3 point IS more efficient. He didn't assumed anything. Can't believe this needs to be explained to people in 2025. Whole discussion about how NBA is bad cause of 3s is completely dumb.
Bad shot selection
Lack of ball movement
Lack of post play skill, ie plurality and versatility
This is why it's dumbed down.
Europe was playing this way since the early 2000s and my team sort of pioneered this, so I had first access on seeing this revolution take place. I even had arguments with NBA fans saying they'd benefit from this.
But instead the NBA as always took something and just doubled down like there's no tomorrow.
Spurs started emulating Panathinaikos, Maccabi and other European teams (as per Popovich himself) and when the GSW rose with Kerr (influenced by Pop and not Phil, as per himself) with two of the greatest shooters the game saw, everyone just assumed that jacking threes is the way to go.
Instead of saving the quality of basketball displayed which was mostly poor, with like 10-15 teams played bad basketball for most of their 82 games, we ended up with just 5-6 functional teams and the rest were treating it like a hood ball convention. And the rules in place didn't help deliver a good product either.
Hyping up players only worked to some degree as even those were one-dimensional and you pretty much knew what was gonna happen.
So yeah, the NBA has been spiraling on a bad path for 2 decades now. Many people hadn't realized how bad things were in the mid 2000s because their favorite players were still involved back then. But rules changes ruined the game and the tendencies of teams 10 years later ruined whatever was left.
The All Star game for example used to be a great exhibition spectacle, now not even the players'families watch it.
Now most RS games remind us of old All Star games. And that's bad. Heck, even some Playoff series are just bad these days and we have to wait for Conference Finals or specific matchups in the Semis to see a quality game.
NBA is becoming insignificant and all those Euro wannabe Americans are switching to NFL these days... which I find very funny.