Most NBA fans agree that the league’s reliance on three-pointers has gotten out of hand, but nobody can agree on how to fix it. Should the league move the line back? Should there be a four-point shot from even farther out? Some have even argued that each team should be limited to a certain number of three attempts per game, while others believe that this is the optimal way the game should be played and no changes are necessary.
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Wherever you fall on the great three-point debate, the fact remains that this whole mess had to start somewhere.
The NBA introduced the three in 1979, the same year that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league, and for a long time, the shot was not a featured component of any team’s game plan. Some guys were known to be great shooters, like Bird, Dale Ellis, and later Reggie Miller, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that the prevalence of the long-range shot exploded.
Mark Jackson is a name that doesn’t get mentioned enough for helping to incite the three-point revolution, but to quote Hamilton, he was in the room where it happened.
Jackson had the misfortune of being fired as the head coach of the Golden State Warriors right before the team became a modern dynasty (after a season in which he led them to a 51-31 record, no less!). He coached the Dubs for three seasons from 2011-14, and it’s that final season that stands out as the Lexington and Concord of this whole thing.
In 2013, Jackson proclaimed his dynamic duo of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson to be “the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game.” People laughed then, but although Jackson was well ahead of the curve, he was absolutely right.
Led by his young Splash Brothers, Mark Jackson’s Warriors attempted 24.8 percent more threes than the league average in 2013-14, a number which, even now, is the highest percentage in franchise history. They were second in the league in makes, trailing the Atlanta Hawks by just .1 per game.
Shouldn’t Steph and Klay share some of Mark Jackson’s blame?
There’s no doubt that the Splash Brothers were the powder keg that really made the three-point revolution explode, but without the green light from Jackson, Steph and Klay may never have become the prolific snipers that we know them as today.
The duo continued to hone their craft after Jackson was let go, and the fact that they went on to win three championships in four years showed the rest of the league that embracing the three was a viable way to win a ring. Still, it really started with Jackson.
As for the current state of the game, the three-pointer has gone from a little-used novelty to an essential part of any winning team.
The three is ubiquitous in any game that’s played today, and it’s tough to tell which stat is more incredible: that the Celtics are attempting an insane 48.3 of them per game, nearly double what the Warriors did in Jackson’s final season, or that the Nuggets, who are last in the league with 31.2 three attempts per game, still shoot 6.2 more than that Warriors team did.
Mark Jackson’s fingerprints are all over this, so if you’re looking for someone to blame, just listen to his own words. As he himself likes to say, “You can’t have the butterfly without the caterpillar,” and the NBA’s three-point metamorphosis can be traced straight back to him.
