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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

It's called practice. That area for a shooter is no-mans land. They either will setup outside the 3pt line or significantly inside the 3pt line. It is simply a spot no shooter, and particularly one like Kobe, would ever setup and wait for a pass or call for the ball from.

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Not only practice, but also training. Every shooting coach in the league will tell you that the deep two is the worst shot in basketball. Kobe had it drilled into his head since he was seven years old that you never shoot a deep two.

I wonder if we'll ever see a maverick player perform well because he's taking these shots, trains for them, specialises in them, positions for them, in a world where defenders train supposing you'll position differently, and reposition rather than take the shot if you happen to receive a ball in a deep two position.

If you could shoot 100% deep twos, you'd only need to make 67% of 3-pointers to make it better to shoot 3's. The typical FG% is about 60% for layups, and 40% for 3's. You'd have to get better at these deep 2's than layups to make this worthwhile!

You won't because you're making it even easier on the defense. Trying to optimize for that spot would screw up the positioning for everyone else on your team. The defending team would have it easy because you've essentially killed all chance for high post plays, PnRs, and a good number of cut/backdoor type plays. It would take far more time than I have to breakdown the why, but the main factors off the top of my head are:

1. Remember the NBA has legal zone defense.

2. Additionally, help defense is a lot easier in today's NBA. Forced isolations would be very difficult and even if you do it, there is less ground b/w help defense and the attacker.

3. You have many more quick and/or lengthy 3&D type wings in the NBA today. Help and close-outs are easier.

4. Long shots mean long rebounds. Putting wings one step in means the offensive team would lose out on one of the main disadvantages of zones - inability to secure defensive rebounds.

5. That one player will also be a liability on transition D. He will always be one step behind in case the opposing team forces a TO and runs.

That's just scratching the surface, but there is a reason it's called no-man's land for shooters.

Probably not. Training for 3-pointers gets you 50% more points for (from what the outside seems like) a basically equivalent training perspective.

we talkin' bout practice?!!

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