For many, Bob Costas’ voice is associated with the 1990s NBA on NBC and the dramatic climax of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls career in the 1998 NBA Finals. The sport has undergone a lot of changes since those days, however, and Costas is not totally on board with them.
In a recent appearance on “The Michael Kay Show,” Costas bemoaned the amount of three-point attempts in the modern NBA, arguing that the proliferation of threes has been bad for the sport from an entertainment standpoint.
“What worked for a competitive edge, or at least arguably that’s what the analytics showed you to do, did not work well for baseball as an entertainment product,” Costas said, via Alex Reimer of Awful Announcing. “And I think the same thing is true — I’m not as close to the NBA now as I am to baseball — but in what I’ve observed, it’s not so pleasing to see two teams combine for 80 three-point attempts in a game. Or to see a potential fast break, and the two guys on the wing run to the respective corners instead of finishing off a beautifully executed fast break.
“A lot of the game’s texture has been reduced. A three-pointer used to be a punctuation and a big deal. But when it’s a matter of force then I think it loses some of its impact.”
Plenty of people might agree with Costas, and he is correct that teams are attempting more threes than ever before. It was not that long ago that the idea that a jump-shooting team could win an NBA title was regarded as ridiculous by some, but the Golden State Warriors blew that notion up quite comprehensively. The NBA’s rise in analytics has gone along with the increased emphasis on the perimeter game, as teams are well aware that threes are simply more efficient than twos.
Costas is a traditionalist who definitely has some strong thoughts about some aspects of modern sports. He may not be alone in his thoughts on the NBA, but there is no way the league has any plans to de-emphasize jump shooting.
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