The future of the NBA lies in
Texas. Not in Dallas, Houston or San Antonio, home to the state's three NBA
teams who have won a combined 64.4 percent of their games over the last decade,
but farther south to Hidalgo, Texas, located a long 3-pointer across the Rio
Grande from Mexico. There, in the NBA's D-League, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers
are playing the most extreme professional basketball in America.
You might have seen the Vipers'
shot chart, which went viral on Twitter after being
posted by the D-League.
Nearly half of Rio Grande
Valley's shot attempts have come from beyond the 3-point line, but that's not
the only thing that sets the team apart statistically. The Vipers are averaging
107.2 possessions per 48 minutes, which not only blows away the fastest mark in
the NBA this season (97.5) but is faster than any NBA team has played in the
last 20 years.
Since Rio Grande Valley's
offense is also hyper-efficient (their rate of 121.0 points per 100 possessions
would lead the NBA this season and blow past the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns
(117.5) for the best offensive rating since the NBA-ABA merger), the team is
averaging a nearly unthinkable 129.4 points per game. Three players score at
least 20 points per game, and all five starters are averaging at least 17.1
points.
None of this is happening by
accident. Since the Houston Rockets
took control of the Vipers' basketball operations under a single-affiliate
partnership agreement in 2009, the Rockets front office under GM Daryl Morey
has utilized the D-League squad as a laboratory of sorts, a testing ground for
ideas they can import to the NBA.
Under Houston management, the
Vipers have always relied heavily on the 3-pointer. They also quickly pushed
the pace, and have continued to play faster each season (the D-League's average
pace is generally trending upwards, but Rio Grande Valley has increased more).
While the big club has always tended to play fast and shoot a lot of
3-pointers, it wasn't until last season that the Rockets really mirrored their
affiliate's extreme tendencies. It took some time for Houston to get the right
personnel in place (this year's team has inevitably slowed down relative to the
rest of the league to accommodate Dwight Howard)
and get total buy-in from the coaching staff.
As a result, it's fascinating to
consider whether this year's Vipers might be a preview of things to come for
the Rockets. After hiring Nevada Smith from Division III Keystone College, Rio
Grande Valley has taken the twin philosophies of playing fast and emphasizing
high-value shots to their logical extremes. According to the new
NBA.com/DLeague/Stats, the Vipers took just 36 2-point shots outside the paint
during their first eight games. Some 88.1 percent of their shot attempts came
either at the rim or behind the 3-point line. That blows away Houston, which
leads the NBA by taking 69.5 percent of its shots from those two locations; no
other NBA team is above 60 percent.
This leads to an inevitable
question: How far can teams increase the number of 3-pointers they shoot? Last
year's Knicks set a new league record by taking 35.4 percent of their shots
beyond the arc. The Rockets attempted them at the third-highest rate ever, and
are on track to shoot them slightly more frequently this season. League-wide, NBA
teams are taking 3s on more than a quarter of their shot attempts (25.4
percent) for the first time ever.
Seeing how much further NBA
teams can go may require nothing more than looking at the NCAA, where the
shorter 3-point line has always been more inviting. In fact, college teams shot
3-pointers as frequently as NBA teams do now all the way back in 1992-93.
Long-distance attempts peaked at 34.4 percent of all shots by 2007-08 before
the NCAA moved the line back from 19 feet, nine inches to 20 feet, nine inches
-- still three feet shorter than the NBA line at its longest. Since then, the
NCAA 3-point rate has settled in around 33 percent of all shots taken.
The superiority of the 3-point
shot has long been held by statistical analysts, but the trend toward
fast-paced play is a new one. With former Houston assistant GM Sam Hinkie
taking over the Philadelphia
76ers this season, the Sixers have supplanted the Rockets as the
league's fastest team.
While there are a variety of
reasons Philadelphia might want to speed things up during a rebuilding season,
as Per Diem partner Tom Haberstroh explored in the
first installment of "The Big Number," that both the
Rockets, 76ers and the Vipers are playing at fast paces seems to indicate Morey
and Hinkie fundamentally believe in it. (The 76ers' D-League team, the Delaware
87s, also is playing at a fast pace and ranks second in the league in 3-point attempt
percentage.)
That philosophy has been applied
in the NBA before, most notably by Paul Westhead's Denver Nuggets.
The difference is that the Rio Grande Valley system has proven more than just a
gimmick. The Vipers won their second D-League championship in four years last
spring and have started this season 9-0. Thursday's win over the Austin Toros
was their 19th consecutive during the regular season (not counting a 6-0 playoff
run), tying the D-League record.
The Rockets' style won't be nearly so
extreme when they face the Golden State
Warriors tonight (10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN). If Rio Grande Valley
continues to be so successful, however, expect Houston to continue pushing the
pace and hoisting more 3-pointers. And if that works for the Rockets and
Sixers, more NBA teams will follow the Vipers' lead.
