Three is bigger than two, but is it always better? In the world of basketball, some say yes, while others shake their heads sideways faster than Steph Curry’s release.
It’s that time of year for high school basketball teams to find their identities. That said, no matter which team, seemingly all of them have incorporated the three-point shot into their offense.
But not always. Marblehead girls basketball head coach Paul Moran, a 2,000-point scorer who graduated from Swampscott in 1985, never played with a three-point line. Back then, Moran said there was just one strategy on offense.
“The closer you could get to the basket and score, you got two points,” Moran said. “That’s really what everyone did. There really weren’t any good jump shooters.”
Fast forward a few decades – how the game has changed. Similarly to how many would respond, Moran said the evolved three-point shot is “positive,” while also adding “sometimes, it drives me crazy.”
“It’s obviously a good thing and a bad thing, right?” Moran said. “Like any older person, I’ve got mixed emotions on it.”
Despite never playing with the three-point line, Moran’s coaching has adapted to it nonetheless – much to the benefit of his players. His players “have a ton of sets where they’re just three-point shots.”
“If you’re a high school boy or girl right now, what a generation to play basketball. You get to go up and down the court [and] if you’ve got that look, you take it,” Moran said. “I talk to my friends all the time, we would die to play in the game today.”
Like Moran, someone else who, in the end, believes in the three-point shot is Classical’s girls head coach Tom Sawyer. He says the shot opens up the floor, makes defenses show respect, and creates opportunities for other scorers.
“It makes the game more equitable for all players,” Sawyer said.
One of those players is Tyrese Melo Garcia of Lynn English. During a game against Beverly in December, the sharpshooter made seven threes in the first half. He said one of the reasons he was successful that night was because of what his head coach Alvin Abreu often tells him.
“My coach tells me to keep shooting and shoot with confidence – that’s about it,” Melo Garcia said.
Because of those words, ones that would’ve never been uttered decades ago, Melo Garcia’s confidence was at an all-time high.
“I was seeing me and the basket all night,” Melo Garcia said.
One reason Abreu values the three is because of how often teams play zone defense today, to which Abreu says “being able to shoot the ball is critical.”
Despite all of the praise, everything comes in moderation. Sawyer still believes the most important quality in a complete basketball player is when he or she starts to “fall in love with defending.” Only after that does the shooting come in from both two and three-point land.
Moran said it depends on which group of girls he has in a given year, and even when he has shooters, they have to go about it smartly.
“This isn’t AAU, this is real basketball,” Moran said.
English’s Jari Perez drilled two threes in the first minute of a game on Thursday and, last week, Saugus’ boys team hit 12 in one game. In decades’ past, those were strange occurrences, but today, it’s only the beginning.
“Some day, they’re probably going to have a four-point shot,” Moran said.
