Nikola Jokic would’ve been the third-best 3-point shooter in the NBA during the 2024-25 season had a new rule been in place last year
The NBA shared on Wednesday that the league will implement a rule change for the 2025-26 season, where unsuccessful end-of-period heaves will now be recorded as a missed field-goal attempt for the team, not the player. That means long heaves will no longer impact individual player shooting percentages.
In the past, many players have been reluctant to take those end-of-quarter long-distance shots, so as not to lower their shooting percentages. The NBA has played with how to fix this small quirk in both the Summer League and G League.
According to an article on the league’s site, the exact new rule is, “the NBA will tell teams that any shot taken within the final three seconds of the first three quarters and is launched from at least 36 feet away on any play that starts in the backcourt will count as a team shot attempt — but not an individual one.”
SportRadar says players made about 4% of those shots last year, with Steph Curry’s four makes and Nikola Jokic’s three makes, pacing the field.
For reference, the half-court line is 47 feet, and Basketball Reference currently defines heaves as any shot attempt from over half-court. So the new rule covers about three-quarters of the floor. But going off the info we have, which is half-court attempts, Curry only took six of those shots last year, Jokic almost doubled second place on the list by winding up from way downtown 22 times. He made a league-best two of those shots, including the longest make in Nuggets history.
If you take away Jokic’s half-court bombs from his overall 3-point takes last year, but keep the makes, per the new rule, the three-time MVP would’ve shot 44.4% from deep last year. That’s up from his actual mark of 41.7%, which dropped almost 3% thanks to his 20 missed full-court shots. That would’ve climbed Jokic up the leaderboard among qualifying players from 18th to third in 3-point shooting percentage if the rule had been in place last year. He would’ve been just behind Seth Curry and Zach LaVine.
Not that he had any reservations, but it’ll be fun to see Jokic chuck up even more shots this year. And it’ll be cool to see if another player in the league is a long-distance wizard who has been holding back out of fear of tanking their percentages.
