2024-25 Hornets General Discussion

Hornets Talk
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Excellent post, Coach. My assumption is that Adam Silver has been okay with the 3 point era because there ought be less injuries(theoretically?) if half the the game is just a shooting contest. And this protects the huge financial investment that is put into these players now.

I was okay with 25% of the shots being from 3. But now we’re up to 42%, and there is not a huge strategic variety from team to team. Sure, a big X and Os guy can pick up on the subtle differences in strategy, but not the masses of fans.

Long range shooting is a skill, but it isn’t much of an art form. It’s the same shot almost every time. I want the art form of basketball. The spontaneity of a Dr. J or Michael Jordan, or the counter moves of a Kevin McHale in the low post. The power in traffic of a Charles Barkley.

Don’t get me wrong. Today’s players can do amazing things. But they are given all kinds of room to do it. A dunk is more impressive when it catches TWO bodies. Not just one, if even that.

I’ve been here before. I disliked the late 90s NBA, because it was too far in another direction. But basketball is my first love, and I truly believe it can take on a new form we’ve yet to see, something even better than the past.

Sure, it’s just sports, but there is a social utility. I’ve been able to start so many conversations with complete strangers by bringing up the game. It’s a way to connect, ESPECIALLY if your team starts to actually win. I’m an old-ish white guy, but sometimes I get cred with younger people by bringing up the GOAT debate. Their eyes light up, like, “Oh, there’s more to this guy than I realized…”

At the end of a hard work day, it’s nice to be able to sit down to an athletic art form. I hope the NBA evolves into something better.

As far as the NFL, yeah, it’s nice that it only requires a little bit of time/attention, and that so many games are still undecided in the 4th quarter.

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I remember having a debate with the original OG Buckets(the Frank Kaminsky fan who was otherwise the most knowledgeable NBA fan I’ve experienced) on the old site. I said I didn’t like the fact that 1/3 of the shots were from three(at the time), that I wanted to see a variety of shots from all over the court. His response was “Why are current trends a bad thing?” The implication was that I couldn’t handle NEW.

It’s not about old vs new. It’s about the fact that variety is the spice of life, and this ESPECIALLY includes entertainment such as basketball. Shot variety is beautiful.

I understand the analytics. Shooting the three is the right thing under the current rules. Just alter the rules a little bit. There are things that can be done.

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I think the shot diet thing is real. It’s to your point Vet, i think, that when there is excess in any direction, it gets predictable and essential boring. I don’t think the long ball is boring. When Steph was singular in his outright assault from deep, that was cool. Now that every team sits that way, not so much. But i hated the Harden, Trae stuff to where it was just a free throw waltz every time down the court. What i think the game benefits from is variety.

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I started following the Hornets back in 92-93. It was a wildly different game back then. Shot variety vs tons of 3s is something that’s changed, but other stuff makes a big difference too - like back then we expected point guards to run the offense and their shooting was mostly to keep opposing defenses from being able to play 5 on 4. Everything was man to man D, no zones. Hand checking was legal. Both Zo and LJ averaged roughly 20 & 10 as rookies and while that was good for ROY / ROY consideration, many rookies came to the league ready to play.

My sense is that guys like Shaq & Barkley constantly complain about todays game and they aren’t alone in the media. Being negative apparently sells better for ESPN and it corrodes interest in the game.

Officiating now is terrible. It’s the #1 reason I hate watching many of the games. It’s to the point where I think it’s actually impacting team offences. I mean, if only your star player is going to get calls, why have anyone else take shots? I think how things are called these days also vastly impacts the kinds of shots being attempted - every bit as much as 3 point shooting does.

Frankly it’s ridiculously hard to watch an NBA game sometimes. The only ‘good’ way is to watch on a sports betting site. Why?

I could go on, but it bugs me when people single out the 3 point shot. Yeah it’s a thing and it’s wildly different now vs then … but, like that’s one thing. If you waved a magic wand and somehow ‘fixed’ that, there would still be so many other things that impact game quality and watchability that are manifestly broken.

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Everyone being friends and not really caring if the win or lose as long as their personal brand advances is killing the sport.

It wasn’t that long ago when rondo was killing the heatles in on court interviews while playing them. Or when Kendrick Perkins and z-bo agreed to a locker room tunnel fight while lined up at the foul line.

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'92-93 was my favorite NBA season. To go from nothing(but still 23,000 fans a night) to winning a playoff series against Boston with 3 chiseled, athletic stud recent draft picks playing all-star to near all-star level basketball was SO exciting. And they did it with MOVEMENT, and strength. Motion, passing, running the break. It was just a fun brand of hoops. I have an old VHS tape of local news highlights from many of those games, including that weekend coach’s show they had with Bristow. Good stuff.

I’d be content if they figured out a way to dial the 3 pt shot down to 25% of attempts. That would help a lot, but you make a good point that there are other current factors to dislike.

Edit: Maybe one concern is the fact that the kids get the money so young, and the contracts are so huge in this era that it’s difficult to go broke now. They are truly set for life and that kills their motivation?

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Yes. JR Reid said that a few years ago in an interview. The guys all know each other and they are too chummy for the good of the product.

A 15 year old baller can be aware of all the other best 15 year old players in the country and hit them up on social media. They develop a bond early on, regardless of where they live. They might even meet each other in travel hoops.

In the old days we were all more dialed in to our local scenes, due to communication limitations. It was a little harder to develop bonds with people across the country. For better or worse, things have changed.

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Yet the NFL has found a way. They all know each other from camps, 7 on 7 etc yet they ferociously compete.

Salary incentives and non guaranteed contracts are largely why I think

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Yes, I’m willing to bet the big guaranteed contract money hurts the NBA product.

Another obvious factor:

The NFL only plays 17 games. Every game, every play, is so much more important. And the nature of the game is a little more towards brutality, not as much as in the past, but it’s still there.

The basketball answer might be the old points standing system of the CBA, the NBA’s (unofficial?) 1980s farm league.

Each game offered 7 points in the standings. You got 1 point for each quarter you won. If you were outscored in three of the quarters but still won the game, you got 4 standings points and your opponent got 3(because they “won” 3 quarters). Quarter ties were handled as half points.

It was a way to encourage effort throughout a game. Even if your home team was down by 35 in the third quarter, there was hope they could pick up 2 standings points by “winning” the final 2 quarters. It offered games WITHIN the game and interesting strategic dilemmas.

I’m intrigued by the idea. I also wonder if it would encourage a few less threes. “Jack them up all night until they start falling” doesn’t necessarily work if you are trying to win a quarter. You might lessen that strategy SOMEWHAT and go for sure buckets.

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I don’t think that teams approach this as “jack them up all night until they start falling.” As fans it might feel that way, but that’s not the coaching strategy. And fwiw, mathematically the best way to come back from a deficit is to shoot 3s. If a team isn’t winning a quarter in your scenario Vet, it might actually encourage them to shoot more.

I think that any effort to reduce the number of 3s indirectly is going to have to change their value somehow. Getting rid of the corner 3 is a great example. That’s the highest percentage 3 point shot there is and it’s existence really impacts how teams create offenses. Get rid of that & the net value of 3s go down as they don’t provide as much spacing value on the sides of the court and they’re harder to hit overall percentage wise.

And if you really want to limit 3s just treat it like the foul penalty but in reverse. Only the first 5 3-point shots each quarter give a team the extra point. After that they’re just long 2s. That would encourage teams to really only have their best shooters taking those shots.

But I want to reiterate, the league has got to fix officiating first before any of that matters to me. If you put todays officials into the 92-93 league I still wouldn’t want to watch that brand of basketball. It’s bad.

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I said in the game chat:

3’s are worth 4pts
2’s are worth 3pts

All foul shots are the same except the first point in given automatically.

It completely messed up the analytics of 50% from 2 = 33% from 3

I was also thinking about something i heard jordan saying, shooting from distance encourages a passive game. That combined with them getting rid of almost all physicality including impeding cutters, creates a game where there is no real emotion. Even if you are playing against your best friend in pickup, once you start banging into each other competition really picks up. The NBA got rid of all that. You don’t need maul ball and on court fights to create a much more passionate game

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While researching to understand the analytics of 3s better, I found this to be interesting, even though the data is a couple seasons old.

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I actually don’t agree that this is true, even though this is what we’ve been force fed to believe by the so called analytics gurus. Yes, 50% from 2 = 33% from 3. That’s been the justification for the volume 3-point shooting. But its’ also true that 60% from 2 = 40% from 3. Since the league average from 3 is 36%, and the vast majority of NBA players shoot below 40%, it makes more sense to prioritize post skill and post offense as opposed to jacking up 3s, as 60% on shot attempts in the post is an attainable mark for a skilled post player. So while post play is beautiful to watch, it really isn’t even about aesthetics. It’s just simply more efficient.

I think this video was spot on. Not only is the way the game is played today less entertaining to watch, it’s just not smart basketball. Especially for a team like us that doesn’t have particularly good shooters. It always makes more sense to play to your strengths, whatever they may be. The best shot is the shot you can make.

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For reference: Hornets overall fg% = 42.7 (30th), 2fg% = 49.8 (30th), 3fg% = 34.7 (21st).

2 x 49.8 = 99.4, 3 x 34.7 = 104.1
2 x 52.05 = 104.1

So, in order for the hornets to be even, they need to improve 2fg to 52.05. Am I looking at that correctly?

They’re the worst shooting team in the league. They’re going to be bad no matter what shots they take.

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That’s a good point, but if the team in danger of “losing the quarter” will shoot more threes, perhaps the team preserving the quarter lead will do something like the opposite(using up the shot clock for a high percentage shot?).

I guess it’s fun to speculate.

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My guess is that the three is also preferred over low post play because of the spacing it creates.

If the three ball is a little less efficient than low post scoring, BUT it creates more spacing for the 58% of shots that are only 2-point shots, then I see how it makes sense. It makes those 2 point shots way easier because multiple deep threats are parked outside that line waiting to catch the ball.

Edit: But if the league wants to suddenly go in the opposite direction, they can be my guest. I love a good post move.

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Good discussion, especially since we can’t ever talk about our cursed team (I’ve had a lot more to say about the team all season, I just don’t feel like exerting the energy anymore).

I’m not one of those that hates the game or think it’s worse now. I’d much rather watch the 130-127 games vs the 75-68 games from the late 90’s, early 00’s. But one caveat - I do like modern basketball creating the freedom of movement, allowing the small guys to showcase their skill. But I don’t like it at the full expense of not being able to have “any” physical contact to have a chance against these brilliant offensive players (except for the Hornets, we’re too young to get those calls, or something…)

I think the skill level continues to expand, especially as kids get started younger, with more access to high level skills training on YouTube and/or hiring trainers for specific sports/positions. The ball handling and shooting is beyond what we had growing up, simply as a state of evolving.

Most people that will ever exist in the world will never sniff being in the same realm of intelligence as Einstein, but we get to start at his highest intellectual achievement and grow from there. So now kids can watch the fanciest moves ever achieved in the 90’s and build off of that into the all the variations of hesi’s, euro’s, gather steps, using your two steps going in any direction, the Shamgod, the fake Shamgod, the inverse Shamgod to hesi reverse euro into a crab dribble off the backboard tween the legs Dr. J reverse… and they can practice in their driveway all through their formative years.

I actually think the skill level and ever increasing size and athleticism of players today has outgrown the old rules of basketball. A bigger court would probably help a lot more. But the old lines probably have to change significantly. The 3 point line should be moved back as far until the league average is around 30%. If it’s moved to 25 feet, that eliminates the sideline 3 all the way up to the free throw line extended.

I may even go more extreme, make a 4 point line from maybe 28 or 30 feet and out (will encourage more end of quarter heaves). Make the 3 point shot from the old high school line (19’9) all the way to the 4 point line, where the emphasis will be more on that midrange shot instead of firing one legged fadeaway 25 footers.

Another idea is to make paint shots worth 3 points as well. Teams would at least start to attack the paint more as an offense rather than fire up 50 threes a game.

Or if they don’t want to change the lines just yet, maybe they should actually start awarding points for assists now. You make a great pass for a wide open 3, you get 4 now. You throw an alley-oop, it’s 3 points now. Will encourage much more passing rather than a 20 dribble spin move fadeaway while everyone else watches.

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That’s just the thing. With all due respect to JJ Reddick et al., I don’t think players are more skilled today. Skill level hasn’t expanded, it’s actually diminished in terms of breadth of skill. I’ll grant that players are more athletic today, and there is a hyper focus on shooting, but across the board, players are far less skilled in their ability to score from the mid-range and in the post. And even though more people are shooting more 3s, I’d still argue that players are only marginally better shooters today. The league average from 3 in the 90s was a little below 35% (34.7) and in the 2020s it’s just over 36% (36.1). So while shooting is clearly more prioritized today, I don’t know that the numbers support the notion that guys are vastly superior shooters. So on the whole, I’d argue that offensive skill is less broad and varied today than it was 25 years ago.

That’s a fair point with regard to the spacing, but skilled post players also attract double teams which can be just as effective at creating open looks for shooters.

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I couldn’t possibly defend the argument with any real data, but to QC’s point, I think certain skills are generally better that lead to more individualized dominating play, the kind that allow for say a 16 year told to dominate surrounding teenage talent. But perhaps the team play (offensive concepts, setting screens, playing without the ball) might be lacking. I think Reddit and Lebron said as much in their podcast: a lot of guys come into the league without what they would consider to be basic knowledge of the game. I know that plays into a narrative that today’s players are more self-centered, but I think there’s just a practical case to be made for how youth players are developed, at least as I have seen on random YouTube clips of youth games. I really have no idea.

The amount of 3s attempted in a game has almost quadruppled since the 90s, so that they can hit at a higher clip with that change in volume suggests to me that they probably are better shooters. It used to be only 3 point specialists were really taking those shots. Now everybody gets in on the action.

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I do agree that more players focus on shooting and more players shoot from 3 at a higher percentage than they did in the 90s. That’s a fact. I don’t remember enough from the stats classes I took to determine whether the difference between 34.7 and 36.1 is a statistically significant difference, but players are better shooters to some degree than in the past. They are also better athletes and I’d say ball handling skills are much better across the board today. But even with all of that, I still think it’s hard to argue that players are more skilled across the board when entire skill sets are virtually non-existent in today’s game.

Big guys aren’t taught post skills. They don’t have the footwork, the countermoves etc. It’s either a dunk or they’re out shooting 3s. And while perimeter players are better ball handlers today, better to what end? It’s not like they’re using their dribble to get to a sweet spot in the mid-range. Oftentimes it’s just them dribbling out the clock with impressive, albeit pointless between the legs and behind the back yo-yoing of the ball only to settle for a step back 3. So while today’s players have focused on and become slightly better at one aspect of the game, other offensive skills have been ignored and lost, so to me, that doesn’t translate to an overall higher level of skill.

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