Hall of Famer Paul Pierce has dished out some wild takes over the years, and he was back at it on the latest episode of his No Fouls Given podcast. When a fan asked if the three-point line should eventually be pushed even further back, Pierce disagreed and offered another solution to reduce the number of threes taken in a game.
“This is what I honestly think they should do with the three-point line,” Pierce said. “I think the three-point line should be an LED line that just comes and goes. You can turn it off, turn it back on at certain times of the game. If you are down ten with three minutes in the fourth… It’s just ridiculous how I have watched games where the next three minutes were all threes.
“I think it should just turn on, like somebody could just be in there,” Pierce added. “You get 48 minutes a game, the three-point line should be on like 30 minutes… Then we going to see who got game, then you going to have to get buckets now. You ain’t going to be just launching. You going to have to get money.”
This might just be the craziest idea ever put forth. It is safe to say the NBA is never going to go down this route, as this is just way too gimmicky.
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons once suggested a far more likely solution. Simmons suggested the NBA get rid of the corner three-pointer and set a limit for how many threes a team can take in a game. The limit part might be a bit much, but the removal of the corner three is something you can see happening. That would bring down the number of threes that a team attempts in a game by a fair bit.
As of now, teams are averaging 37.0 three-point attempts per game in this 2025-26 season. That’s on pace for the second-highest average for a campaign, after these teams put up 37.6 threes a game in 2024-25.
There is no stopping this analytics-powered three-point revolution, and it won’t be a surprise if that number goes to 40 in a couple of seasons if nothing changes. The fact that we had teams attempt 20 threes a game on average for the first time in 2012-13, and the number has nearly doubled since then, is astonishing.
The purists and the old heads aren’t fans of what they’re seeing. Miami Heat president Pat Riley shared his thoughts on today’s NBA at his press conference on Sunday after his statue was unveiled outside Crypto.com Arena by the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Today is about pace and space, which is good,” Riley said. “But I think all of us here who know the game, I think sometimes we cross our eyes when we see 50 threes go up, and maybe 25 of them are good shots basically. But it’s almost like a game of attrition, but it’s a hell of a game.
“Great talent, great coaches, great ideas, and I think whatever changes have happened over the last two or three years, they will settle in to a solid game that will probably move on for the next decade, and then there will be change again, whatever it is,” Riley added.
You do wonder if the game will change too much if there is no change whatsoever to that three-point line. Analytics has identified only taking threes and shots near the rim as the ideal way of playing basketball. That won’t change unless the game itself changes in some way.
