NCAA Basketball: How college (not the NBA) has led “3PT revolution”

The three-point shot has become increasingly prevalent in both NCAA Basketball and the NBA, but it is the college game that has led the “Three-Point Revolution.”

The “Three-Point Revolution” has been well documented in the sport of basketball. Although the “revolution” has spread to both college basketball and the NBA, the perception (in my opinion) is that it is more prevalent in the NBA, and/or that the NBA has led the way towards spreading the three-pointer across all levels of basketball. Just this past week, an ESPN article was titled, “The NBA Is Obsessed With Threes, So Let’s Finally Fix The Thing,” reflecting the prevalence of threes in the NBA.

But is this perception accurate? The three-point prowess of the up-and-coming Warriors teams, and in particular sharpshooters Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, helped give the “revolution” a lot of attention in the NBA and deservedly so. But as I’ll demonstrate, NBA teams as a whole still don’t attempt threes at THAT high of rates, especially when compared to college basketball. The collegiate level has been WAY ahead of the professional level in terms of leading the three-point revolution.

(All statistics used in this article were found via TeamRankings and are up to date through 5/5/19).

I used the site TeamRankings to look at the “three-point attempt rates” of both college and NBA teams. “Three-point attempt rate” (3PA%) essentially reflects the percentage of a team’s shots it takes from three. Team Rankings 3PA% data went back to 2003-04 in the NBA and 1997-98 in NCAAB. I decided to look at the percentage of NBA and NCAAB teams each season that met three different categories: >=40% 3PA%, >=35% 3PA%, and >=30% 3PA%. I thought this would be an effective way to measure the prevalence of the three-point shot over time in both levels of basketball.