That D’Antoni probably gets too much grief over the defenses on his teams. When he’s had the personnel, his teams have been good on D. He just happened to coach Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire during his prime years.

Alsep, I agree. I think often lost in the rush to doing more and more three pointers is the fact that an open two can be much better than a contested three. If you are Mike Antoni and you have a lot of good three point shooters you can design an offense that gets lots of open threes, but if you don’t have personnel to do that, available two pointers may be better shots.

Did you know that the Rockets had the sixth-best defense in the NBA this past season?

Besides, extending the 3 line means having to cover more space on defense which will lead to more open threes and more space to drive. You’d see more shots at the rim and the three line and even fewer mid and long twos.

I honestly have no issue with guys like Curry for example making 30 footers. He’s a transcendental superstar who has worked tirelessly on becoming one of the top shooters ever, it’s a strategy and one that I don’t think is cheap or lessens the game in anyway. Anyone can take those shots, only the absolute top tier can consistently make them.

However it does bother me that tons of guys can just sit on the corner doing nothing and shoot 3s and get rewarded so much by what no longer should be considered a tough shot (or at least a shot tough enough to warrant 3 over 2).

Make it so that 3s are harder to hit, so specialists and superstars are rewarded for their work, while adding some relevance to a more 2 point oriented game.

My reasoning is that the 3-pt shot was intended to be a specialty/situational shot that few players shot at a TS% significantly higher than a 2-pt shot. But as was pointed out, the difference in TS% between a long 2 and a 3 is so dramatic that two of my favorite aspects of the game…the face-up 2 and the post-up game…have been marginalized. I also think the court dimensions were designed for smaller, less athletic players, so widening it would make sense.

If the purists don’t go for this, just bring back hand-checking so that 3-pt shooters can be better defended. Or eliminate screening beyond the 3-pt line (i.e. eliminate the high P&R.) Anything that reduces the efficiency gap between 2’s and 3’s is worth considering.