It’s no secret to anyone who’s tuned into this year’s NBA playoffs and watched Khem Birch and Thaddeus Young launch catch-and-shoot threes that the game has changed. Three-point shooting is the most valuable skill in basketball right now — just ask Davis Bertans and Duncan Robinson, who received contracts worth a combined $170 million to sprint around behind the arc and knock down tough jump shots.
This year, 278 players attempted more than 100 three-pointers; twenty years ago, just 125 shooters crossed that volume threshold. There have never been as many three-point shooters in the league as there are today; the trend has demanded change from every corner of the NBA, even the most bruising of post-up big men (Brook Lopez and Jonas Valanciunas are the poster children of this development).
This change is, at its heart, the result of a simple math problem. What Daryl Morey was the first general manager to catch on in the mid-2000s, the entire league understands at this point the relative value of a three-pointer. A two-point field goal with a 50% chance of going in yields the same expected point value as a three-point field goal with just over a 33% chance of going in.
As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to shoot at a 33% clip from beyond the arc than a 50% clip from one or two steps inward. While high-percentage looks at the rim will always remain valuable, players that aren’t elite midrange scorers probably shouldn’t be taking shots from that area if a team wants to optimize their offense.
As a result, NBA offenses have polarized towards the extremes, shooting from either very close to or very far away from the basket with very little in-between. Midrange scoring has become a luxury — and a shot most defenses are willing to concede.
Enter the Phoenix Suns.
Phoenix finished the season with an NBA-best 64-18 record, eight games ahead of the next-closest team in their conference. They finished second in the league in overall shot quality and fifth in offensive shot quality — and did it in spite of the new conventional wisdom. Helmed by midrange maestros Chris Paul and Devin Booker, Phoenix took 22% of their shots from that area of the floor, the second-highest rate in the NBA. Simultaneously, they generated fewer “high-efficiency” looks than just about anyone: the Suns finished 27th in three-point rate and 29th in free-throw rate.
The Suns can do this because they’ve created an inefficiency of their own. While by and large the three-point shot yields more expected points than the midrange jumper, the Suns are so elite from the midrange that their midrange attempts are more efficient than about a third of the NBA’s three-point attempts.
Most teams settle for midrange jump shots; the Suns seek them out. Sure, most of their players are prototyped for the more traditionally analytically sound offensive scheme — DeAndre Ayton and JaVale McGee score almost exclusively near the basket, while Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder, and Cameron Johnson are flamethrowers from three — but having two stars capable of doing their damage from anywhere on the floor add a dimension to the Suns offense that makes it almost wholly unguardable.
In Game 6 against the Pelicans, this was fully on display. Chris Paul, taking the scoring burden from an injured and limited Devin Booker, attempted 14 field goals: 13 midrange jumpers and one three-pointer. He didn’t miss once — a feat that’s never been accomplished in the playoffs on 14+ shots by anyone not named Wilt Chamberlain.
They’re unicorns, a dying breed in today’s game. Comparing the distributions of all 102 players who attempted 100 shots from the midrange and from three this season is revealing. Paul and Booker are two of the only players in the group whose expected points per shot on threes is around the league average and still manage to make their midrange attempts more efficient.
Only teams with the best midrange scorers in the league even dare to attempt a high volume of shots from the area. Phoenix is joined by Chicago (DeMar DeRozan) and Brooklyn (Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving) in the high-volume, high-efficiency midrange club: they’re the three teams that lead the league in midrange attempts and also three of the four teams that average at least one expected point on those attempts.
The difference between the Suns and those two teams, though, is that they can also force opponents into the same “inefficient” midrange shots that they thrive on making. The Suns allowed the fifth-most midrange jumpers in the league, while allowing just 0.87 expected points on midrange jumpers, the stingiest clip in the NBA.
The Suns have made a living all season on dragging opponents back in time to an era reliant on the midrange jumper, and then letting Chris Paul and Devin Booker cook. They force teams to play a style in which they thrive — a style which seems to contradict league-wide trends. Phoenix’s unique style has worked well enough to earn them the top seed in the Western Conference and a trip to the conference semifinals this year, and a finals berth last year. Whether it can lead them to the promised land remains to be seen.