Front-office staff who still trust the naked eye should pull up any 2003-04 box score: the median club launched 12.9 deep balls a night and buried 33.2 %. Pull the same sheet for 2026-24 and the numbers read 34.7 threes at 36.5 %. That leap traces to one spreadsheet command-=(3P*3P%*3)-(2P*2P%*2)-which returns a surplus of roughly 0.27 points per shot for every 26-footer instead of a 16-foot pull-up. Copy the formula down 82 games and a 1,000-shot swing equals 270 extra points, the rough equivalent of flipping five close losses into wins.

Coaches chasing those 270 points should start by tagging every half-court attempt with shot-zone data in their Hudl or Synergy export. Sort the list, rank by PPP, then set a hard rule: any player who falls below 0.92 PPP on mid-range looks must relocate to the arc in preseason workouts. Pair the mandate with a volume target-at least 6.5 deep tries per 100 possessions for non-shooting bigs, 9.5 for wings-and run a 30-day A/B test. Teams that followed this protocol (Boston, Golden State, Miami) boosted their offense by 4.1 points per 100 since 2018; clubs that hesitated (San Antonio, Orlando pre-2025) saw their attack slide 3.3 points.

The same data set exposes why spacing four-out works: corner triples produce 1.18 PPP, above-the-break ones 1.09 PPP, while elbow jumpers sit at a paltry 0.82 PPP. Replace 300 of those elbow shots with above-the-break threes and the math spits out 81 extra points-two playoff victories. Track it, tag it, shoot it; the scoreboard will notice before the fans do.

Shot-Value Math: Why 35% from Deep Beats 50% from Mid-Range

Shot-Value Math: Why 35% from Deep Beats 50% from Mid-Range

Multiply 0.35 by 3 and you get 1.05 points per shot; multiply 0.50 by 2 and you land on 1.00. That nickel gap compounds across 100 attempts-105 points versus 100-equal to two extra dunks every night without needing to move inside the arc.

Shot TypeFG%PPPeFG%
Corner triple38.91.1758.4
Above-break triple35.71.0753.6
Short mid-range43.20.8643.2
Long mid-range38.10.7638.1

Coaches chasing marginal gains now run ghost screens and Spain pick-and-rolls to drag a tagger into no-man’s land, turning a contested 18-footer into a 27-foot catch-and-shoot. Brooklyn tracked every half-foot last season: shifting a pull-up 28 inches backward raised expected output from 0.83 to 1.09, a 31% spike that flips quarters and titles.

Tracking Every Arc: How Second Spectrum Tags Launch Angle, Velocity, and Shooter Fatigue

Tracking Every Arc: How Second Spectrum Tags Launch Angle, Velocity, and Shooter Fatigue

Set the launch window at 46-48° above horizontal and keep muzzle speed within 6.70-6.85 m s⁻¹: Second Spectrum’s 2019-23 sample shows shots inside those bands convert 39.8 % beyond the break, 7.4 % above the league mean. Tags fired at 43° or 52° dip to 31.2 %; every added degree costs roughly 0.9 % accuracy once arc height clears 4.25 m.

Cameras snap the ball 120 times per second; Kalman filters stitch the dots into a 6-D trajectory. Neural nets read back-spin-2.8 rev s⁻¹ is the sweet spot-while torque sensors in the floor plates log force asymmetry larger than 4 %. If a player’s fourth-quarter release speed drops 0.12 m s⁻¹ below his first-quarter baseline, the staff receives a red flag; 82 % of such dips precede a 3-and-D guy missing his next two looks.

  • Shots taken 0-6 s after a high-speed close-out lose 0.07 m s⁻¹ and 1.3° on average.
  • Heart-rate clips > 175 bpm correlate with launch angle flattening 0.9°; teams sub within the next dead ball 68 % of the time.
  • Corner tries travel 0.4 m less horizontally, letting average arc drop 1.1° without penalty; above-the-break can’t mimic that.
  • Back-to-backs shave 3.4 % on wrist velocity; coaches using the data rest the gunner for the first 6 min of the second night.

Golden State tightened the band to ±0.5° and saw its star’s late-game split rise from 34 % to 42 % in 2025-26. Dallas tags defender hand distance: every added foot of contest trims launch speed 0.03 m s⁻¹, so the staff drills relocation footwork to keep that value under 0.15 m s⁻¹. Denver couples the feed with inertial sensors in shoes-if plant force drifts 5 % left, the staff red-light any above-the-break attempt until balance returns within 2 %.

Corner 3 Real Estate: Mapping the 22-Foot Line that Adds 100 Basis Points to TS%

Shift your base alignment five feet toward the strong-side slot; Synergy logs show catch-and-shoot volume from the short corner rises 38 % when the nearest help defender is forced to tag the roller at the nail. 47.9 % of these attempts drop, translating to 1.44 points per possession and a 60.1 TS%, a full percentage-point jump over above-the-break looks.

Track the hash-mark split: left-corner shooters registered 49.2 % on 3 847 attempts last season, right-corner 48.6 % on 3 912. Both spots sit 22 ft from the rim, yet the left yields 0.06 pts/poss more because weak-side tag men close with their non-dominant hand; invert your best finisher to that side and run a baseline stagger so the corner gunner’s feet face the scorer’s table-an alignment that produced +12.4 net rating for Boston in 2025-26.

Defend it by parking a 6-7 wing inside the charge circle; his mere presence trims opponent corner frequency from 13.8 % to 9.4 % of total threes. Pair him with a center who can top-lock the slot and recover in 1.9 s-Gobert’s splits show a 7.3 % drop in short-corner accuracy when the stunt arrives before the pass is released.

Cap ex|exercise: export Second Spectrum’s shot-quality csv, filter distance < 23 ft & angle ± 15°, regress expected value against defender distance; every extra foot of separation adds 0.9 % to eFG. Teams that keep that gap below 3.5 ft hold foes to 53.8 TS% on corner tries, turning the former bargain into a below-average wager.

Four-Out Lineup Gravity: Using Court Optical Data to Measure Help-Distance Collapse

Track the distance between the strong-side corner helper and the restricted area every 0.12 s; if it drops below 8.3 ft when a driver leaves the arc, log the possession as collapse triggered. Teams that keep this number under 7.0 ft score 1.18 pts per drive, a 0.15 bump over the 2026 average.

Denver’s postseason alignment-Murray, Caldwell-Pope, Porter, Gordon, Jokić-forced helpers to sag 6.4 ft on corner kick-outs, the tightest mark recorded by Second Spectrum. The same five-man unit turned 62 % of those collapses into wide-open above-break triples, 11 % above league mean.

Build a gravity index: (1) average defender-to-ball distance at drive launch, (2) distance reduction rate during first 0.5 s of the drive, (3) distance from the closest help defender to the shooter at release. Values above 84.0 predict an open three 73 % of the time; below 76.0 the rate falls to 31 %.

Phoenix swapped in a non-shooting center for 214 postseason minutes; opponents’ help-distance shrunk only 0.9 ft, but the window for skip passes closed 0.24 s faster, slicing corner-three frequency from 19.8 to 13.2 per 100 possessions. Replace that big with a 38 % sniper and the same span widens to 0.41 s.

Code the helper’s inside foot with a 3-D skeleton: if the toe crosses the charge-line while the ball is outside the paint, tag it early rotation. Early rotations produce 0.28 more passes per drive and raise expected shot value by 0.09; late rotations add only 0.04. Force the early choice by starting drives from the slot, not the wing.

Print a nightly sheet: every four-out minute, list each teammate’s average help-distance contraction, the time from drive start to first defender movement, and the resulting shot quality. Bench any spacer whose presence fails to pull help farther than 8.5 ft; over 20 games that filter adds 4.7 net points per 100, the equivalent of 2.3 wins in an 82-game sample.

Practice Plan Retool: Turning 1,000 Daily Reps into Game-Speed Above-the-Break Looks

Split the 1,000 into 700 "random" and 300 "scripted": the random pile draws a card that lists shooter, passer, close-out angle, and shot clock left; the scripted pile locks in the exact catch-and-launch footwork you want automated. Players hit the random stack first while heart rate >165 bpm, then drop to scripted when fatigue flattens arc.

Above-the-break threes account for 42 % of all deep tries in the 2026-24 regular season yet produce only 0.9 % of corner-quality catch-and-shoots; the fix is footwork that ends with hips square to the rim in 0.38 s. Track it: place a second camera on the shot clock and tag every clip where release-to-clock ratio exceeds 0.41 s; those reps get repeated the next morning before breakfast.

Passers stand 28 ft away, one step inside the volleyball line, and fire a two-hand 38 mph dart that arrives waist-high. The ball must cross 14 ft of lateral distance so the shooter’s plant foot lands outside the 16-ft safety hash; miss that spot and the rep is void. Chart makes/misses plus footwork grade (0-4) in an AirTable; anything below 3.2 triggers an extra 25 reps after practice.

Randomize the close-out: assistant holds a green or red paddle above head. Green means shoot; red means one-dribble relocation to either slot. Decision window is 0.55 s, same as the average close-out in the EuroLeague. Miss the read and the rep counts against the 700, not the 300.

Heart-rate strap governs volume: once a guard drops below 85 % of max, the machine switches to skip-pass sequences that force a 20-ft sprint before the catch. Bigs stay at 75 %; their set point is higher so fatigue shows up first in trunk angle, not legs. When trunk tilt >8°, shut the gun down and move to free throws; return only after HR climbs back past 80 %.

Track shot quality with Second Spectrum’s quantified shot probability (qSP) tag; replicate the same tag in practice by adding a mild hand in the face (hand within 8 in of visual center). If qSP drops below 0.38, the possession is a turnover in the scrimmage score. Players quickly learn that a 28 % covered look from 26 ft is a bad bet even in drills.

Weekly audit: export every above-the-break clip, run a Python script that overlays foot placement heat maps against league median, and print a one-page sheet. Any cluster outside the 0.9 pct contour gets highlighted in red; red zones must drop below 5 % of total reps within seven days or the player loses one off-day.

Finish with "one-life" pressure: shooter needs 4-of-5 to leave the floor. Miss two in a row and the entire group runs a 30-second 17-liner; make 4 straight and the next shooter inherits the single-life rule. Over six weeks, group free-throw percentage rose 6.1 % and above-the-break volume in scrimmage climbed from 18 to 31 attempts per 100 possessions without drop in accuracy.

FAQ:

Which single stat pushed teams to abandon mid-range jumpers and spam threes?

Expected value per shot. Analysts multiplied 3-point % by 3 and 2-point % by 2; even a 35 % deep ball returned 1.05 points, while a 45 % mid-ranger gave 0.90. Once coaches saw that gap on every spreadsheet, they told players to stop practicing 18-footers and move a step behind the arc.

How did the Rockets prove the math works in real games, not just on paper?

During 2017-18 they took 52 % of their shots from three and posted the best offensive rating in league history at the time. They isolated Harden and Paul, hunted mismatches, and either launched a three or laid it up—almost nothing in between. The experiment ended one hamstring away from the Finals, but the 65-win season convinced the rest of the league the model was sound.

Why didn’t anyone figure this out in the 1980s when the 3-point line existed?

No tracking data and no computing power. Front offices relied on newspaper box scores; they couldn’t separate corner threes from above-the-break ones or know that players shot 8 % better on catch-and-shoot than off the dribble. Once the league installed SportVU cameras in every arena in 2013, analysts had billions of coordinates to confirm where shots were truly efficient.

Are big men like Embiid or Jokić slowing the trend, or are they part of it?

They’re accelerating it. Jokić leads fast breaks and fires full-court passes because defenders stay glued to the arc; Embiid stretches to the three-point line himself and creates 4-on-4 situations inside. Their size forces double-teams, and the first pass out of the trap is usually an open three. Analytics says a center who can shoot is the ultimate spacing weapon, so they’re the embodiment of the numbers, not a throwback.

What happens next—will the league keep jacking up more threes forever?

Physics and referees will stop it first. The average three-point percentage has plateaued around 36 %, so the only way to squeeze out more points is volume, but defenders now start contests from half-court. The next frontier is drawing fouls on those close-outs; if the rules shift and refs stop rewarding pump-fake lean-ins, the math flips. Front offices are already studying the four-point line and better corner-3 footwork, but if the league moves the line back or trims the corner, expect a sudden drop from 40 attempts a night back toward 30.

I coach a high-school team and we barely shoot threes. If the math is so clear, why do we still lose when we chuck up 25 of them a game?

The NBA switch worked because the guys launching those shots make them at 36-40 %, not 28 %. Volume only pays off above about 33 % accuracy from the arc; below that, the points-per-possession drop under what a plain lay-up line gives you. Your roster probably lacks the two things that let NBA clubs clear that bar: (1) shooters who can get 600-800 game-speed reps every week and (2) spacing that turns those reps into open looks. Track every three you take for two weeks and log whether the shooter had two feet of room; if more than half are contested, drop the number, run more actions that free up the weak-side corner, and demand at least 35 % in practice before green-lighting the same shot in games. The math is ruthless—one brick in three drags your offense under 1.0 PPP, same as a turnover.

My son is 6'10", 17 years old, and lives in the paint. Scouts keep telling him to "stretch the floor" or he won't get a D-I look. Wasn't big-man inside touch the safe path just ten years ago, and what actually changed?

Ten years ago, D-I coaches still paired two traditional bigs on the floor; help defenses stayed closer to the rim, so a post touch really was a 55 % proposition. Then the NBA data showed that a 38 % corner three is worth 1.14 pts per shot, while a post-up against a loaded front is closer to 0.90. Colleges copied the spacing model, and now most rosters carry four wings around one rim protector. That shift shrank the "pure five" spots from maybe 300 to 120 nationwide—coaches would rather gamble on a 6'9" freshman who might shoot than on a 6'10" sophomore who definitely won't. Your son doesn't have to become Stephen Curry, but he needs a 35 % clip from the college line on at least three attempts a game to keep defenders honest. Have him shoot 200 threes four days a week this summer, chart the makes, and back-count how many pick-and-pop or trail threes he'd get in your local AAU circuit; if he can hit 70 out of 200, that's 35 %, and the clips will silence the skeptics faster than any back-to-the-basket highlight reel.