Basketball is Breaking - Two is Now More than Three

TL;DR

The post-up is now the most efficient half-court play type, making two-point scoring more valuable than the three.

Key Points

• 1.Post-ups score 1.18 points per 100 possessions this season — higher than isolation (99.7), handoffs (97.8), and pick-and-rolls (99.4).
• 2.Nikola Jokić leads with 1.28 points per possession on post-ups — a better rate than any team in NBA history. Giannis (1.15), Porzingis (1.23), DeRozan (1.19), and Luka (1.22) are also elite.
• 3.The reason: the three-point revolution forced defenses to play smaller, quicker players and pull help defenders away from the paint, leaving post players less contested.
• 4.Using a game theory matrix, the video shows that improving your three-point threat raises your two-point efficiency too — the defense is forced into a harder equilibrium covering both threats.
• 5.Post-up frequency is at an all-time low, but that's largely selection bias — bad post players (Tony Allen, Zach Randolph at 0.84 PPP) have been eliminated, inflating the remaining averages.
• 6.Teams are leaving efficiency on the table: players like DeRozan, Franz Wagner, and Haime Hawez post up far less than their superior post-up numbers justify versus their isolation/pick-and-roll usage.
• 7.The video argues basketball isn't solved, just standardized — over-indexing on threes has created a new exploitable edge inside, though a full post-up revolution is unlikely.