Timberwolves would have made playoffs if three-pointers didn’t exist
By Ben Beecken
This just in, Timberwolves fans: your squad would have managed to make the 2015-16 NBA playoffs if the three-point line didn’t exist.
SBNation’s Jon Bois decided to investigate what today’s NBA would look like without a three-point line. Or, as he so eloquently (and facetiously) puts it, he thought it would be good to “go back and fix it”, with ‘it’ being basketball as a whole.
It’s an interesting exercise that was no doubt time-consuming, and provides a fun, mid-August conversation piece. And while I’m not sure that Bois’ method was entirely accurate or fool-proof, I think it got us relatively close to at least answering what 2015-16 would have looked like without the three-point arc.
Here’s the video in it’s entirety — just under 11 minutes that will be well worth your time, trust me.
So let’s start with the obvious, Timberwolves-related commentary.
Yes, the Sam Mitchell-led Wolves would have eked into the playoffs as the eighth seed, albeit with only 36 victories (and four ties). The Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks are the big losers, of course, joining the Portland Trail Blazers as the only three Western Conference teams to be affected by two or more spots in the seeding.
It’s been well-documented that the Wolves led the league in long-mid-range shot attempts (23.9 percent of their shots came from between 16 feet and the three-point arc with the Indiana Pacers lagging behind at 21.9 percent) and finished second-to-last in the lowest percentage of team field goal attempts coming from three-point range at 20.2 percent (Milwaukee finished with just 18.9 percent of their shot attempts from beyond the arc).
Surely, Andrew Wiggins‘ turnaround-fadeaways from 18+ feet away from the basket would be more effective if a contest jumper from a random wing from 24 feet was worth the same amount. I’m not sure that’s the world that I want to live in (it’s not), but it’s certainly worth pointing out.
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Bois also does a good job (at the 7:03 mark) of showing that just because teams attempted less threes doesn’t mean that they’d benefit by removing the arc. The inverse was also true, as Golden State was still one of the top teams in the league, even while removing their top weapon.
My biggest contention with this exercise is Bois’ conclusion that the league would wouldn’t change a lot, and that we’d “probably be watching a similar brand of basketball” without the three-point line.
I absolutely buy the idea that shooting percentages from, say, 23 to 25 feet would improve if the arc wasn’t there; defenses wouldn’t have the same incentive to play tight, one-on-one shot defense. But offenses would also adjust and almost certainly not emphasize the long jump-shot as much as they do currently.
So sure, retroactively changing any specific season will impact the standings some, but removing the shot from the future would have a domino-like effect on style of play, ultimately resulting in a much different on-court product.
Next: A Breakthrough Year For Andrew Wiggins?
One thing we can agree on, however, is that the 2015-16 Minnesota Timberwolves would have given the top-seeded San Antonio Spurs a heck of a time in the first round of the playoffs…or something like that.