WNBA legend Sue Bird addresses NBA’s biggest issue linked to Steph Curry amid ratings decline
Sue Bird weighed in on the NBA ratings drop, which has been attributed to soaring 3-point attempts by every team, inspired by Steph Curry. The rise in shots from behind the arc started when Curry turned it into a tool that usually resulted in winning games. Teams mimicked how Curry and the Dubs played, hoping to replicate the same success.
In The Young Man and the Three podcast, Bird said about the ratings drop:
“I can argue on both sides of the table for this because I think the reality is you’re in the locker room, whether you’re a coach, whether you’re a GM putting a team together, a coach a player, you’re trying to win.
“Right now, it is being set up analytically. The proof’s in the pudding that if you play this way, it equates to wins. You can’t just remove that, but as a viewer, I think there is something to the game being a little bit too predictable?”
When Steph Curry entered the NBA, the league averaged 18.1 attempts from deep, per Basketball Reference. When the Warriors won their first championship in the Curry era, that figure rose to 22.4 per game. Ten years later, the league is putting up 37.6 3PAs.
It isn’t just Sue Bird who pointed out how the game has become too “predictable” or even boring. Charles Barkley said that watching games in the NBA over the past years has been “awful.”
LeBron James said on Wednesday:
“Our game, there’s a lot of f**king 3s being shot. So it’s a bigger conversation than just the All-Star Game.”
Unless there are changes in the rules, teams aren’t likely to stop jacking up 3s. The math is simple in this regard.
More 3-point attempts give teams better chances of winning games instead of going for mid-range shots that count as 2s. Bird was right when she said that every team wants to win, so the trend that has made the game “predictable” is here to stay.
Sue Bird said the last two minutes of the Nuggets-Kings game could be what the NBA should aim for
Sue Bird used a game between the Denver Nuggets and the Sacramento Kings as a model the NBA should go for to excite the fans. The four-time WNBA champ said about that matchup:
“The last two minutes of that game? There was like two 3s. And the rest was just like, ‘We gotta score. It’s 30 seconds, we’re down two. We gotta find a way to score. And I’d argue, those two minutes? There was something different than what you might see in a regular season game.”
The NBA is reportedly looking at 3-point shooting as one of the reasons for the drop in ratings. It remains to be seen if the league makes adjustments to bring back fans.