Maybe it’s not load management or tanking that’s ruining the NBA, because Charles Barkley is placing the blame on Steph Curry.
Barkley joined a recent episode of The Howard Eskin Show, where he was asked to fix the NBA product. And without hesitation, Barkley went right to the three-point shot.
“The notion that everybody’s a good three-point shooter, that’s ridiculous and stupid,” Barkley said, believing too many NBA players have free rein to attempt as many threes as they want. “It’s alright to shoot a layup every now and then. But listen, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, they ruined the NBA because everybody think they Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Y’all are not them. Stop jacking up threes.”
It’s a similar sentiment to what his Inside the NBA co-host, Shaquille O’Neal, said a couple of years ago. O’Neal didn’t blame Curry for ruining the NBA, but he did blame the two-time MVP for making the league “boring.”
“Steph Curry and those guys messed it up,” O’Neal said in 2024. “I don’t mind Golden State back in the day shooting threes, but every team isn’t a three-point shooter. So why everybody has the same strategy? I think it makes the game boring.”
So how do you fix it? Barkley suggested “give more power to the coaches.” But even when the Boston Celtics missed a record 45 threes against the New York Knicks during Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last season, it’s not like head coach Joe Mazzulla was begging his players to stop and they were overruling him. The influx of three-point attempts is as much an organizational strategy as it is a result of the players.
But Barkley and Shaq aren’t alone in believing that the emphasis on threes has become a problem for the NBA. Last week, Paul Pierce suggested getting rid of the three-point line for about 18-minutes every game because he was sick of seeing players shoot from behind the arc. Bob Costas previously claimed the increased number of threes might be hurting the NBA’s TV product. Bomani Jones and Nick Wright have similarly complained about the NBA’s emphasis on threes.
Too much of anything can be damaging. And that includes three-pointers. The NBA would benefit from more balance. But it’s not Steph Curry’s fault for being the best shooter ever. If the NBA wants more offensive balance, they don’t need Curry to lead the charge, they just need more analytical data to prove the three-point shot is starting to lose value.