The 3-point shot has taken over the NBA. On the opening night of the 2024-25 season, the defending champion Boston Celtics tied an NBA record by making an eye-popping 29 3-pointers in a commanding win over the New York Knicks. But just a few months later, the Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls reached a less impressive milestone — the two teams combined to miss 75 3-pointers, the most ever in a single game.

Meanwhile, in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles’ vaunted “Tush push” has become the most talked about play in football. The Tush push is essentially a quarterback sneak with a critical added element — the players in the backfield line up immediately behind the quarterback and push him forward once the ball is snapped (which accounts for the play’s humorous name). The play often resembles a rugby scrum more than a football play. Some have questioned the legality of pushing the quarterback from behind, but for now, the play is allowed, and the Super Bowl LIX champions have used it to great effect during the last few seasons.

These might seem like two disconnected trends, but they have one important element in common. In both cases, the search for greater success and more wins has led to what many would argue is a less interesting game. Watching NBA players launch 3-pointers one after the other is not nearly as exciting as watching a game with a dynamic mix of dunks, layups, mid-range shots, and 3-pointers. For this reason, an overreliance on the 3-pointer is likely a factor in the NBA’s declining viewership — on ESPN, pro basketball rates were down 28 percent as of last fall.

Yet teams have learned from analyzing the available data that prioritizing 3-point shots can lead to a more effective offense. Similarly, watching Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts get pushed forward in a cloud of dust and linemen isn’t the most exciting version of football either. However, the Eagles have ridden the Tush push to two Super Bowl appearances in the last three years, including their win in this year’s championship game.

In both the NBA and the NFL, commentators haven’t been shy about voicing their displeasure with these trends. There have also been calls to implement rule changes to deal with both issues, leading to yet another layer of debate. Should the rules be changed to decrease the reliance of NBA teams on the 3-point shot? Should the Tush push be banned?

These questions are a part of a conversation that is as old as the sports themselves. The way sports are played is constantly evolving, and there are always questions about whether those governing the game should intervene when this evolution takes off in a direction people don’t like. Should the rules be changed, or should we embrace the ever-changing nature of sport and let the transformations play out unimpeded?

—

For the first 33 years of the NBA, the 3-point shot did not exist — it was first introduced for the 1979-80 season. Most coaches and managers at the time were in favor of adding the 3-point line, but there was still plenty of skepticism surrounding the change. The New York Times referred to the 3-pointer as a “gimmick,” and some coaches voiced their displeasure with the new rule. In a prescient recognition of the potential of the 3-pointer to suck excitement out of the game, Phoenix Suns coach John MacLeod told the Times, “I’m not going to set up plays for guys to bomb from 23 feet. I think that’s very boring basketball.”

Back in 1979, there was also a sentiment that there wasn’t much use in focusing on 3-point shots. “I don’t think it will change the game drastically, or the scores,” remarked Knicks coach Red Holzman. “You’ll only use it in certain situations.”

At the time, he was right — in the 1979-80 season, NBA teams shot an average of 2.8 3-pointers per game. However, the 3-point shot has a much different place in the game today. As of February 2025, teams are averaging an astronomical 37.4 3-point attempts per game for the 2024-25 season, which would easily be the most ever if it holds through the end of the regular season.

Why are teams shooting so many 3-point shots? The answer comes down to offensive efficiency. Because of the extra point you get for a 3-point field goal, you don’t have to make a high percentage of these shots for it to be worthwhile. Making one-third of your 3-point shots is just as efficient as making half of your 2-point field goals. Once teams had access to more data and more rigorous analysis, they concluded that if you have accurate long-range shooters, you can improve your offense by simply shooting more threes. This encourages teams to build their rosters around 3-point shooters and focus their offensive strategy around high-volume attempts, which they certainly have.

Of course, it isn’t all math. We’re also living in the era of Steph Curry, the best 3-point shooter of all time. The success of Curry and his Golden State Warriors teams, who won four NBA titles between 2015 and 2022, encouraged other teams to mimic their potent offense. But Curry is an outlier, even in a league full of 3-point shooters, and while it might be exciting to watch him launch 3s from just inside half-court, when the entire league is playing this way, it makes for a game stripped of much of its variety and excitement.

It’s this dynamic, along with an alarming recent drop in NBA viewership, that has led to concerns about the way basketball is played in the league. A senior writer for Sports Illustrated, Chris Mannix, recently told Rich Eisen that he believes the NBA has become less entertaining “because the proliferation of the 3-point shot is getting out of control.” While there are a variety of factors involved in the NBA’s viewership, Mannix isn’t alone in seeing the plethora of 3-pointers as part of the reason for the NBA’s drop in TV ratings. “Fans are not going to go out there to see a bunch of guys jack up threes,” hall-of-famer Charles Barkley remarked in a recent podcast appearance. “There’s no strategy involved.”

A variety of rule changes have been proposed to disincentivize 3-pointers, including moving the 3-point line back further, allowing more physical defense behind the 3-point arc, or even making dunks worth three points. In this regard, the NBA could follow in the footsteps of Major League Baseball, which recently sought to speed up its games and add excitement by enforcing a pitch clock, a change that was met with mostly positive feedback from fans.

It’s also worth taking a step back and asking whether a rule change to deal with 3-pointers is necessary at all. In another parallel to baseball and its “moneyball” data analytics revolution, recent academic research on the state of the 3-point shot in the NBA has provided surprising results that challenge the conventional wisdom. A new study by Syracuse University professors Justin Ehrlich and Shane Sanders creates a new “shot efficiency” model using data from the NBA. After the tweaks the researchers make to the traditional models, they find that teams would benefit from shooting fewer 3-pointers than they currently do and that this has actually been true since the 2018-19 season. It may take time for this new analysis to have an impact on NBA offenses.

These new insights from the data line up with what we all know to be true about sports — what is perceived to be the best strategy for winning games is always shifting.

—

The Eagles’ tush push has had an impact on the game of football in ways that are hard to ignore. In the 2025 NFC championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Commanders, the Commanders’ defense tried so hard to time the snap count just right and stop the infamous play that the defense jumped offsides four times in one sequence.

The Commanders’ odd approach to defending the Tush push makes more sense once you get a sense of just how effective the play has been for the Eagles. The Eagles use the Tush push in short yardage situations, when they only need a yard or two to either get a first down or cross the goal line for a touchdown. In 2022, when they first started running the play, they ran it 27 times and were successful in achieving that result 25 times. The next year, they used the play even more and went 35 for 42. That’s a lower success rate of 83 percent, but even that lower percentage is still significantly higher than the average success rate of NFL teams on quarterback sneaks.

Ever since the Tush push’s inception, there have been calls to ban the play, not only because of the competitive advantage it gives the Eagles but also because it’s a relatively boring play for spectators.

Pushing the quarterback from behind has actually been illegal for most of the NFL’s existence. It wasn’t until the 2006 season that the league got rid of a ban on pushing the ball carrier forward.

So if the Tush push is allowed, why doesn’t every team run it? The answer seems to be that they can’t. The Eagles’ success with the play is due to a combination of factors, many of which are unique to their team. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts can reportedly squat 600 pounds, an enormous amount for a quarterback, making him much harder to stop when he is driving forward for a first down compared to your average quarterback. Additionally, when the Tush push was first implemented, the Eagles center, the player who snaps the ball and leads the forward push that makes the play successful, was Jason Kelce, one of the best to ever play the position. Not every team has a quarterback like Hurts or a center like Kelce — not even close.

So even without a ban on the play, the days of the Tush push’s dominance in Philadelphia may be numbered. Center Jason Kelce retired after the 2023 season, and although the play certainly held a prominent place in the Eagles’ Super Bowl winning season this year, the success rate fell a bit further without the veteran center.

The Eagles also have the long-term health of quarterback Jalen Hurts to think about. The Tush push is an extremely physical play, and at a certain point it may be in the quarterback’s best interest to reduce his injury risk by running the play less. Tom Brady has voiced his concern for Hurts’ health, saying of the Tush push that “you may have some short-term gain; you may have some long-term pain.”

—

While talk of NBA teams taking too many 3-pointers may dominate the conversation today, for the first three decades of the league’s existence, the shot didn’t even exist. And for all the discussion about the Eagles’ Tush push and whether it’s a boring, unfair play that should be banned, the play has only been in use for a few short years.

When we are in the middle of a trend, it’s hard to see it for what it is. It may be true that if the NBA doesn’t change its rules in significant ways, 3-point attempts will continue to increase to the point of absurdity. There’s also a chance that if the Tush push isn’t banned, every team will soon build their roster around the play and run it as many times as they can.

However, both of these scenarios are extremely unlikely. New analyses of NBA offenses suggest that in the current environment, there is efficiency to be gained by taking more two-point shots and fewer threes. And how much longer the Eagles will be able to sustain their current level of success with the Tush push is an open question.

Still, great players leave their mark on the game and change the way it’s played. Steph Curry will forever be known as the catalyst of the 3-point revolution in the NBA, and his shooting records may never be bested. No one will be able to think about the Tush push without calling to mind the impressive strength of Jalen Hurts.

Some of these trends may disappear as quickly as they came. Or they may be here to stay in one form or another. If they do stick around, we might need to adjust the rules to keep the games fun and interesting for players, coaches, and fans alike. All of this is a part of the history of sports, and there’s an excitement in watching it unfold.