound efficiency edge over the three.
However, there is a game theory to all of this. In the long run and over a large enough sample of games and shots, an equilibrium ought to be achievable between twos and threes, whereby neither type of shot has a demonstrable edge in efficiency over the other.
Right now, both shots have near-equal efficiency when we only consider the shots themselves. But when we factor in fouls drawn, or offensive rebounding, or the opponent’s subsequent efficiency, twos currently have a demonstrable edge over threes. I’m not sure if that fully means we have reached Peak 3-Pointer™, but it does mean that teams might need to adjust their strategies to add back in a bit more twos — until the pendulum swings back too far the other way, and threes need to make their own comeback.
Filed under: NBA, Basketball
Because the average 3-pointer goes in at a much lower clip than the average 2-pointer.
Really enjoyed this one Neil. The one aspect that I suspect might come close to evening things out is that I would guess you are much more likely to turn it over going for a 2-pointer than a 3-pointer. That would be difficult to study without access to the tracking data though.
Wow, Paine coming out firing after the break! A terrific analysis and a topic that has troubled me for a few years now. In particular, the simplistic "three is more than two" tiresome analysis of the sports media. I’ll freely admit up front that I am not sure my concerns here are valid – and likely could be off base. Still, what follows are some ungrounded observations plus a few crude proxies that are nowhere near as elegant as your solution here but intended to possibly advance the conversation.
I’ll start with an observational proxy using box score data that I made a few years back. What I did was remove the points from three-point shots from the final score, then run all the three point shot attempts using the two-point shot percentage for the entire game and add those points back into the zeroed out three-point shot points to obtain a revised final score for the team using only two-point shots.
What I saw – frequently – was that a team taking zero three points shots would have scored more points presuming the two-shot percentage held. This was true, even where the three-point shot percentage wasn’t terrible – above 33-1/3%. Now, it’s admittedly an imperfect analysis but it reflected to me at a high level that something was amiss with the orthodoxy that more three-point shots always equates to more points and more winning – so fire away.
It then struck me that the “three is more than two” heuristic focuses entirely on the conversion of made shots into points. It’s a simplistic and purely positive forward calculation where 33-1/3% for three-point shots equals 50% for two-point shots. Simple enough, but you are not shooting baskets by yourself in an empty gym and keeping score – you are playing an opponent where the outcome is relativistic and heavily dependent on what strategy you are pursuing.
What about the unspoken negatives from using an overweight three-point strategy…what I call the “taxes?” Your piece calls one of these taxes out brilliantly…the reduction in FT attempts. On the other hand, your readers have called out that some elements could be incrementally improved by shooting more threes e.g., rebounds and turnover rate. True, but right or wrong, while these strike me as worthy adjustments, they feel relatively small in effect.
What seems much larger to me is possessions. At a fundamental level, possessions reflect the opportunities to convert shots to points and prevent your opponent from doing that as much. Thus, possessions alone can be seen as statistically yielding points, i.e., “Value of Ball Possession (VBP).” While the formulae and numbers can vary to some degree, I recall that a possession is usually equal to slightly more than one point over time – say, 1.1 points.
From a possession perspective, the problem with an overweight strategic approach to the three-point shot starts to come into focus. Three-point shots are far less successful than their two-point counterparts, resulting in additional incremental possessions and points. That feels important, because a heavy three point shot strategy will create more possessions for your opponent versus a two-point strategy. As you wade more heavily into three-point shots, the possession tax gets larger given the time bound nature of the game and the upper constraint on the number of possessions during a game.
One important caveat. Any possession arbitrage can only be captured where a team is willing to be two-point shot heavy in their counter strategy…to take those extra possessions and convert them into two points, or lock in 1.1 points over time. If both teams are pursuing the same strategy of shooting high numbers of threes, the arbitrage is still available but never leveraged. Everyone is paying the same tax.
But what if a team adopted a decidedly different shooting strategy and tried to lock in added points from the incremental possessions it was given from more missed threes? Would the added points from made three-point shots still outrun this counter strategy regardless of number of missed shots, or is there some optimal number/levels for three-point shots based on shooting percentage?
There would seem to be other secondary efficiency benefits as well to a two-point strategy later in games. Near the end of games, teams in the lead tend to do three things: (1) they over defend the perimeter to make three-point shot attempts more difficult but leaving the basket under-defended; (2) they try and wind the shot clock down before taking their own shot - resulting in increasingly poor shot selection and more missed shots; and (3) they become reticent to physically challenge teams taking the ball down low for two-point attempts for fear of a whistle and free throws or a foul out at a critical juncture. Thus, inside shots become progressively easier and more efficient near the end of games when they matter most.
Now, I’m not suggesting that a team should never take a three-point shot or we should return to rates that were prevalent 30 years ago. What I am saying is that it seems to me that there exists a more complex balance between the two strategies to optimize performance versus blindly espousing that “three is more than two.” Things like segmenting three point shots attempts by areas on the floor where the three-point shooting percentage is lower and thus a less optimal spot to attempt shots – those sorts of things.
Your work here strikes me as a significant effort toward clearing the smoke on this topic. Thanks as always for the stimulating work.