Tucked into the most claustrophobic area on the hardwood 22 feet away from the rim lies the home of one of the most important shots in modern basketball.
The corner 3 is more than one of the most tactically important shots in the league, it has also come to symbolize the data-driven evolution in game play that has turned the sport inside out in the 21st century.
In 2023, corner 3s are a major part of virtually every NBA offense. Despite the fact that the corners represent just a tiny fraction of the jump-shooting real estate on an NBA court, they now account for a whopping 19.6% of the league's total jump shot attempts.
Aside from shots at the rim, the corner 3 is now the most common field goal attempt in the best basketball league in the world, and the best teams in the league know how to hunt out the shot's efficiency -- and exploit it to open up the rest of the court for the league's biggest stars.
Michael Jordan's final NBA championship represented the end of an era. In 1997-98, corner 3s represented just 3% of all field goal attempts leaguewide. An average game included just 4.7 total shots from the corner. The 1997-98 Utah Jazz, who lost to Jordan's Bulls in the Finals, attempted just 105 corner 3s all season.
By last season, corner 3s accounted for 10% of the league's shots, and an average game included 17.6 of them. The same Jazz who barely attempted one per game en route to the Finals took a whopping 852 in 2021-22, third most in the NBA.
Times have changed. So have strategies.
Following the Bulls dynasty, the San Antonio Spurs emerged as one of the league's most innovative and successful franchises. Long before analytics infiltrated the league, Gregg Popovich and his staff recognized the value of having shooters stationed in the corners. The Spurs ranked in the top four in the league in the percentage of their 3-point attempts taken from the corners every single season between 2000 and 2014.
With the Spurs' recognition of the value of the corner 3, Bruce Bowen, who was never known as a great shooter, became the unlikely face of a spacing revolution.
Over his first five seasons in the league with the Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, Bowen shot 34.9% from the arc, making an average of just 0.6 3s per game. But he found his niche in San Antonio, becoming the archetype of a 3-and-D player by living in the corners. In eight seasons with the Spurs, three of which ended in championships, Bowen shot 40.5% from beyond the arc.
Now, players like Bowen are in higher demand than ever as teams recognize the value of a shot that's worth 50% more points than a shot at the rim that comes closer to that rim than any other 3-point shot.
In 2022-23, the average corner 3 has resulted in 1.17 points per shot, and an uncontested shot yields a whopping 1.29 points. Both figures dwarf the value of an average NBA possession. The math is clear: The more clean looks from the corner an offense can generate, the better, and the shot has become a reward for strong half-court actions.
"Usually the corner shot comes when a possession is in rhythm and you're creating a good open look from the corner when defense has to react," Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry told ESPN earlier this season.
According to Curry, good shooting conditions naturally beget good results -- "If I can get a corner 3 that's wide open, It's the greatest shot," he said -- and his fellow Splash Brother agrees.
"It's definitely one of the better options on the floor to get a wide-open corner 3," Klay Thompson told ESPN. " I just shoot the ball and let it fly when I'm open. ... That's butter every time."
Not quite every time, but Thompson has made 48.8% of his 160 uncontested corner 3s in the player tracking era (since 2013-14). In that same time frame, Curry has made an absurd 60.7% of his 135 uncontested corner 3s, amounting to 1.83 points per shot.
There are two reasons the corner 3 has proved to be so valuable. First, these are among the greatest shooters in the universe. Second, the shot conditions are optimal. Virtually the only time these players even shoot the corner ball is when they are open, have their feet set and receive a pass from a teammate.
"You normally don't see a lot of people take corner 3s off the dribble," 76ers forward PJ Tucker told ESPN. "It's more of a catch-and-shoot shot."
More than 91% of this season's corner 3s have qualified as catch-and-shoot attempts according to Second Spectrum tracking. Why does that matter? NBA shooters have converted 36.7% of catch-and-shoot 3s since 2013-14 while only making 32.1% of their off-the-dribble attempts, according to Second Spectrum.
Much of the legendary efficiency of the corner 3 owes to the simple fact that it's almost always taken by a good shooter with a clean look. Kyle Korver made 347 of his 645 corner 3s between 2013-14 and 2019-20. That's 50.7%, which comes out to 1.54 points per attempt. Among active players, Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. has been the best, making 50.4% of his 280 career corner tries, which amounts to 1.52 points per attempt.
Meanwhile, since 2013-14 an average layup attempt in the NBA has yielded 1.17 points on average according to Second Spectrum. For the league's best shooters, corner 3s aren't equivalent to layups -- they are superior.
An NBA basketball court is exactly 50 feet wide, and even with today's deep-shooting 3-point specialists, the entire scoring area spans only 1,500 square feet. That's about the size of a decent two-bedroom apartment; when you throw 10 giant athletes into a two-bedroom apartment, things can get crowded -- especially when those athletes start running around.
That's where the 60-square feet of room in the corners comes in handy.
The NBA's 3-point line is 23 feet, 9 inches from the rim at the top of the key and on the wings, but that distance shortens to 22 feet in the corners because otherwise players wouldn't have enough room to both stand behind the arc and stay in bounds.
From a pure distance standpoint, the corner 3 represents a simple optimization strategy.
"Very literally, it's the easiest 3-pointer in the sense that it's the shortest distance from you to the rim to score three points," Portland Trail Blazers guard Matisse Thybulle told ESPN earlier this season when he was with the 76ers. "[We're] just trying to take advantage of that and look for as many opportunities to get those shots as possible."
By stashing one or even two shooters in the corners, NBA offenses can stretch out the width of opposing defenses and open up room in the middle of the floor.
For years, the threat Tucker created by loitering in the corners meant Houston Rockets teammate James Harden could operate more freely. In the three seasons Harden played with Tucker in Houston under coach Mike D'Antoni, the former MVP averaged 33.7 points per game while racking up a usage rate of 37.7%, helping to usher in the heliocentric era in pro basketball.
Now, as teams continue to rely increasingly on their best players to both score and create open looks for their teammates at higher rates, usage rates are soaring all over the association. This season there are 15 players with a usage rate of 30 or higher, which is on pace to be the most in league history.
In many cases, the corner 3 specialists of the NBA and their ability to thin out the middle are assisting in this concentration.
The Dallas Mavericks offense around Luka Doncic looks a lot like the D'Antoni-Harden industrial complex that Houston used last decade. The Mavs don't have Tucker, but they do lead the NBA in corner 3s this season, hoisting up nearly 12 of them per contest as Doncic does his uncanny Harden imitation on a nightly basis. Reggie Bullock has emerged as the Mavs' version of Tucker, making 44% of his 168 corner 3 attempts this season. His 74 makes from the corners trails only Mikal Bridges for most in the NBA -- but it's still far behind the 102 corner 3s Doncic has assisted on.
The rise of the corner 3 has also meant the rise of synergistic interactions between hyperusage pick-and-roll superstars like Doncic and Harden and their spacey off-ball teammates. But with all due respect to those players, there can be only one king of the corner-3 dime: LeBron James.
Though he ranks eighth in total 3-pointers made, James will not go down as one of the better 3-point shooters in league history. Still, like Bowen, he will be forever linked with the rise of the corner 3 -- just for a very different reason.
More than 95% of corner 3s are assisted and no player has been on the passing end of more of those shots than James. While no single shooter in NBA history has converted more than 900 corner 3s, James has assisted on 1,590 and counting.
Creating a corner 3 is a modern art form, and that makes James the Picasso of the movement. Creating an open look from the corner generally requires a teammate creating chaos and forcing the opposing defense to collapse away from a catch-and-shoot threat.
Nobody in the modern NBA has compromised defensive shapes as much as James, who is the greatest playmaking superstar pro basketball has seen since Magic Johnson.
Along with some sharpshooting teammates, James has helped pioneer the corner revolution. It's no coincidence that five of the 11 most prolific corner 3 shooters of all-time have shared the floor with James.
These teammates were vital to opening up the scoring area for James, who became the league's all-time leading scorer in large part because of his ability to attack the paint and finish at the rim, something that was a lot easier with players like Ray Allen, Shane Battier and Danny Green keeping their defenders honest 22 feet away from the hoop.
With James pressuring the rim as well as anyone in his generation, and shooters like that thinning out defenses, it's no wonder James has been to the Finals 11 times. James plus shooters equals an unstoppable half-court offense.
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We're approaching the 10th anniversary of the most important corner 3 in NBA history. Allen's season-saving masterwork in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals changed the arc of that series and James' career, and permanently linked Allen -- one of the greatest shooters ever -- with the shot that he helped make famous.
By 2013, the NBA was well on its way to the pace-and-space aesthetic we see nowadays, but when Allen entered the league in 1996, no player was training to backpedal to the corner after an offensive rebound. But as the league evolved, so did Allen. He famously described how he'd practiced the exact choreography needed to be in position for a game-tying shot after Chris Bosh retrieved the most important rebound of the 2010s in workouts.
Few, if any players were doing that in Jordan's NBA, but Allen and the Spurs changed that. The corner 3 is one of the most practiced shots in the sport. Walk into any practice facility in the NBA and you will witness players practicing those baseline 3-point tries over and over and over again.
"You can practice 'em, practice 'em, practice 'em, practice 'em and you know that you're gonna get 'em," said Memphis Grizzlies guard Desmond Bane. "I mean, every team wants to get a bunch of corner 3. So, I mean, if you just stand there and work on shooting 'em from there, it's the shortest 3."
And it's no longer just role players like Bowen or Tucker, who are firing away from the corners, nor is it just guards like Allen or Bane.
In his first seven seasons in the NBA, Boston Celtics center Al Horford made a total of 10 3-point shots. This season he ranks third with 62 made corner 3s. It's been a remarkable metamorphosis that epitomizes a key trend that has unfolded during Horford's tenure: Virtually every player can stretch the floor and shoot now. Even bigs.
In the 1998 Finals, Bulls big men Dennis Rodman, Bill Wennington, and Luc Longley combined for zero 3-point attempts in six games. Those days are gone. Horford attempted eight 3-pointers in Game 1 of the 2022 Finals alone, making six of them. For the series he went 15-for-24 from deep.
Players like Horford and Brook Lopez have extended their brilliant careers in large part because they've been able to adapt to larger trends in the league.
"I think the way the bigs have evolved, becoming threats from the perimeter, that's the first shot usually they start with," said Lakers coach Darvin Ham, who was an assistant with the Bucks when Lopez began his frequent 3-point shooting. Like Horford, Lopez rarely shot 3s early in his career, going 3-for-31 over his first eight seasons. In five seasons in Milwaukee, Lopez has attempted nearly 1,500 3-pointers, making better than 35% of them.
Over the past 25 years as arithmetic has infiltrated pro basketball, corner 3s have too, and with numbers like this, it's fair to expect them to continue to be a major part of NBA strategy going forward. As teams and players continue to refine strategies to harvest more offensive efficiency, the future of the most efficient jump shot on the floor is very bright.
Matt Williams of ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this story.