Basketball: Washington State @ Oregon State

This really isn’t a study of what we’re talking about. But it is fascinating nonetheless.

I think the closest it comes is in the difference between Deron Williams and Rajon Rondo (down on the page), followed by the article on trey efficiency. Imagine there was no trey line. Where would those players with that high efficiency play?

I’m saying their value has either been decided by that one line, or they use it as an additional tool. Would they be able to play a game such as Rondo’s? The author states that Rondo is one of “those rare players” who has the ability to play this way. Well, I have news for him. That kind of player used to be the norm. The trey gave value to a whole different set of skills, and those skills apparently don’t translate to the author’s intuitive statements in that article and others on the page about players who can hit the mid-range shot. Those who can do it frequently are stars in his opinion. Rondo is rare because of it.

But he points out in another piece that those mid-range shots are low efficiency because it’s the outside range for bigs and too low for perimeter players to score efficiently. To me, that means there is more value for perimeter players outside that mid-range. They patrol the trey line instead of finding catch and shoot spots in the mid which were once considered as easy as a lay-up. His point about perimeter players not scoring there has nothing to do with height. It has everything to do with how they learned to play the game and what value those spots have.

What I’m saying is that kids like Jared have been told for years that they need to develop a longer range. But that’s not true. The only thing they need to do is develop their own games. Jared is quite apt at the mid-range if he practices it. And the benefits of scoring from that range are tenfold for a PG who can do this over one being able to hit the trey. As the greats developed their games in the NBA and lost their athleticism, they developed that outside shot. But they all had the skill to penetrate the mid-range and hit that shot.

Now kids are so in love with the trey that they forget what hoops once was. Scoring and defense are only shadows of what they once were. Now it’s all about dunks and treys and out-muscling your opponent. The addition of the trey line initially increased scoring because players still knew how to play the mid-range. Once the mid-range took on less value though, players were quick to recognize it. The mid-80’s was the last vestiges of that mid-court game in the NBA. And the only reason FG% suffered compared to the decades before was that more players were camping on the trey line… and missing more since that would have been by far the lowest percentage shot on the floor at the time.

From the time of the addition of the trey line to the early 80’s was the period of extreme scoring (about four to six years). Then the trey took hold and drew value away from the mid-range. Mid-range percentages began to drop, trey attempts began to increase, and FG% and scoring slumped for two decades.

Now, I blame the allowance of more physicality in the late 80’s for an additional variable on scoring decreases. Players were allowed to bang on the perimeter like they were in the post for too long. The NBA has tried three or four times to “focus” on the actual rules for defenses and offenses on the perimeter. But those have been jokes for the most part since players and coaches just whine about it for the first week, and that “focus” goes away.

The reason for the increases in scoring over the last decade have been the introduction of the zone defense and a correlating increase in 3pt%. 3pt% is still nothing near what mid-range games were 30 years ago. But they are reaching the point of middle to late decline (early to mid 90’s) when the trey line was moved in for a couple years to combat their failed officiating on the actual physicality of the game. And they are at an all time high other than when the line was moved in.

And don’t forget that the “stars” of the game get to do violations that a once “liberal with rules” international system would never allow. If I have to watch LeBron do a four step 270 spin with the ball above his head, then land on his toes before he releases what is deemed a highlight shot nowadays, I’m going to puke.

Suffice it to say I don’t watch NBA ball anymore.