This isn't Adam Silver's NBA, it's Jamal Crawford's.
At least, it will be, if the 4-point shot is ever introduced. If that sounds impossible or radical, it's not. In fact, the NBA has considered such a move.
Speaking with ESPN's TrueHoop TV over All-Star Weekend, NBA president of basketball operations Rod Thorn acknowledged that the league has weighed the introduction of a 4-point shot.
As ESPN's Tom Haberstroh explained (behind a paywall) on Tuesday, it might not be crazy, and people would come around to it eventually:
This is how I imagine a post-4-point-line world would work. Some folks would be fired up about how it turns the game into a circus act until they have a player on their team who can shoot 4-pointers. And then it becomes a weapon, not unlike a strong post player or an expert passer.
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But it would also cause coaches to innovate and adapt to the modern basketball player, who is bigger, stronger, faster and more skilled than ever before. If the league isn't open to expanding the court, which may jeopardize precious courtside seat revenue, a 4-point line would unclog a court that right now, even with a 3-point line, feels compact
Haberstroh also highlighted in the piece how it wouldn't eliminate post play. Conversely, it would open up the game even further - the use of the 3-point shot correlates well with post efficiency at the team level.
Our concern would be the value proposition between shots as players became more skilled with shots beyond, say, 28 feet (the length of a 4-point line Haberstroh proposes), but the poor efficacy of said shots should balance out twos, threes and fours. Eventually, teams would find an equilibrium shot mix.
Along with the 4-point line, the league has also considered changing the dimensions of the court to adapt to the growing size and athleticism of its athletes. NBA vice president of basketball operations Kiki Vandeweghe explained:
Making the court bigger -- it's an interesting idea and we've actually looked at it. We keep a list of ideas on what we should do and how we can make the game better, of course. But arenas are obviously built in a certain way and that would take a lot of adjusting to actually make the court bigger. But does it mean we shouldn't look at it? No, of course not. We're looking at all sorts of things."
The biggest obstacle with court expansion is the loss of high-revenue seats close to the floor. However, a larger court would actually increase the perimeter of the court, allowing for more courtside seats - the impact would be felt in the secondary sections that would have to be thinned out.
The league has used a 94-by-50-foot court since the 1940s. It's the way it's always been, sure, but there weren't athletes built like LeBron James back in those days.
None of these changes, or others the league has investigated, are necessarily going to happen. What is obvious, however, is the league is committed to consistently improving the product, which everyone can get behind.
The league, however, has pulled back on these statements somewhat. According to a series of tweets from Howard Beck of Bleacher Report, NBA spokesman Tim Frank expressed that the ESPN story was a little beyond the scope of the actual conversation:
"No one at the NBA, nor the competition committee, has had any serious conversations about increasing the size of the floor or adding a 4-point line. Rod Thorn and Kiki VanDeWeghe were entertaining a line of questioning about out of the box ideas and ESPN.com chose to make a story that doesn’t exist."
