Jump shots are key to game for NBA championship contenders

Can a jump-shooting team win the NBA championship? The question has fueled debate in these playoffs, especially as the two top seeds, Atlanta and Golden State, overcame series deficits with free-flowing, 3-point-launching schemes. But the question is also antiquated, a relic from before teams understood and unlocked the power of the 3-point arc.

Can a jump-shooting team win the title? Reframe the debate into a statement: A jump-shooting team, in almost any scenario, is going to win the title - because they’re all jump-shooting teams now.

Offensive revolution in the NBA has occurred over time, slowly enough to barely notice, like water that comes to a slow boil. But the war over the most effective, efficient way to play offense in the playoffs is over. The jump shooters won. To the stretch fours go the spoils.

In 2011, the Dallas Mavericks set the NBA record for most 3-point attempts in the playoffs by an NBA champion, at 22.2 per game. This season, every team that advanced to the conference semifinals, aside from the dangerously conventional Memphis Grizzlies, broke that record. Twelve of the 16 playoff teams have shot 3s at a rate of more than 22.2 per game, capped by the Warriors at 29.9.

For years, teams that relied on the 3-pointer were dismissed as entertaining regular-season outfits that would be exposed as weak in the playoffs.

The postseason remains a different animal - “anybody that says it’s not different, they haven’t been in a seven-game series,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. Games become more physical. Closer scouting allows less open space for shooters. Familiarity leads to less success on set plays.

Still, over the past three decades, the 3-point shot has morphed from a gimmick into the standard offensive aim. In 1980, when the NBA introduced the 3-point shot, the Lakers won the title attempting 1.1 threes per game in the playoffs. In 1983, the Philadelphia 76ers won the title while making 1 out of 10 3-point attempts in the entire playoffs.

No champion attempted more than 10 3-pointers per game in the playoffs until 1994, when the Houston Rockets under Rudy Tomjanovich used a radical strategy that changed the court’s geometry. First using it as a defensive tactic to neutralize Charles Barkley, Tomjanovich played usual small forward Robert Horry at power forward. He realized the real benefit came on the offensive end, where a phalanx of shooters around Hakeem Olajuwon spread the floor and turned the 3-point arc into an opportunity.

The Rockets attempted 17.8 3-pointers in 1994 and then fired 22 per game as they repeated in 1995.

Other coaches were slow to catch on, which in retrospect seems unfathomable to the point of negligence. The simplest math imaginable - a 3-point shot is worth 50 percent more than a 2-pointer - failed to seriously influence the highest level of the sport for decades.

But the trend is no longer a trend; it is simply how teams play offense. Tomjanovich, who runs a scouting and analytical service, pointed out that the worst 3-point shooting in the league scores more efficiently than the best long-2-shooting team. The better statistical understanding led to coaches to unlock the true value of 3-pointers and arrange schemes around it.

Spurred by several innovators, including Mike D’Antoni with the Suns and Stan Van Gundy with the Magic, teams also grew more creative in their personnel use. They sought a way to get more shooting on the floor, just like Tomjanovich had done with Horry years before. Call the Hawks’ Paul Millsap a power forward if you want, but he can do anything a traditional wing player can.

“No. 1 is, teams, us included, were trying to just leverage what the best way to play for your personnel would be, regardless of position,” Spoelstra said. “Now you’re just seeing more teams play to the strengths of their personnel, regardless of if it’s conventional or not. In more instances than not, that would be playing a little bit smaller, with a little more spacing, to open up the floor for your best players.”

Many may still doubt the ability of a deep-shooting team to win in the postseason. But those people haven’t realized that every team plays that way now.