OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Well, you're giving me a lot to think about.
I will say, re:Colangelo - if he was behind both the removal of illegal defense and the Suns' acquisition of Nash, then it would be reasonable to think that he thought he needed that rule change in order to do what he wanted to do with Nash.
In any event, whether causal or not, one can clearly see a trend towards 3PT-heavy offenses starting from the early/mid-00s, at least in philosophy if not actual volume of 3PA. You see Nelson's Mavs rise from 01-04, you see 7SOL, you see the Spurs offense go from the inside-out offense of 99 and 03 to the offenses of 05/07/beyond that were much more dependent on Manu/Parker's perimeter offense and the shooting of others(Bowen was known for that corner three), you see the 09/10 Lakers play lineups with Gasol at C and Odom at PF next to Ariza/Artest/Kobe/Fisher(that would've worked better if Odom was actually a better shooter), and more.
You see the Heatles make the adjustment in 2011-12 of moving Bosh to center and using him as a stretch 5 while putting another wing with range next to LeBron at forward(mainly Battier, but also Rashard Lewis, Mike Miller, and Ray Allen in 13/14 too), as opposed to Bosh at PF and Joel Anthony at C like they'd done in 2010-11, which opened their whole offense up.
You see the KD/Harden/Westbrook Thunder, which was a very perimeter-oriented offense.
And finally the Warriors and everything beyond.
To be fair, there were teams in the years before the rule changes that had unusually high 3PA for the time, but they were mostly teams that generated their 3PA from inside out offenses built around transcendent big men...I'm thinking specifically of 94/95 Rockets, 95/96 Magic, 00-02 Lakers. On the other side...there's the second-threepeat Bulls and Payton/Kemp Sonics...both had unusually high 3PA, but theirs were probably generated from high-level defenses enabling fastbreak offense.
I'm glad you're chewing on it OldSchool! Not going to push any further right now, but certainly we can talk more later.
Re: reasonable to think Colangelo needed rule change to do what he wanted with a Nash-like figure. It's a worthy hypothesis without question, but one thing I'll emphasize is this:
Even if Colangelo THOUGHT he needed the rule change to do what he wanted, that doesn't mean he was right. I'll flat out say that I don't think anyone thought there was this much untapped leverage in the game, and the scale of that actualized leverage is what makes much of the original points of debate close to moot. This was a case where play/training strategy was the immediate cause with greatest force, as evidenced by the fact that greatest acceleration occurs a decade removed from the relevant rule changes.
I'll also note that the father and son element makes things confusing. Circa 2001, the father Jerry Colangelo has a strong case for being the 2nd most powerful man in the NBA behind David Stern - in part because he was in Stern's ear. Jerry had a unique history at that time as someone who had been a scout, coach & GM who became an owner. This not only spoke to his outstanding ability to schmooze, but gave him a flexible ethos that he could turn in various ways depending on who he was talking to, and made him something of a one-stop shop for the lawyers who actually run the Association. But as a Phoenix Suns man, he was on his way out. He'd handed over the reins of GMship to his Sun in 1994, and sold his ownerships to the Suns, Mercury, Diamondbacks & Rattlers in 2004.
Meanwhile, Bryan was in the workaholic mode of his life, utterly dedicated to being the basketball boss of the Suns, and very much looking to prove himself as more than a nepotistic hire. The way he thought about basketball was heavily influenced by his father, but he wasn't just doing his father's bidding, and his father wanted that for his son too.
I think it's also important to consider things like how D'Antoni ended up in Phoenix. See, Bryan Colangelo and Mike D'Antoni met through their wives, because Bryan's wife Barbara Bottini - the one who would eventually cause his downfall in Philadelphia - had met working for Olimpia Milano back in the '80s. Bryan and Mike would meet in 2001 and really hit it off. Bryan would then hire Mike as an assistant coach in 2002 and promote him to head coach mid-season in 2023. Within the Suns' organization, Mike was specifically Bryan's guy. He was walking proof that Bryan knew what he was doing, and hence was not a walking avatar of nepotism.
Re: trend of 3's going up before 7SOL. Oh sure, 3's have been going up for most periods of NBA history, and that's a significant factor in the eventual paradigm shift.
I might draw the analogy to the rising sea temperature leading to me living through my first hurricane warning here on the Pacific coast. The gradual process of 3's slowly becoming more entrenched as as an essential part of a team's toolset is the sea temperature, and the shifts are the storms coming with greater likelihood hood than before.
I think it's important to credit all the storms along the way like what you're doing here.