It’s hard to overstate just how much pro basketball has mutated since Y2K. The 2000s NBA was an analog league full of hulking centers, midrange jumpers, and pixelated national TV games framed in 4:3. But the game has since changed in every imaginable way: stylistically, financially, globally, and culturally. We’ve witnessed the rise of the 3-pointer, the death of the post-up, the internationalization of the MVP race, and the billionaire-ification of the NBA’s ownership class and even of some players.
As part of its weeklong reflection on the NBA quarter century, The Ringer asked me to come up with a set of charts that explain the past 25 years of the best basketball league in the world. Let’s start with shooting.