And of course, the players oblige since the math encourages it. And the coaches encourage it, too!
See, I have doubts that the math encourages it. How would we know for sure, as these teams all do the same thing so there's no real sample size to compare against.
Kinda like in baseball, prior to banning the shift, the analytics cult preached swinging for the fences versus bunting against the shift because the math encourages it. Well, how could they possible know? Very few, if any, players actually bunted against the shift. And those that did didn't do so consistently. So there wasn't any real data to compare against.
You can't use "older" data as the game and ruleset was different. Defense is different (and worse). I'd make the argument that 55% of 2's is greater than 36% of 3's (league wide average for 3pt shooting is "around" 35-36%).
If a team today committed to getting to the basket as much as possible (not passing up layups to pass out for threes) and working for the best shots closest to the basket against today's less physical often matador defense where hand-checking is illegal -- I'm not so sure teams can't shoot 55%+ from the floor more consistently than they can shoot over 36% from three as a team. Especially teams that have the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid, and Victor Wembanyama.
And I'm not even sure shooting 55% would be necessary, as an ancillary benefit to making a concerted effort to get to the hoop and work for closer shots is the likelihood of drawing more fouls, shooting more free throws and getting the opposition in foul trouble.
I've often argued that if Shaq in his prime played today, the opposition would have to adapt to him more than he'd have to adapt to them. Sure, a stretch would get open shots on him a lot. But he'd punish smallish defenses not constructed to slow the likes of him.
Dude shot over 58% for his career playing against bigger, more physically apt players. If he played today, there's no reason to believe he couldn't average 65-70% shooting. Jokic shot over 63% last season and Rudy Gobert has often averaged between 65-70%. So teams would likely have to construct their rosters a bit differently and not play their "small" lineups so much meaning they don't shoot the 3 near as well.
Obviously no "Shaq" exists today. But Giannis, Jokic and Embiid do. And they are all capable of shooting super high 2-pt percentages, especially if the 3 is drastically reduced out of their games. If other teammates did the same and focused on higher percentage shots against defenses geared to stop transition 3's, how do we know the math doesn't actually encourage that?
I always circle back to the Warriors really excellerating the mass 3 pt trend, due to their success beginning a decade or so ago. Thing is, the Warriors were and always have been an outlier. They had and still have two of the best 3 pt shooters of all-time. Arguably the very best 3 pt shooter in Steph Curry. Their 3 pt shooting has almost always been an outlier, in which the math did often workout because they could shoot 40-45% from three on a consisitent basis. Most teams can't come close to that.
