When the Golden State Warriors, led by Steve Kerr, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson started transforming the way the NBA used the 3-point shot, the NBA as a whole shifted to a more perimeter oriented league. Their potent, high-scoring offense was tough for opposing teams to deal with. When the Warriors were down, it didn’t take much for them to catch up and reduce the opponent’s lead, thanks in part to the 3-point shooting they possessed. When the Warriors had a big lead, opposing teams found it very difficult to cut into the deficit because it was damn near impossible to stop the Warriors from putting points on the board. Teams across the NBA tried to mimic their recipe in a variety of ways, and in turn have almost reduced the big man to an afterthought, especially on offense. Then after a slew of injuries and with the departure of Kevin Durant from the Warriors to the Brooklyn Nets, the NBA seems primed for a reset and an opportunity to incorporate the big man back into the fold. The Lakers showed last season with their championship run, that you don’t necessarily have to rely on 3-point shooting to be crowned NBA champs. With Dwight Howard, Anthony Davis, Javale McGee along with Lebron James, they ran one of the NBA’s biggest front-courts.

Even with the evolution to small ball in recent years, there are still very good big men in the league. The list below is actually pretty impressive when you look at it. It’s just a matter of using them to their potential.

Here is a list of notable big men in today’s game (names in bold averaged at least one 3-point attempt per game):

• Rudy Gobert
• Joel Embiid
• Deandre Ayton
• Clint Capela
• Nikola Jokic
• Jusuf Nurkic
• Anthony Davis
• Karl-Anthony Townes
• Nikola Vucevic
• Al Horford
• Myles Turner
• Marc Gasol
• Brook Lopez
• Steven Adams
• Richaun Holmes
• Jarrett Allen
• Bam Adebayo
• Andre Drummond
• Hassan Whiteside
• Jonas Valanciunas
• Deandre Jordan
• Kristaps Porzingis
• Lamarcus Aldridge
• Montrezl Harrell

Now, the names in bold were players that attempted at least one 3-pointer per game. That’s not even mentioning players at the power forward position. So the game has drifter so far out of the paint, that guys like Al Horford are being seen at stretch 4 or 5 players, where in the past they would have perfected their back to the basket game and left the 3-point shot to the guards and specialists. Even guys like Karl-Anthony Townes and Joel Embiid are shooting 3+ 3-pointers per game. In my opinion, this development has really hurt the game and dramatically increased the amount of bad shots being taken in pretty much every game being played.

Now that teams are using analytics to try and maximize every possession, one could make a case for having a guy like Al Horford taking multiple 3-pointers a game, especially if the defense is leaving him open and giving it to him. Especially when paired with a guy like Joel Embiid, who does occasionally impose his will in the paint. Having Horford on the perimeter allowed Embiid to post up and actually gave him more room to operate. Still, to some it’s just not a winning strategy (which is why Horford and his contract are on the move this off-season) since Horford only shot the 3-pointer at a 35% clip last season. While that’s not horrible, it’s also not going to win you many games against good teams.

Commentators like Shaq, Charles Barkley and others have consistently railed against the league moving in this direction, because there are far better way to use the big man in the course of a game. For every 3-pointer a guy like Lamarcus Aldridge or Anthony Davis takes, they could be posting up and getting an “and-one”, which still generates 3 points on the board (with a successful free-throw), but also creates foul trouble for the opponent. To me, this make much more sense than having your tallest players hovering 24 feet from the hoop shooting a shot that they’d be better off not taking. The Houston Rockets, who reduced Clint Capela’s role to virtually nothing before shipping him off to Atlanta, underachieved enormously by relying primarily on the 3-point shot. Their offense because predictable and at times stagnant and they too weren’t able to have the same success against the elite teams in the league. Now they are stuck with a small team, who can’t win a title and two unhappy superstars. So much for analytics. Teams seem to forget that the main reason the Warriors were able to shoot so many 3-point shots and successfully win titles was in part due to superior ball-movement, high percentage shooting and superb defense. It wasn’t just guys jacking up shots just because they were open. It was a well-crafted system that worked for the roster that they had.

Hopefully the rest of the league takes note. If you have a big man, there’s nothing wrong with him shooting 3-pointers. There’s also nothing wrong with using his god-given advantages to punish smaller players on the block, which to me would take a lot less effort than trying to mold him into a stretch 4 or 5. If his shot evolves, then it evolves and it can be incorporated into his game as a bonus. But if you think you’re going to recreate what the Golden State Warriors did from 2014 – 2018, you probably won’t have much success unless you have players named Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on your roster.