The Chicago Bulls beat the Atlanta Hawks 152-150 at State Farm Arena on Sunday in what was the NBA’s highest-scoring game of this 2025-26 season. Both defenses were repeatedly torn apart on the night, as the two teams scored at will.
While the purists might not have enjoyed what they saw, the Bulls’ analytics department probably loved how the offense operated in this one. A look at their shot chart for the game shows that all of their points came either from beyond the three-point line or in the paint.
The Bulls went 53-92 (57.6%) from the field and 20-42 (47.6%) from beyond the arc against the Hawks. Even with all those attempts, they did’t put up a single shot from the mid-range.
Analytics dictate that layups and threes are the shots teams should be taking, and the mid-range is slowly getting phased out as a result. The Ringer’s Kirk Goldsberry showed just how much the most popular shot locations have changed in the NBA from 2005 to 2025.
The mid-range is just gone. Houston Rockets superstar Kevin Durant isn’t happy about how analytics have “dissed” the shot, but the numbers show that it does indeed come out as the “worst” of the lot.
This is simple math at the end of the day. The three-pointer and the shot near the basket are going to result in more points than the mid-range jumper on average. The byproduct of teams going by analytics, though, is that we see a lot of them play a similar brand of basketball now. There isn’t a whole lot of variety.
Former NBA player BJ Armstrong has been very critical of today’s game, calling it predictable and robotic.
“Now we hear NBA executives, personnel, coaches, analytic people, presidents of teams, general managers of teams tell me to my face, they look at me with a straight face, and they say the following: ‘A two-point shot is a bad shot.’ A two-point shot now is a bad shot. ‘Well, I made it! I’m shooting 60%!’ ‘Well, it’s a bad shot, we only want three shots: we want the corner threes, we want layups, or we want to get to the free-throw line.’ I don’t understand.”
A lot of former players and purists do not like what they’re seeing, but the game isn’t going to change. It’s only going to get more and more about shooting threes and layups as time goes by.
