During his tenure as the head coach of the Phoenix Suns some twenty years ago, Mike D’Antoni began the process of changing modern NBA basketball. At the time of its inception, the NBA was still living in the era of Shaquille O’Neal. And with no new Shaqs on the horizon, the Suns had to think of something.
D’Antoni’s Suns were famous for what became known as the “Seven Seconds or Less” offence, the thesis of which was exactly what it sounds like. Led by two-time MVP Steve Nash, the Suns sought to get their offence quickly, before opposing defences had a chance to settle.
What was at the time revolutionary – and unpopular – has now become normalised. The NBA plays at a pace today that it has not done since the 1960s, and whereas teams were gunning up any old garbage back then, they do so now as a result of schematics, strategy and talent. The three-point shot is here to stay, not through laziness, but through provable mathematical efficacy.
It took a catalyst in the form of Shaq, though, to get things started.
D’Antoni’s Defiance Changed The NBA
Speaking on the On Point podcast, D’Antoni posited the idea that the NBA’s explosion in three-point shooting over the past two decades came out of a need to find a way around O’Neal. Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention. And Shaq’s presence necessitated a new approach.
We always said among ourselves, you can’t out-Shaq Shaq. So we had to figure out a way to beat him. And that was to speed the game up, take more threes and spread them out, and then they give us a chance to win. […] He [Shaq] is actually the cause of the three-point shot.
Considering O’Neal only made one three-pointer in his career, the last part would sound absurd out of context. It is however the ultimate endorsement of a man who changed the game through his uniqueness.
The Young Unicorn
Playing from 1992 to 2011, Shaqâs career went on for so long that it is somewhat difficult to remember his prime.
Towards the end, he was a plodder, an absolute monster of a man but a flat-footed one who travelled far more than he was ever called for (superstar calls have a legacy), who would camp in the paint and call for the ball, but not running or jumping like he once could. Old Shaq was still good and effective when healthy, especially because old Shaq was even more mammoth than young Shaq, but he looked little like prime Shaq.
Prime Shaq, though, was a ridiculous combination of power and agility. He may not have run quite as well as Jarrett Allen, but nor did he need to. Shaq was far stronger than almost everyone else, far quicker than most of his peers, and smart and skilled enough to make that combination work for him.
Shaq was so good that they made rules about him. He was the latecomer to an era of tremendous post players â most notably Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, the late Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning â all of whom had their role in reshaping the game. When it became obvious that there was no filling that centre void within the next generation, Shaq stood out further from his peers. Turn-of-the-millennium Shaquille OâNeal was as good as he wanted to be.
Like everyone, D’Antoni and the Suns had to work around that.
Shaq Inadvertently Got Other Guys Work
There was a time when players existed to foul Shaq. It is entirely fair to say that it was why they ever made an NBA roster.
Hack-A-Shaq was in large part a product of OâNealâs permanently poor free throw shooting, but also because there was not much else that could be done. Shaq got position around the basket whenever he wanted, and unless you could deny the passing angle, jump the pass for a steal, pull the chair like Kurt Thomas or somehow have Mount Fuji in there to body him up, his ability to turn and raise up or power through could not be stopped. The foul was thus the only option.
Teams planned for Shaq not just from game to game, but in terms of their roster composition. To win the title, you had to go through Shaq. And although you could not rival him, you had to at least try and body him so that he would not throw a 40/20 playoff series on you without a fight.
Therefore, NBA teams get away with seven foot âstiffsâ on rosters far more easily than they can now. The roster spot that now goes to the extra shooting wing once went to the third seven-footer, used on a player whose points, rebounds and fouls totals were always similar.
How Shaq Would Play Today
It is a fun thought experiment to imagine what Shaquille OâNeal would look like in the NBA of the now. An era in which Victor Wembanyama, rather than Ervin Johnson, is the new style rim protector.
No reasonable thought experiment would or should suggest that if he were to come through in this era, Shaq would be a shooter. Nor would anyone surely suggest he would have gone away from what made him so great. Shaq had finesse, more than he is often given credit for, overshadowed as it was by his phenomenal power. But he was a power player.
Shaq never shot foul line jumpshots, nor mid-rangers. His eight-foot flippy thing does not count. He would surely not now become a shooter, a stretch big, or anything other than what he was. He was a big man, and played like it. And he still would.
Nonetheless, to do so now would be somewhat anomalous, even more so than before. Everyone wanted to play like Shaq then. They do not now. Big men, who would otherwise be assigned the post, shoot threes now, as they have all along always wanted to. Big guys have always liked the novelty of the three â see also, Dwight Howard in the All-Star game. But now, they actually do it.
“Small” Ball Is The New Orthodoxy
It is well known that this is the era of “small ball” in the NBA.
“Small ball” is not just a rhyme, but an attempt at a description of this era. It is the league-wide (and, increasingly, worldwide) trend within professional basketball to go away from traditional two big men line-ups and instead often feature only one, if not sometimes none.
That said, âsmall ballâ is still something of a misnomer. Or at least, it is if âsmallâ is used to mean ânot tallâ. More power forwards are playing centre, and more small forwards are playing power forwards, but those position alignments are more about changing styles of play than decreasing size. Those players are still tall. The tall guys just play differently now.
âSmall ballâ is not so much âplay three guardsâ as it is âspeed the game upâ. The game is sped up in large part by speeding the players up, particularly those who traditionally were slow. If âsmallâ is therefore used as an antonym of âwideâ, it becomes more accurate.
The game still features seven footers, nearly if not quite as many as before. They just almost all run rather than stand now. Such is a requirement for the increased perimeter play of big men that small ball truly entails.
Evolution Of The Centre Spot
The small ball tendency was in part a product of analytics, and the increased understanding of offensive efficiency that it brought about. The direct by-products of this understanding were not only an increased value in the three-pointer and the demise of the planned pull-up two, but of spacing in general. That is to say, the ability for bigs to do more when coming out of the paint than just screening, loafing back on defence and occasionally hitting a two-point mid-range jump shot.
The pick-and-roll is fully en vogue, and particularly the spread and/or very high pick-and-roll; the bigs are spotting up from three now, as well as driving closeouts, and defending their counterparts who are doing the same. Teams will normally have four shooters now, or five if they can. Not two posts.
Small ball’s ascension was also in part something of a concession to the encroachment of the international game onto the NBA shores. International and European basketball are physical leagues, no matter what unfair and under-researched stereotypes may tell you; nevertheless, the lack of athleticism in comparison to the NBA in part created a culture of outside shooting. Outside shooting big men was not unheard of in the NBA, with Bill Laimbeer in particular long being lauded for his ability to draw the Mark Eaton-type shot-blockers of his era away from the basket with his ability to spot up and hit flat-footed threes. But Europeans have always done it more, and with the rise of Dirk Nowitzki and varying unsuccessful attempts to clone him, a wider small ball ethos was born in the NBA.
However, small ball was also a product of necessity. Teams went small when going big was futile. And this futility was in large part due to Shaquille OâNeal.
Shaq’s Impact On The Three-Ball
Small ball is not just about the big men shooting threes, although it is the most obvious and measurable embodiment of it. But even with that paradigm shift in mind, small ball has not seen the death of the big man. Indeed, the quality of centres (or de facto centres) in the NBA today is seriously high.
What small ball has done, however, is eradicate the underskilled big. Particularly the underskilled, unathletic big who clogs the paint. The paint does not need clogging any more with no Shaq. Instead, if a player is to only have one skill, that skill ought really be shooting, no matter what height. Bruno Sundov came around ten years too early.
Bigs are faster now, and the game has been sped up. The supposedly halcyon days of the 1990s were much slower, more physical, âgrittierâ, and, if you like that sort of thing, more big-mannish. There was more post play, more hard fouls, and more need for Chris Dudley. Stylistic opinions of that era vary â what is not subjective, though, is the significant shift away from it. And for that, Shaquille OâNeal should take significant credit. So, too, should D’Antoni and the Suns, for fearlessly pressing ahead with their counter-strategy, despite the doubters.
If transposed into the modern NBA today, one built around the D’Antoni principles, Shaq would still be great, because greatness transcends. Yet it is partly because of his greatness that we are where we are.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post D’Antoni: The Three-Point Revolution Happened Because of Shaq appeared first on Heavy Sports.