Plain English with Derek Thompson - The Five Superstars Who Invented the Modern NBA

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

The game of basketball has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. In the early 1990s, Michael Jordan said that 3-point shooting was "something I don’t want to excel at," because he thought it might make him a less effective scorer. 20 years later, 3-point shots have taken over basketball. The NBA has even changed dramatically in the last decade. In the 2010s, it briefly seemed as if sharp-shooting guards would drive the center position out of existence. But the last four MVP awards have all gone to centers. In his new book, ‘Hoop Atlas,’ author Kirk Goldsberry explains how new star players have continually revolutionized the game. Goldsberry traces the evolution of basketball from the midrange mastery of peak Jordan in the 1990s, to the offensive dark ages of the early 2000s, to the rise of sprawl ball and "heliocentrism," and finally to emergence of a new apex predator in the game: the do-it-all big man. Today, we talk about the history of paradigm shifts in basketball strategy and how several key superstars in particular—Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Manu Ginóbili, Steph Curry, and Nikola Jokic—have served as tactical entrepreneurs, introducing new plays and skills that transform the way basketball is played. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Kirk Goldsberry Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sure, the weather is getting warmer and you're probably planning your next vacation with your family, but what better way to avoid your family on that vacation than listening to three dudes argue about quarterback tears if you can trust a wide receiver over 30 years old, and if Jim Harbaugh still thinks chickens are nervous birds? Join me, Craig Horlebeck, along with Danny Hyfitz and Danny Kelly every week on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Today's episode is a special history of the invention of the modern NBA. A few years ago, I wrote an article for the Atlantic about what I called the dark side of Moneyball. Moneyball, of course, comes from Michael Lewis's book about the analytics revolution in baseball,

which I argued had been straightforwardly bad for that sport. What happened, it seemed to me, was that more teams had learned to run the same financial analyses to perfect the game, and the sport was weirdly optimized and homogenized. It was solved like a math problem. Every team learned that you needed fast pitching pitchers, and they built big bullpens full of hard-throwing relievers whose arms would fall off after a few years or months. And then every hitter increased his launch angle in a way that raised the odds of hitting a home run, but also increased the odds of a strikeout. And so singles dried up, and bass runners disappeared, and so did audiences. And baseball now languishes in a weird state of anonymous ubiquity.

It's always going on, it seems, but fewer and fewer people. seem to be following it on a weekly basis. I wonder sometimes if the same thing is happening to the NBA. I suppose you could say it is. In his history of the three-point revolution, Sprawball, Kirk Goldsbury chronicled the rise of the three-point shot. One quick statistic to summarize this well-known phenomenon. In the year 2000, no NBA team shot more than 30-3s a game.

In fact, I think only one team shot more than 20-3s a game. This year, every single NBA team shot more than 30-3s a game. One out of every 10 shots now is a corner three. In basketball, as in baseball, it didn't take that much advanced calculus to realize that three is worth more than two, and that realization that bit of very simple calculus has, without a doubt, transformed the game. But as Kirk writes in his new book, Hoop Atlas, this is not the only megatrend that has transformed basketball in the last 40 years.

Hoop Atlas traces the evolution of basketball from the mid-range mastery of Peak Jordan in the 1990s to the offensive dark ages of the early 2000s, to the rise of sprawball and heliocentrism, the growth of the international players movement, and the emergence of a new apex predator in the game, the do-it-all big man. Today we talk about how several key stars in particular, Michael Jordan, Alan Iverson, Manu Genoobli, Steph Curry, Nicole Yokic, have played key roles in being, I guess you could call them, tactitional entrepreneurs, sort of architects of the modern game of basketball. We talk about the history of paradigm shifts in NBA strategy.

Why Michael Jordan didn't take more threes in the 1990s? What stat nerds get wrong about Alan Iverson? Why international players tend to be more well-rounded than American stars. how foreign-born centers resurrected a position that was until just a few years ago on the brink of extinction and what the next paradigm shift in basketball might be after the age of the do-it-all center. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. Kirk Goldsbury, welcome to this show.

It is so good to be on here. Derek, this is one of my favorite podcasts. Thanks for having me on, buddy. It's an honor to hear you say that. I've been reading you for years. Your new book, Hoop Atlas, is an excellent history of the invention of modern basketball and the superstars who've served as the premier architects of the modern game. You begin with Michael Jordan, and really your history of modern basketball begins on June 3, 1992.

Why start here? Why not Wilts Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Kareem, Larry Bird, not even MJ's first MVP seasons? Why does the history of the creation of the modern NBA begin in the middle of Michael Jordan's career? Yeah, from my standpoint, that was the day that three-point shooting really became the main course, or at least a potential main course for superstars to use. That's the game for your audience, just a case they don't remember.

Michael hit six threes in the first half and broke the all-time scoring record for a half in an NBA finals game, and he did it with a bunch of three-point shots. And we didn't know it at the time, Derek, but honestly, in retrospect, that's a template that we've seen from Ruka Dantz, which obviously, Stefan Puri, James Arden. In the 21st century, the best players are now jump shooting perimeter savants. And Michael really made jump shooting cool. And on that night, game one of the 92 finals, he made it very apparent that you could win big games with three-point shots. And as you mentioned in the book, his nickname was Air Jordan, not Midrange Jordan.

He became famous and popular and an international celebrity because of his extraordinary play around the hoop. It was only later in his career that developed his midrange and to a certain extent three-point shot. But you had this incredible quote at the beginning of the book. This is Michael Jordan at the peak of his powers in the early 1990s, quote, my three-point shooting is something I don't want to excel at because it takes away from all phases of my game. My game is fake, drive to the hole, penetrate, dish off, dunk.

When you have the mentality of making threes, you don't go to the hole as much. You go to the three point line and start sitting there, waiting for someone to find you. That's not my mentality, and I don't want to create it because it takes away from other parts of my game.

End quote. Michael Jordan, the goat, saying, I don't want to excel at three-point shooting. It's literally unbelievable to read. Like, I got to chill reading it. I don't know about you, but I love reading, like, historical accounts of brilliant people being objectively wrong. Like, eminent scientists in the late 1890s

saying there's nothing more to discover in the entire field of physics. And it's like five years later, Einstein and Planck invert our entire understanding of the universe. This is that for basketball. Like Michael Jordan's saying, it doesn't make any sense for me to be good at three point shots.

And now from our perspective, we're like, you know, we've had sprawball, we've had mori ball, three is just objectively 50% more than two. Give us an understanding historically of what the smartest people in basketball were freaking thinking

when they were saying things like this. What's the steel man case for what is now obviously a defunct piece of conventional wisdom? You have to remember, Derek, that these dudes grew up without it. Michael Jordan hit some incredible shots. He won the NCAA championship with a jump shot on a court that didn't have the three-point line on it.

He won a gold medal on a basketball court that didn't have a three-point line on it. He had become one of the best players in the world without ever using it because it didn't exist. And his coaches have even more drastic examples of that backstory. The three-point shot was a gimmick. It was a newfangled sort of addition to a sport that they had already. mastered. And I think that's the mentality, especially in contrast with what you and I grew up with, where almost every game we've ever played in this sport or watched has had three-point shots. The coaches of today's teams were watching in 2024 playoffs have coached with the three-point line

for virtually their entire career. So I think it was just like nobody knew how to use it. And most important, I think, nobody practiced shooting out there because, again, there was no reason to do that in a world where there were only two point shots. It's a fair steel man case. I feel like in a game like football, if they invented a super end zone that was worth 10 points rather than 7, I'd feel like Patrick Mahomes would probably practice throwing into the super end zone. Like, it's always easy to criticize the past when you know exactly how history is going to unfold. But it will never not be surprising to me that it took someone like Darrell Mori and people like Steph Curry, that it took a revolution to invent

sprawball. You talk in the book about the idea that before sprawball was really invented the way that we commonly understand it to be, where you have just dozens and dozens of three-point shots happening every single game, you had this specialty of the corner three-point shooter. Maybe talk us through, if not the invention of sprawball, the invention of the concept of the concept of the concept of of a corner three-point shooting specialist? Yeah, and it really starts with Bruce Bowen, who invented an archetype called 3-D. And again, that didn't roll off the tongue

when Bruce was playing basketball and beating Kobe and Shaq in the 2003 playoffs. The term Corner 3 itself didn't really enter our lexicon and pro basketball until the 21st century, and it was gradual too. And I think what you're saying, and I love the point about a 10-point touchdown,

which is great. But yeah, it was one of the, sort of most definitive aspects of the three-point revolution is it was very gradual nature. It wasn't a wake-up and the game is different. It was one percentage point, three-point range, increase, one percentage point here, one percentage point there. But for the corner three, it really happened on defense with Greg Popovich and the Spurs just in a lockout, having nothing to do and be like, how can't make our defense a little bit better? We can't seem to get over the hump. And they changed some defensive principles, Derek. And one of the things they protected against

on defense is like, why are we leaving these strong side shooters open to help on drivers? And they changed it. So before they recognized the power of the shot on offense, they recognized it in true spurs fashion as something to protect against on defense. And then they started to realize with Tim Duncan just owning the left block that if they stationed Bruce Bowen on the right corner or another shooter, they could get the ball out of the double team and throw two quick passes. and that's how the corner three revolution was born in San Antonio.

But Bruce Bowen is definitely the mascot of one of the big analytical revolutions in basketball history, which is that corner three. It's interesting to think that the corner three was invented as a defensive revolution, because as you talk about in the book, the late 1990s into the mid-2000s when the Spurs dynasty was taking off. In many ways, this was the dark ages of offensive efficiency. And I didn't realize what a dark gauge it was until reading your book. Scoring per game hit rock bottom, shooting efficiency, which generally has increased that NBA history actually cratered in the late 1990s, nearly 2000s. Pace of play, that is possessions per game, also hit their all-time low in NBA history in the late 1990s, nearly 2000s.

Offensive efficiency cratered. What happened to the game of basketball between Jordan's retirement and, say, 2006? Because we're about to get to. rocket ship takeoff. We're about to tell the story of hero ball and heliocentrism and a three-point shot just absolutely creating a golden age of offensive efficiency. But just before that golden age, you really do have the darkest age in NBA history of offensive efficiency. What happened in this roughly just shy of a decade after Jordan's retirement to the game? Ugliness, in a word, it was brutal. It was defenses became very physical, very skilled,

and offenses weren't very good at overcoming that. It was the most physical, slowest time. Front offices were prioritizing strength and defensive power over shooting skill, for instance, because it was easy to contain the fastest guards in the league or the best shooters in the league because you could be very physical. Now, interestingly, we point out in Hoop Atlas that this really changes in 2004. after the smothering Detroit Pistons,

which really come to epitomize that trend, beat Kobe in the finals 2004 and smother him. And really, that summer, a few months later, Derek, they take the hand check, the perimeter touch rule, and they change it. And then Steve Nash is suddenly the MVP of the NBA two years in a row. This dude was not the MVP in a world where that kind of perimeter handling and touching of guards was legal.

But certainly that son's team. becomes a real factor in the modernization of pro basketball, specifically offenses, and a huge reason that we start playing faster and more open. I still think the Spurge really weaponized spacing in those O-3 with Bruce Bowen, but those Suns teams with Nash really opened up the game and sped up the game and really deserved credit for modernizing offenses in pro basketball. I want to touch on two more stars of the early 2000s. before we spring to the 2010s.

One of the most interesting chapters of your book is an analysis of Alan Iverson's game. And in this dark age of offensive efficiency, Iverson is a really interesting character because if you're the sort of sports nerd who follows sports through efficiency statistics, through basketball reference.com, you will inevitably conclude that Alan Iverson

is one of the most overrated stars, maybe not just in NBA history, maybe in American sports history. I mean, this is a guy who, in only one year of his career, shot above the league average in efficiency, and his peak coincides with this dark ages that we're talking about. Defend Iverson's legacy for us, especially at the cultural level, it's obvious.

There's really no debate at the cultural level of his significance. But at the tactical level, at the level of players watching players and learning how to improve the game of basketball, How did Alan Iverson help to invent the modern game? He made dribbling cool. He made ball handling not only something that was fundamental, but he made it stylistically cool for a future generation.

He invented the crossover highlight where you now hear ooze and awes and ways in basketball arenas around the world that you wouldn't have heard in the 90s. He really, when he dropped Ty Lou famously in the 2000, and won finals and stepped over him. That was a new kind of highlight. And one of the analogies I like to use here, Derek, is it's kind of like Miles Davis. He might not have sold as many albums as, say,

Kenny G or something, but nobody would argue that Miles Davis is anything less than a great foreign player. And in part, our definition of greatness in pro basketball is so infantile and so analytical. I wanted to draw inspiration from art or music. And when you talk about contemporary very greats and you talk to them, whether it's Stefan Curry, Russell, Westbrook, James Hardin,

and you talk to them about Alan Iverson's greatness. You don't get a lot of hemming and hawing and certainly they don't cite windchairs. They're like, oh my God, I wanted to be like that guy. I can't believe I'm in the conversation with this guy. He was so important culturally, which is not something I really write about in this book, but stylistically on the floor, making ball handling cool and tactically so important for perimeter stars of the future, he gave them a path forward. And it's not just the titles or the wins or the scoring efficiency. It's the influence on the game that is really at the heart of Hoop Atlas, players that influence the next generation stylistically or tactically. And Alan Iverson is about as influential as it

gets in that category. Another surprising hero of your book is Manu Genoobli. I think if most people, you know, were going to list the 10 most important players of the last 40 years, very few of them would include Manu in that list. But you are very persuasive on this case. In fact, and this is a statistic you cannot argue against. Of the 146 players in NBA history, who played at least 1,000 games,

the player with the highest career-winning percentage is not LeBron, Karim, Jordan, or Pippen. It is Manu Genoobli. you argue that Manu should be seen as a kind of entrepreneur, someone who is at the bleeding edge of several different revolutions that have contributed to the invention of the modern game. What are those bleeding edges? How did Manu help to shape what we now understand to be basketball? Yeah, I think the winning, which you already alluded to, is incredible.

I'll also throw in. He beat Team USA in the 2004 Olympic Games. and really showed the world and a lot of international players around the world that America was beatable. Just 12 years after the dream team, he sent them home losing. He was by far the best player on that Argentinian team that won the gold medal. But stylistically, in the NBA, Derek, the Euro step, the day Manu retired, I'll never forget. And I wrote about the book, LeBron James sent a tweet out. Thank you, Manu, for bringing us the swagiest move.

in the NBA, which is the Eurostep. And Manu did not invent the Eurostep, but he popularized it on the biggest stages and used it more and more. And he was so athletic and so gifted that that really set a template for future driving wing players to create plays for themselves and their teammates. I'm talking about LeBron. I'm talking about Jan Asante Toccoo, Luca Donchich. The Eurostep is a fundamental for today's superstar. And even when Manu was in this prime, we didn't quite recognize how influential, that was. But looking back at it, again, in

2004, the drive and dish, the Euro step. And he also is the face of like the awakening of international basketball. We already talked about how he was the winningest player and he won the Olympic Games. Well, the 2014 spurs, he led this bench unit called the Foreign Legion that had no American-born players really. And they

won an NBA championship. And he was the face of that unit. And so he proved once and for all that there was great basketball from outside the United States. He brought us the Eurostep. And as a slashing wing making plays for everybody on his team, I think he's part of that sort of futuristic wing revolution too. Let's talk about Steph Curry. You have a great deep chapter about essentially how Steph learned to overcome the Spurs defense, which had shut him down in the playoffs. How did St. Stephen Jeff Curry go from being merely an excellent shooter to being probably at a tactical level

the most influential basketball player of this century? Yeah, this is probably my favorite chapter in the book. I mean, Stefan is certainly sort of an iconoclastic disruptor of pro basketball. I don't think that's a hot take. He may be more influential than LeBron James, less successful as a career, but more influential. That's sort of at the heart of this book.

But we talk about moneyball. It's a huge part of the modern MBA, but nobody really had moneyballed their own practice sessions. Nobody had sort of brought statistical thinking or analytical reasoning into their one-on-one workouts to this day. And part of this, one of the coolest things I got to do for this project was go watch stuff and work out in Palo Alto with his trainer Brandon Payne, is a big part of that chapter. And how they really thought, how can we maximize our time together? can we use these sort of just one-on-one workouts that aren't real basketball, but how can we make

even, how can we make the best shooter in the world even better? And I think it's, it's proof that he's very innovative. He is very dedicated to his craft, and he's open-minded. And he really brought all this technology into, and I don't know how much you want to get into this, but there's a ring that hangs over the sensor, a sensor that hangs over the rim that they use. It's called NOAA and they use it to monitor where the basketball enters the basketball hoop and how close to a bull's eye every shot is or how far away with a short and he used that to shrink the target and we write about that in the book. But long story short is, you know, there's the saying making practice perfect than we write in the book. This is what happens when you make practice perfect. It's not practice makes perfect.

it's what happens when you make practice perfect. And I think Stefan has really deserves a lot of credit. And one of the reasons he's so good is because he's developed his own game through innovation. Tell me about the clock. And that's another great example. So Brandon Payne, the early in his career, Stefan had ankle problems and he had problems with bigger defenders. And those spurs and their incredible defense is the main character here. Danny Green, you know, in one of Stephens' first big playoff moments, he scored 40 points.

or something in a playoff series against the Spurs. Pop, game two is like, that's not going to happen again. Let's see you do it against Danny Green, a much bigger wing defender, and you can't do it. And the Spurs win the next few games, and then the Warriors are done. They're not champions. So that's summer, again, Brandon Payne and Stefan get to work. How can we get shots against these bigger defenders? And Brandon had a revelation with Stephanie.

He's like, there's always shooting space, but a lot of things is behind you, even when this is the bigger defender. And so he drew a claw. on a piece of paper, and he labeled the clock face, 12 o'clock, 6 o'clock, you know, the whole metaphor we've used for direction for a long time. And together, they've worked to develop moves that create good shots or good scoring opportunities at every direction on that clock face, 1 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 7. They've got to move for each one of those. And when you watch them practice, Derek, it's fascinating. They'll give some jargon, some code about some dribbling ball handling

moves and then they'll attach a clock face direction to it. So he has a lot of moves. But it was originally those clock directions behind him, the stepback three where they knew they had space, but they had to develop the footwork against bigger players to trick their balance and then move backward and create a shot. And that was really, in my opinion, where Stefan went from an incredible shooter to the greatest shooter this league has ever seen. when he started adding those moves and the read and react steps.

So that's the clockwork idea, and it's central. I'll never watch Stefan Curry the same way again. I hope that you read this book, it changes the way you watch Stephen Curry. It really helped me understand the evolution of what I guess I'm thinking of is like the skills bag of the modern NBA star, right? You need handles. Well, Iversan is like the godfather of handles. You need the Eurostep. Well, Manu is the architect of the Eurostep.

The Drive and Dish, Manu helps to popularize it on the early 2000 spurs, but then I would say LeBron James is clearly the historical master of the drive and dish. I think one of the stats from your book is that six of the 10 players who are the most efficient or most prolific corner three shooters in league history have all played with LeBron James. I mean, he just turns you into a historic corner three-point shooter. So the handles, the Eurostep, the drive and dish, And then you think of the Gather and Step back that Steph has been practicing on the clock. I mean, that is the modern bag.

That's Jason Tatum. That's Lucca Donchich. That's like all of these players are borrowing from or taking from this collectionist buffet of skills that has been created and perfected by all these stars. And that was really fun to see. The last thing we have to put on this is heliocentrism. Heliocentrism essentially being the modern NBA's term for stars who monopolize the ball

so that you keep the ball in the hands of your best players and they can essentially distribute as they see fit. Russell Westbrook, James Hardin, Luca Donchich, to a certain extent, even Janus. According to your historical analysis of the game in the last 40 years, who invented heliocentrism? Who's the godfather of the modern heliocentric style, the same way Iverson, Manu, and Steph are the godfather of their own particular skills? I'll get to that, but I just want to say

this is one of my favorite podcasts, and part because what you just did, you should have written the epilogue book. But, yeah, Hoop Atlas essentially is a book about the bag, the modern bag. I wish I would have come up with that. That's a great way. And what I wanted to do was, like,

if you watch any playoff game now and you're watching these superstars, what you're watching also is this ancestry of evolution, these forefathers of the bag and different elements. And that's exactly what I tried to capture. And I just wanted to say, you did a great job yourself. You captured it. I just read it.

But as a writer, I wish I could have used some of those terms. But thank you for that. It's great work. So one of the things you said about heliocentrism, which is a term we got to credit Seth Pard now for from the athletic. But I think the modern is a key word here. It's doing a lot of work in that sense. Because Will Chamberlain and George Makin, this isn't the first time in the NBA history

where the strategy was to just get the ball to your best player and let them work. Like I told Riscilla the other day, you can't score 100 points in a game without some kind of heliocentrism happening. And that happened in the early 60s. But you said modern. And I applaud that because that's really what we're talking about. that same post-up rinse-and-repeat strategy is moved out to the suburbs. And now we're giving these perimeter superstars the ball farther away from the basket than Mike in or Wilk ever had it.

And the father of it, some people can say Michael Jordan, I'm not that bad, but I'm not mad at that. But the book really zeroes in on Kobe, a specific post-Shack Kobe season in 2005 where he breaks a usage percentage record. and that's the year he scored 81 points and shot the ball more than any player in the modern history. And like Iverson, some of Kobe's best years aren't statistically very great. But when you talk to Devin Booker, you talk to James Harden,

guess who they say? Kobe's name always comes up as this, man, I modeled my game after this guy. He is, in my opinion, because of that generational influence, Derek, you have to point to Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant in those post-Shack seasons was a ball hog. And I say that lovingly.

But Mike Dantone or whoever the coach was post-Shack would write in Phil Jackson some of those years, just give the ball to Kobe, high usage seasons. And now we see Donovan Mitchell, Luca. The list goes on. But he's the father of modern heliocentrism, in my opinion. Do you think it works? I mean, this is another famous Rusilla debate, I suppose. But, you know, it sort of does fly in the face of a lot of basketball values.

but it also flies in the face of outcomes to a certain extent. Russell Westbrook has no titles. Luka Donchich yet has no titles. Hardin never won. Kobe in those years was not going to the finals, right? He needed POW in order to really win his final championships. Do you think there's something about this ball-dominant heliocentric style that essentially maximizes for regular season wins

in a way that also sacrifices for postseason success because it makes it easier for really smart coaches like Popovich to plan against you. If the ball's always going to be in your hand, well, that's one person to design a defense around, as opposed to a system that is dynamic to learn to guard against over the course of his series. Yeah, and it's an attractive thought for those of us who love ball movement and player movement. And I hope that's the correct answer. Now, if you look at the state of the 2024 playoffs, where Luca Donchich and Jason Tatum are in the conference finals.

You're seeing super high usage guys. Anthony Edwards is there. Tyrese Alliburton, I wouldn't put in this category. But it remains to be seen. I still think heliocentrism, I don't want to be the Charles Barkley of heliocentrism. What I mean by that is Charles famously said a jump shooting team can't win the NBA championship. And then he doesn't say that anymore, by the way, because the Golden State Warrior

sort of, you know, prove they could. I am a little, like I said, I think it's easier to game playing against. Somebody who studied James Hardin in a game playing environment in San Antonio. But I think somebody's going to win doing it if I had to say. And it could be this year if Luca pulls it off. But ultimately, you're right. I think you have to be dynamic. You have to be fluid.

You can't go in there as a one-trick pony against the best defenses and the best coaches. But that said, I think that's a little bit of a false choice. I don't think heliocentric necessarily means simple. I don't think it necessarily means predictable. I think it means our best player is getting a lot of shots. And like we already said, Derek, that's his old as basketball itself. And it has worked in different ways. One big question that I have about sprawball

and the just incredible rise of three-point shots in the last few years and really the last few decades is whether it makes the game more interesting or more boring. You know, moneyball in baseball, I think very much made baseball boring to me. I think the analytics revolution might be borrowing from your language again. I think it perfected the game. It almost solved a problem. And you don't watch sports to watch solved problems. That's tick-tac-toe. That's not football. That's not basketball. You write in the book, quote, the modern NBA is faster and more skilled than ever, but it's also the product of what happens when a league obsessively hunts and arbitrages efficiency margins for two plus decades.

Moneyball deformed baseball and how that sport valued at stars. The same has happened to hoops. And this is in the Iverson chapter, so you write Iverson's legacy is intertwined with the legacy of baseball's past stars. Could you just dilate on that a bit? moneyball deformed baseball and how that sport valued stars, the same has happened to hoops. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, Moneyball came out in 2003.

The point we talked about, Alan Iverson's prime, it's also the dark age of the NBA. And it helped us understand and reason about what efficiency and greatness look like. Slowly efficiency starts to replace the word greatness in a lot of conversations. That's straight out of Wall Street. terms like asset infiltrated the discourse. We start talking like bond salesmen like Michael Lewis himself was. The intrusion of financial reasoning into front offices in sports itself is one of the larger trends in sports in the 21st century, period.

And as a consumer of all sorts of products like you, Derek, I don't think the more financial ideologies infiltrate art, music, or whatever, cinema, I don't. I don't think it's been great. Okay, call me crazy. And in the NBA, it's meant a lot more threes, a lot less mid-range, a lot more homogeneity and how offenses are playing compared to earlier times. And I share these notions about baseball, which is a cautionary tale. But what Major League Baseball has done, and this is the bright side where Adam Silver

needs to look is what Theo Epstein did for Major League Baseball over the last few years, was actually used data, use analytics, use the same. kind of tools to say, how can we optimize the product? How can we get more of what the fans actually like, more of that beauty back onto the baseball time? It might be too little too late for that sport. I'm not going to say it one way or another. But that's a paradigm shift. Using the money ball to design the product, I think, is a big next step for pro basketball. Corner threes are now one out of 10 shots in the NBA. That's too many for me. I don't want to see that. That's the strikeout

home run sort of thing that happened to baseball. So I think the NBA could move the three point line, get rid of the corner three, whatever. We don't have to have that conversation now. But it's time for the regulators in the face of this crazy ideological sort of change

and just rapid shift in gameplay. It's time for the regulators to take a turn. And I think they can optimize the products. And basketball's not in trouble like baseball. I would say that. But, dude, it is. it isn't as enjoyable for many of us as it used to be. One step deeper there.

What's the first fix? You know, getting rid of the corner three, I guess would just mean you take the three-point line and you connect it to the corner of the court in both cases, or it's just taken away in that parabola, that arc just ends before it gets to the baseline? What else are you doing if you're essentially trying to take away shots that you think are becoming the back?

basketball equivalent of baseball's three true outcomes, right? The sport being colonized by strikeouts, walks, and home runs to the extent that there aren't runners in the bases for fans to follow anymore. So what would you do for basketball? Yeah. Well, the current three-point arc, and this is a little nerdy, is 23.75 feet. And a pure arc without the two straight-line parts of the corner of three, Derek, it would fit in the playing surface.

But there wouldn't be enough space for the dude. shoes at the corners. They couldn't stand in those corners and shoot. So they shortened it when they drew it. So it's 22 feet in the corners. The first thing I do is just change that. And I've talked to a bunch of coaches and they're like, yeah, that would actually help if you wanted to do this.

But one of the things I would say is every other major basketball league on this planet has moved its three point line in the 21st century, WMBA, FBA, men's college basketball, women's college basketball. Why would they do that? They don't have Steph Curry. They don't have James Harden. They don't have these guys. I don't have the best shooters in the world.

But we do. And we're the one league that hasn't moved it. That doesn't make any sense to me. So that's where I'd start. It's time to make the three-point shot a little bit harder for a little more players. Because it's too easy for too many right now. And that has reduced the diversity in scoring strategies in the league. And so I think I would do that.

And then there's other concepts. And actually my last book, Sprawball has a whole chapter on this that we talk about. But yeah, I think the three-point line. lines the easiest place to start. Last chapter of your story is the rise and fall and rise again of the center. One statistic to drive this point home. Between 1960 and 1980, centers won MVP every year but one. But between 1996 and 2020, non-centers won MVP every year but one.

So Star Wings and Guards blended everything we've been talking about, the footwork, the dribbling, the gather, three-point shooting, and they damn near played the center position. out of existence. But now the big guys are back. And in particular, foreign-born big guys have won the last five MVP's, Yokic, 3, Embed, and Janus Ande Cumpo. And as I was thinking about the story of your book, it is almost Hegelian, like thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Like, the game has gone from being dominated by American centers to being dominated by non-centers who can do everything, to now being dominated by non-American centers who can do everything, right? Like, maybe just tell us, how does Nicola Yokic represent, like, the final forms of the themes

of your book? Yeah, maybe it's Victor Wembeyanma, but Nicola Yokic is the chapter that we really end on because, yeah, Draymond Green and the so-called small-ball golden state of warriors deserve credit for being the dynasty of the 2010 after LeBron left Miami. You know, obviously they won the Western Conference many years in a row, and Draymond Green is 6-4-6-5 was their center in many of their best lineups. And that put the big man sort of up on trial. And, you know, a funny thing happened on the weight of extinction.

As Roy Hibbert exited stage left because he was too slow or not quite fast enough to keep up with the pace and space, couldn't close out on all these three-point shooters that were taking over the game. A funny thing happened. The Europeans, especially, as you point out, didn't take that lightly. And they,

starting with Dirk and obviously Vladi Dvach, you can go back to the Casal brothers. They brought passing first. Then they brought long range shooting. And now they're bringing dribbling. And, you know, Yokic brings the ball up the court. Long story short is they didn't go quietly.

They instead, oh, I have to learn to dribble pass and shoot. And I have to be sort of quick enough to close out on the perimeter on defense. Okay, fine. And now you see. Embed, you see Yokic. This is already the first decade since the 1980s to have three or four centers win the MVP. It's only 2024. And you could see a path where Jokic wins more.

And then Victor Wemba Jama to me really represents where this is headed. Yokic and Wemba Nama could win all the MVPs until 2030. It would not be crazy if that happened. Yeah. And then we see an American prospect like Cooper Flagg who is like a Kevin Durant-sized player. And the days of these guys not. being skilled, which is just over. So the long story short here is these guys got the same skills the perimeter's guy's got. Victor is dribbling through his legs, taking step back

threes. He's making assists. Yokic led the playoffs last year, Derek. This is my favorite stat in that chapter in total points, total rebounds, and total assists. The whole playoffs. The first player to ever do it. He's the center. They went the workshop and got all the skills and are still bigger and stronger than anybody else. So that's the revenge of the girth, as I like to say it, but you're exactly right. The big men are back. Why are they international, though?

Why does it seem like international players are more well-rounded than American players? Or maybe you can question the premise if you'd like to. No, it's a fair assumption, especially disproportionately at that position group. When you look at the Olympics in 2024, one of the things we're worried about is team USA is every other team has a great center. And it's actually a pretty weak spot for us. Now, Joe L. Ambita's classified as

American, which is convenient. So that really helped us. But, you know, he's not really as American as apple pie. And I think one of the things that we are struggling with is developing young, skilled big men in this country. And it's certainly not something that they're struggling with in Serbia or Slovenia or Latvia or Germany or Spain, where we've seen many of the modern NBA's best big men come from. And there's a lot of theories of this. They play with the shot clock. They're taught to shoot.

All the coaches there have to be certified before they get their hands on young talent. And I think that's different than the AAU climate, the EYBL climate. A lot of people have theories. I'm not the authority, but there is something going on. And Victor Wehbanyama sort of represents the perfect proof of that.

Would he be this skilled if he grew up in St. Louis or if he grew up in Phoenix, or is there something going on with the way they're developing their basketball players, particularly the bigs in Europe, that is superior. And a lot of people think there is. If you're working for the Spurs or the Nuggets, or maybe even more if you're working for Duke University or UNC, what are you trying to study in Eastern Europe that seems to be producing

much more well-roundedness, certainly on a per capita basis? I mean, like, what is the skill that you're trying to import from Latvia, Lithuania? I think it's coaching skill. At the coaching level, yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things, I think it was Gino Oriamma made this point, and it kind of went viral earlier this year, is like, they practice and play less. They practice more and they play less. If you have a person in your life, a 14-year-old men or women's American player, who's playing AU or EYBL, you know what they're doing this week? they're playing 10 basketball games and they're not practicing very much.

They go to these tournaments and just layer game after game after game after game after game. In Europe, it's more common in Western Europe and Eastern Europe that they focus on the practice sessions. They play three on three. They learn how to shoot. They learn how to run drills. The ratio of gameplay to practice is different. That's what Gino R&M believes it is. And I'll take his word for it.

He's been on the front lines all longer than me. And that's one of the more provocative things, especially, and by the time we're at UNC or the Spurs, I think that horse has already left the barn, Derek. So I think it's age 14 to 18. Can we practice a little bit more? And more intentionally, like Stefan does, I think. It's just what I was thinking. It sounds like Steph Curry is extremely European in his practice mentality.

If we were recording this in 1997, we would say, well, obviously mid-range mastery is the future of the NBA. Michael Jordan just showed us that if you want to win every single title where you play a full season, you have to be the match in the midrange. In 2004, if we were recorded in this podcast, we'd say, well, clearly swarming defense is the future of the NBA. Look what the Pistons just did to the star-laden Lakers. If this was in 2012 or 2013, we'd say every team, if you want to win, you need a big three. Wherever you are, you need three superstars. That's how you win a championship. Then it's three-point shooting.

Then maybe it's heliocentrism, although who knows. Now it seems like it's the era of the do-it-all big man, and especially if you got to do-it-all-big-man born in Europe, that's especially good, or I guess, Europe or Africa. Do you think something, what's coming next? If you had to predict the next turn of this dial, and don't give me the Victor Wenamah thing, because I feel like he is in many ways like the apotheosis of the do-it-all-big-man era, right? but if there's something coming next that maybe you can see the glimpses of in Ant Man or in something happening in college basketball or even just strategically thinking,

well, if you're going to have tall big men that are kind of driving the offense and doing everything, well, then you have to shift it in this way in order to beat them. What might be the next paradigm shift to come for basketball? I think he's already here. It's 2024 playoffs. If I had to pick the finals right now, the Celtics and the Timberwolves. Timberwolves just dispatched

of Nicole Iokage and the Nuggets. And what do they have in common, Derek? Well, they're big. Both of those teams are big. There's not a lot of small players there, and they're deep. And one of the things that both those front offices have done very well is within the confines

of an increasingly punitive collective bargaining agreement and salary cap structure is build a deep basketball team with long, big players. And I think the real reason that Minnesota beat Denver was depth. And I really think the signature strength of the Boston Celtics is depth up and down the roster. It's almost like the third superstar on these teams is the depth. Nas Reid was huge as the Timberwolves put away, Nicole Yokich. Indeed, he made a few incredible plays against Yokic.

He's the sixth man of the year. Jade McDaniels, Nikiel Alexander Walker. Mike Conley. It's not just Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert. It's a depth thing. So I think where we're going is within the confines of this increasingly strict team building environment is the front offices that can build depth. And teams like Phoenix, these super teams that you alluded to have essentially been outlawed by these. You talk about a rule change. They essentially outlawed the super team. So how can we build a deep roster like those old spurs? teams with these confines. And Minnesota and Boston, to me, are the epitome of where that's going right now. Kurt Goldsbury, thank you very much. The book is Hoop Atlas. This is a blast man.

Thank you, Derek. It was a blast for me, too. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Plain English is produced by Devin Baroldi. We've got new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. If you like what you're hearing, give us five stars and a nice review on Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast for feedback and episode suggestions, email us at plain English at Spotify.com.