How big is the 3 point line in basketball

USA Basketball - The History of the 3-Pointer

On November 13, 1967, the Indiana Pacers of the American Basketball Association were losing to the Dallas Chaparrals, 118-116, with just one second left on the clock.

Indiana inbounded the ball to Jerry Harkness, who was 92 feet away from the basket. With no time to do anything else, Harkness threw a towering Hail Mary heave toward the goal. It smacked off the backboard and went in.

Pandemonium erupted in Dallas, but for all the wrong reasons. You see, 1967 was the first year of the 3-point shot among basketball's top leagues, and the players and fans weren't used to it. A lot of the 2,500 in attendance that day thought that the Harkness miracle tied the game and forced overtime. In fact, he was 68 feet behind the brand new 3-point line. His shot won the game for the Pacers, 119-118.

"We were running off the floor to huddle up for the overtime when the official, Joe Belmont, came up to me and said 'Jerry, it's over. That was a 3-pointer,'" Harkness said in the book Loose Balls. "I said, 'I forgot all about that. A 3-pointer.' Then we were celebrating again, because we found out that we won the game."

These days, the 3-pointer is second-nature to basketball players and fans. It's a safe bet that nobody under the age of 30 has any recollection of college or professional basketball being played without a 3-point line.

But, in fact, basketball was played for a long time without the 3-point shot. The NBA considered it gimmicky for years. The NCAA was even slower to adopt the rule.

Once it became mainstream, though--with the ABA leading the charge in 1967--basketball would never be the same again.

The Inception

The 3-point line's first use in a professional league was back in 1961 in the American Basketball League. The ABL only lasted 1 ½ seasons before folding, so the 3-pointer quickly went away.

The NBA, which had been around since 1946, never seriously considered it at that point. But when a new league competing against the NBA was dreamed up in the mid-1960s, the 3-point shot was back in the spotlight.

The ABA, which started in 1967, differed from the NBA in its experimentation of fan-friendly ideas. They had a red, white and blue basketball, a slam dunk contest, and of course, the 3-point shot.

According to the book Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association, which chronicled the nine-season history of the ABA, league organizers had planned to use the 3-pointer from the beginning. Coincidentally, the commissioner of the ABA and a big proponent of the 3-pointer was George Mikan, a 6-foot-10 NBA legend who probably would've never shot one during his playing days.

"We called it the home run, because the 3-pointer was exactly that," Mikan said in the book. "It brought fans out of their seats."

In 1976, the ABA and NBA merged, with four teams joining the NBA--the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and New Jersey Nets. The 3-point shot, at first, wasn't part of the package.

The NBA stayed firm in the game's traditions. The league didn't adopt the 3-pointer until 1979--Magic Johnson and Larry Bird's rookie season. While certain college basketball conferences experimented with it in the early '80s, the NCAA didn't universally implement a 3-point line until 1986, with high school basketball following suit a year later.

The Adjustment

In the late 1960s, when the ABA introduced the 3-pointer, a generation of coaches had to rethink everything they knew about the game, and it made things hectic. One ABA coach admits that at first, he never used the 3-pointer unless his team was losing late in the game and was desperate for points.

Other coaches had similar problems adjusting to its reality.

"You have to tell your players to remember who the shooters are, and when those guys are 25 feet from the basket, get in their jocks and guard them," former ABA and NBA coach Hubie Brown said in Loose Balls. "Don't give them the 25-footer, which is something players had been conditioned to do all their lives. And as a coach, if you have a shooter with range, you have to give him the freedom to take the 25-footer, which is a philosophy that goes against what you learned as a young coach--namely, pound the ball inside."

It wasn't just the coaches, either. The fans loved it right away, but there were growing pains among the players.

"It took a while for players to understand time and score situations, when to take it," said Len Elmore, who played in both the ABA and NBA. "You also recognize that players who hadn't been accustomed to playing with a 3-point line really had to work to develop the range."

Michael Jordan is a perfect example of that. He played college basketball at North Carolina without a 3-point line. In his rookie season with the Chicago Bulls, he was 9-for-52 from 3-point range. He never shot better than 20 percent from long range until his fifth season in the NBA. But by the time his remarkable tenure with the Bulls wrapped up, he was consistently shooting better than 35 percent from 3-point range.

The Evolution

It may not be obvious, but the 3-point line continues to change the sport today.

"Guys have become super efficient at the shot," Elmore said. "You see the NCAA continue to move the line further back because players can shoot it. At one time, it was only 19 feet at its shortest point."

In addition to the players continuing to improve, the utilization of the shot continues to evolve as well.

"Now you're seeing it on the fast break, whereas coaches from old school wouldn't want you to take that shot on the break. They'd want you to challenge the defense and get the highest percentage shot," Elmore said. "Also, you're seeing guys now driving to the basket, and even though they have an opportunity to take the layup or a much shorter shot, they're more willing to kick it out to the wide-open 3-point shooter. I'm not sure the percentages work from that standpoint, but it's a trend. "

Though the distances differ between all levels of basketball, the 3-point line is universal. The NBA has a 22-foot 3-point line in the corners and a 23-foot, 9-inch line elsewhere. The WNBA and the international game plays with a 20-foot, 6-inch line. The NCAA men's game has a 20-foot, 9-inch line while the NCAA women and high schools have a 19-foot, 9-inch line.

Whereas size was a crucial factor in matchups in the past, the 3-point line gave smaller teams a great equalizer.

Even the post players get into the action--just not very often.

Shaquille O'Neal is 1-for-22 from 3-point range in his career, that one a humorous bank shot buzzer-beater. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played half his pro career with no 3-point line and half of his career with it. He was 1-for-18 from behind the arc in his career.

More than anything, though, the 3-point line has made basketball a completely different experience for the fans--a more spread-out game with another level of energy that wasn't there before the 1960s.

"It keeps the game exciting, particularly at the college level," Elmore said. "There are times when people fall in love with it, and there's the adage that you live by it and you also die by it. When it's not incorporated properly and not utilized properly, it can hurt a team. But the advantage is to be able to stretch the floor."

Everything You Need to Know About Basketball Court Dimensions

Of the two major American-invented sports — baseball and basketball — only one has gained worldwide popularity. We play baseball across parts of the globe, but we play basketball worldwide. You can play with as few as two people and as many as ten. Shoot hoops indoors and outdoors and on any surface hard or flat enough to bounce a ball.

Indoor courts are usually made from hardwood, though other, more easily-maintained surfaces are gaining in popularity. Outdoor courts can be either asphalt or concrete. You can put a permanent basketball court just about anywhere you would like. Don’t have the room for a full-length court? Fitting just a half court into your driveway, backyard, or commercial gym would be just as useful.

So, have a space in mind and wondering “What are the dimensions of a basketball court?” Let’s take a look at the standard sizes for every level of basketball, from high school all the way up through international competition.

The National Basketball Association, better known as the NBA, boasts the largest court dimensions of any level of basketball — domestic or international. The outer dimensions are 94 feet long by 50 feet wide. The half court line is, as the name would suggest, halfway between each end line. In the middle of the half court line is a tip-off circle with a six-foot radius, which often sports the home team’s logo.

The key is 16 feet wide and 19 feet from the baseline to the foul line. A semicircle with a six-foot radius extends from the foul line. Some courts have the other side of the half-circle drawn in a dotted line inside the key to complete the circle and create a clear boundary for any jump balls.

The backboard protrudes four feet out from the baseline, and the rim of the basket hangs 10 feet off the ground. Subtracting the four feet overhang from the 19-foot length of the key, we get the familiar 15-foot distance from the foul line to the front of the backboard. It’s a misconception that the foul line is 15 feet from the center of the basket. The backboard itself measures six feet wide and 42 inches high.

Inside the key, a four-foot arc is aligned with the center of the basket to designate the restricted arc. If a defender is inside this semicircle, he cannot draw a charging foul. Along both sides of the key, lines are drawn three feet apart to create the standing positions for other players during a free throw attempt, starting with a box that is seven feet from the baseline and one foot wide.

Outside the key, the three-point line forms an imperfect arc stretching one side of the baseline to the other. The arc isn’t a perfect circle because it would run out of bounds on the sides of the court.

Instead, the three-point line runs in a straight line from the baseline out 16 feet, nine inches, at which point the line begins to curve. The straight lines are an even 22 feet from the center of the basket, and on the arc, the distance is 23 feet and nine inches.

Starting at the baseline and running 28 feet toward the center of the court, a line bounds the team bench area. The line also acts as the starting place for inbounds passes after timeouts and fouls.

The Women’s National Basketball Association or WNBA’s court dimensions are identical to the NBA court in every way except the three-point line. Instead, the distance is equal to the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) at 22.15 feet from the center of the hoop. WNBA teams share arenas and playing surfaces with the NBA, which is why it’s no wonder the court dimensions are so similar.

National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA basketball courts have similar dimensions to the NBA and WNBA, which include the:

• Court
• Foul line
• Backboard
• Basket height
• Tip-off circle

That said, there are a few significant differences in the dimensions of the NCAA court. For starters, the key is only 12 feet wide, rather than 16. The first box on the side of the key is only six feet from the baseline, not seven. The restricted area under the basket is also one foot smaller, at three feet in diameter rather than the NBA’s four.

However, the most recognizable difference between the NBA’s court dimensions and the NCAA’s is the distance of the three-point line. The NCAA three-point line is only 20 feet, nine inches from the center of the basket. Because of the smaller diameter, it is a continuous arc from one side of the baseline to the other, with no straight lines necessary to create space on the sidelines.

The difference in three-point line distances is the biggest adjustment for shooters to make as they begin their professional careers, and also why it’s so difficult to project how well a player will shoot in the pros.

High school basketball courts are a little different from their college and professional counterparts. The most noticeable difference is that the court is a full 10 feet shorter, measuring only 84 feet. However, there are some similarities. The court is still 50 feet wide. The basket is also 10 feet off the ground.

The tip-off circle has a six-foot radius, just like the big kid courts, and while the high school landscape isn’t as standardized as college and professional basketball, the backboard is supposed to have the same measurements as the NCAA and NBA.

Just as in college and professional basketball, the foul line is 15 feet from the backboard, and the key is 19 feet long. It’s also the same 12 feet wide as the NCAA — four feet narrower than the NBA and WNBA.

The other visible difference is the distance from the three-point line. Shorter than either the NCAA or NBA, the high school free throw line is just 19 feet, nine inches from the center of the basket. Additionally, high school basketball courts do not have any restricted area under the basket, since that rule doesn’t exist in high school basketball.

FIBA governs international basketball courts. The measurements for FIBA basketball courts differ from U.S. courts because of the difference between our Imperial measurements — feet and inches — and the more standard metric system.

FIBA courts are an even 28 meters long, which converts to almost 92 feet. The 15-meter width converts to just over 49 feet. The tip-off circle is a bit smaller as well, at 3.5 meters in diameter. This difference translates to a radius of about five feet, seven inches.

The key is almost the same size at 5.8 meters long and 4.8 meters wide. These numbers convert to within a few inches of 19 and 16 feet. The basket is 1.2 meters, or almost four feet, in from the baseline, which puts the foul line at 4.6 meters — 15 feet — away. The restricted area under the basket is 1.25 meters or just a shade more than four feet in radius.

The basket is still 10 feet off the ground, which means the biggest difference is the three-point line. At the top of the arc, the three-point line is 6.75 meters from the center of the basket or 22.15 feet. This measurement works out to about 22 feet, two inches. The FIBA three-point line, which has also been adopted by the WNBA, is over a foot and a half closer than the NBA line.

Since its invention in 1891, basketball’s court dimensions have varied. Let’s look at some of its historical changes, as well as answering that nagging question — “Why are basketball hoops 10 feet high?” — below:

The Story Behind the 10-Foot High Hoop

It would appear the 10-foot basketball hoop is the result of a careful calculation that considers the human anatomy and mechanics of the game. After all, even the tallest players today have to jump to dunk a ball, and a ten-foot high rim gives a comfortable target to shoot for at a distance. But as we see so often in history, the truth is much more mundane.

When James Naismith dreamed up the game in Springfield, MA in 1891, the railing he chose to hang the baskets on was ten feet off the ground. So, while everything else about the sport has changed since that first game, the baskets are still right where Dr. Naismith hung them.

The History of the Three-Point Line

The three-point line is arguably the most recognizable aspect of a basketball court’s dimensions and part of the reason why is attributed to the history surrounding this semicircle.

The first instance of the three-point line appeared in the American Basketball League in 1961, a full 70 years after Dr. Naismith invented the game. The line was added to increase excitement, but the league folded in just one and a half seasons, so the idea never had a chance.

In 1967, the next competitor to the NBA arrived. The American Basketball Association, or ABA, instituted the three-point line from the very start, and it was a huge success. The ABA had many exciting innovations that produced a better product for the fans. But ultimately, there was not enough room for two professional basketball organizations, so the NBA and ABA merged in 1976.

The three-point line, however, was not included in the merger! The decision-makers in the NBA at the time were too stubborn to adopt such a radical change. They held out for three years before implementing the three-point line in the 1979-1980 season. The NCAA didn’t integrate it until 1986, and it didn’t arrive on high school basketball courts until 1987.

That isn’t the end of the story, however. The line was moved closer for three seasons in the ‘90s to try to boost scoring, but it was quickly moved back to its original place. Taking the idea to the extreme, the NBA has even admitted to having discussions about a four-point line. Ultimately, we’ll believe it when we see it.

The Original Cage Matches

In the early days of professional basketball, the game was played inside an actual cage. The reasons were more about practicality than about safety. The rule for who got to inbound a ball that left the court was “whoever got to it first,” so organizers took to putting up a cage so the ball could never go out of bounds in the first place.

Those first basketball courts were about a third smaller than they are today, and the cages provided a physical boundary and an extra immovable for savvy teams. Could you imagine how much different the game of basketball would be today if those cages had stuck around?

The Alternative Key Designs

Today, basketball courts at all levels share a common design for the key — a rectangle measuring either 19 feet by 16 feet or 19 feet by 12 feet. However, this was not always the case. From the creation of FIBA in 1956 until 2010, the key was a trapezoidal design that was significantly wider at the baseline.

Another design of this feature is responsible for the name “key.” Have you ever thought about how a rectangular area under a basket got such a random name?

The reason is that the original area was much narrower, while the circle surrounding the free throw line was the same size. These two factors combined to create a shape that resembled an old-fashioned key. In 1951, the key was widened to 12 feet and later to the 16 feet we see now in the NBA and FIBA.

While the term lives on, time has erased any record of its design and original reference. And for the record, the official name for this feature is “free throw lane,” which isn’t a phrase many of us hear often.

And that’s a wrap on the history of basketball’s court dimensions.

Perhaps you don’t have 94 feet of flat asphalt or indoor floor space. Don’t worry, because residential half court setups can be just as fun. And whether you are looking to paint your court or apply a pre-made solution, sticking to the official dimensions will take your pickup games to the next level.

Take a look at our selection of goals, nets and accessories to bring your home’s court together. You’ll have a hard time dragging your kids off the court as they spend hours posting up like Boogie, slashing like LeBron and launching it from deep like Steph.

BY.Tribuna.com Best NBA Point Guard Rankings - Basketball

Original - Jonathan Tjarks, The Ringer.

If you've been waiting for the best time in history to become a point guard in the NBA, congratulations, it's here. Instead of loitering around the floor, throwing the ball into the opponent's zone and waiting for a wall game, the best playmakers these days force the pace, have the ball for most of the game, and initiate most of their team's attacks. The space-speed era began in earnest back in 2004, when the Suns were playing three-point shooters at the power forward position and clearing space for Steve Nash. A little over ten years have passed and now the centers are throwing three-pointers, and the defense is stretched to incredible limits. If the defenders at 90's maneuvered in the narrow streets on the way to the ring, then the defenders in the 2010s rush forward along the wide avenues.

Playing point guard has become so much fun that everyone wants to do it. The Rockets moved James Harden to the One position during the off-season, and while many assumed it was just a matter of semantics, the move made him a real favorite for the MVP award. Give a player who can dribble, pass and shoot the ball and freedom of movement and no one will tell you what can happen. Any statistical achievement can be at risk.

Eight point guards have been selected for this year's All-Star Game, and that's not counting Giannis Antetokounmpo, the multifaceted monster who leads the Bucks in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. Chris Paul would be there if not for the injury, and the position is so deep that Mike Conley, Eric Bledsoe, Damien Lillard and Goran Dragic are waiting overboard. It's hard to win in this league without an elite point guard, and many of the worst teams this season will be looking to improve this position in the draft (and for good reason).

Ranking point guards is useless, as their performance is directly dependent on teammates. Steph Curry is still the same player who won two MVPs in a row, but his stats have gone down with the arrival of Kevin Durant. Conversely, with Durant gone, Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple-double per game. In college basketball, less talented players depend on point guards to make them better, but at the highest level, a point guard can only be as good as his environment allows.

So, instead of making a traditional ranking, I decided to compare the eight point guards that made it to the cost center + Chris Paul in various aspects of the game.

All statistics are current as of Wednesday, February 8th.

Who is the most like a point guard in the traditional sense?

The days of point guards as clean passers are long gone. The playmaker, who cannot threaten the defense with his throw, plays with one hand tied behind his back. Nevertheless, the kid with the ball, even now, one way or another, must involve all the other partners in the attack. Finding the balance between passing and shooting is a very delicate matter depending on the other four players on the floor. What options do we have in this category? Thanks to high-definition tracking cameras in every NBA arena, we know exactly how many times each point guard touched the ball and how many times they passed.

Chris Paul is almost 15 percentage points more likely to pass in a single possession than Westbrook, who has historical possession. Compared to last season, Russ has 10 more touches and only 2 extra passes. Paul is a precision weapon that chooses its position carefully; Westbrook is a blunt tool that decides by force at every opportunity. While Paul's style boosts his advanced stats, it doesn't automatically make him more efficient. He shoots at the best rate of his career (47.3%), great numbers for a point guard, but wouldn't it be better to sacrifice efficiency and score more points? Take a look at the Clippers-Thunder playoff series in 2014. Paul scored 22. 5 points on 51 percent shooting and Westbrook was 27.8 points on 49- percentage accuracy. The difference is only 5 points; but that extra 5 points per game was pretty valuable.

Who uses more space?

Playing point guard in the NBA is like sitting down to play a video game. The more snipers in your team, the easier the difficulty level. If the opposing defense is forced to defend against four combat-ready players within 25 feet of the ring and beyond, getting to the ring won't be difficult. If the defense cements the "paint" and forces the other four players on your team to shoot, the task becomes almost impossible. So who plays on "easy" and who plays on "expert"? To make this calculation easier, I took the four most frequently played teammates on our test point guards team and calculated the number of three-pointers they shoot and hit on average per game.

Harden, Curry, Irving and Thomas are all playing in a ton of playing space, and perhaps not coincidentally, the Rockets, Cavs, Warriors and Celtics have 4 of the top 6 win-loss balances in the league. On the other end of the spectrum, Westbrook and Kyle Lowry, in particular, move through minefields. Most of the Raptors' shooters come off the bench, so most of the time it's only Demarre Caroll who expands Lauri's attacking space. The Thunder did not try to connect Westbrook with any snipers at all, in principle, believing that he would do everything himself, regardless of anyone. It's worth wondering what would happen to his stats if you swapped him with Harden.

Of the nine teams on the list, only one – the Celtics with Al Horford – gets enough three-point shots from the starting center, although the Warriors (with Draymond Green at the top five) and the Cavs (Channing Fry) regularly play with five long-range shooters. The era of "space-speed" has not yet reached its peak, as there is still enough opportunity to expand the attack space, for example, by adding a good combo guard to the elite declarer.

Which point guard is more suited to Mouriball's paradigms?

Under the auspices of GM Daryl Mowry, the Rockets built their offense by maximizing the most effective shots in basketball - 3-pointers and rim shots. The Mouriball is slowly eating away at the rest of the league, thanks in large part to the emergence of the "wide" pick-and-roll, which is based on the active use of these shots. Middle throwers became textile workers during the Industrial Revolution; their livelihood was taken away, and "long 2-pointer" became a dirty word. So which point guard has the closest to ideal shooting range?

Surprisingly, Harden, whose game seems to be crafted from the blueprints in Mowry's underground labs, is not the most "Mowryball" point guard. This trophy goes to Thomas, who is slightly ahead of Curry and Lowry. All three of them make about 4 out of 5 shots from two sweet places on the court. But while Curry and Lowry give more than half of their shots to 3-pointers, Thomas is a harmonious shooter who shoots about the same number of shots from under the basket (7.6) and from behind the arc (8.3). Despite being the smallest player in the group, he is second only to the wildly athletic Westbrook in paint hitting frequency.

Who is the best at pick and roll?

Pick and roll is the basis of offense in modern basketball, and the vast majority of these plays are initiated from a screen at the top of the 3-point line. Every good point guard is good at pick and roll, but still, who is the best? To answer this question, let's go beyond statistics. We can calculate how many pick-and-rolls playmakers play and how efficiently they do it, but these numbers are determined by the attacking formations, the skills of the partners involved in the play, and the space available. It's much easier to throw a pass to Andre Drummond or Deandra Jordan than it is to Zaza Pachulia.

There are three distinct components to an effective pick and roll. The first is the ability to shoot after a dribble. An easy way to counter pick-and-roll is to go around the screen and get the ball carrier to shoot. If you can't get the defender to respect your throw, the play will stall before it even starts. On the other hand, the better the ball handler's shot, the wider the defense must stretch to prevent him from entering the operational space, which opens up opportunities for other schemes.

The second component is the ability to attack when trading. Instead of having to deal with all five defenders moving and working as a unit, many teams simply trade off screens. The Cavs used this strategy in the last Finals, using Curry's limited mobility from a knee injury to switch either Tristan Thompson or LeBron to him. They forced Curry to try to beat them on the dribble, which effectively stalled the Warriors' offense.

Only a defender who can shoot well and actively sees teammates can unlock the full potential of the pick and roll. If the defense does not screen or exchange, the declarer can use the freed space to get into the paint and throw a pass to the oncoming big man, or find a sniper in position, well, or throw himself. This is the moment when the traditional qualities of a point guard (ability to manipulate the defense, make passes in tight spaces, the ability to anticipate the position of the players) come into play.

So who is the perfect pick-and-roll quarterback? There is no right answer, but there are wrong ones. It's definitely not Wall or Westbrook, who are the worst three throwers in the group. You wouldn't want someone to lose the ball too often, which is a problem for Harden, the only one on the list with an assist-to-loss ratio of less than 2-to-1. You want an elite 1-on-1 scorer who can consistently penalize trades, which rules out Walker, who is only scoring 0.65 points per possession while playing in isolation this season.

That leaves Paul, Irving, Thomas, Lowry and Curry, each of whom presents a near-impossible screening challenge. You can't leave them alone, you can't throw a big man at them, they can quickly break through to the ring. Even though he suffered from trades in the Final, I would still pick Curry because he's the best shooter out of the six and he's taller than the rest so it's easier for him to shoot. The irony is that he has the fewest pick-and-roll plays of any of the other playmakers on the list.

Who is the better defensive player?

Defensive skill is incredibly difficult to measure, especially for point guards where a lot comes from the team concept. You also need to consider a ton of exchanges when the best point guard is placed against a less talented opponent in order to save strength. So while it's important to look at how a player defends in 1-on-1 situations, the caliber of his opponents will vary depending on how the playmaker is used. Thomas, who shares the backline with an elite perimeter defender like Avery Bradley, doesn't have the tough individual assignments of Lowry and Paul, who play DeRozan and Redick, respectively.

In order to balance how a player defends individually with his participation in the whole team's defensive schemes, I looked at their percentage of allowed shots when they are the main defender, as well as the difference in their team's defensive rating with and without them on parquet. I compared the entire group to each other and then took the average of both scores. This does not give an accurate picture of their defensive performance, as the difference between Thomas (9th) and Harden (8th) in ranking is exactly the same as the difference between Harden and Lowry (3rd). However, there is an interesting plate:

The numbers have been tested as Paul has been in the top five in defense for many years and Kairi is notorious for his defensive clumsiness. In terms of reputation, the most surprising position is that of Walker, who doesn't have the physicality of Wall. Walker takes advantage of the fact that he plays the schemes of Steve Clifford, one of the best defensive coaches in the league. Walker takes full advantage of his agility to pick up fouls from bigger players.

Who makes their partners better?

Numbers with and without a player on the court never told all the secrets, unless you want to punish the player for having a good backup, or reward if his replacement is bad. However, this data can be revealing, and as you would expect, all of the top point guards in the league significantly improve their team's performance when they're in the game:

To see the power of context in these numbers, all you have to do is look to Kairi. LeBron James is essentially playing back-up point guard when Kyrie is on the bench. As you've probably heard, James thinks the Cavs need another playmaker. It's hard for Kyrie to have the kind of influence on the Cavs that Thomas has on Boston given that his backup is Terry Rosier and they don't have a recognized second option to control the attack when Thomas is resting.

However, while it makes sense for Kairi to be at the bottom of the rankings, it's very strange to see Steph at the top. Usually, when Curry is off the court, Durant is on it, but there is still a huge gap in the team's effectiveness without their star point guard. The Warriors are losing more points without Curry than Boston without Thomas, even though Durant didn't move to Massachusetts this summer. That's the difference between having a point guard who hits 36.6% of career 3-pointers versus having another who shoots 44.1 percent already. There are many ways to be a great point guard, but one path may be smoother than the others.

Thank you for your attention!

Photo: REUTERS/ Kelvin Ma, Tom Szczerbowski (USA Today Sports). Washington Post illustrations.

Basketball Court Dimensions and Hoop Height: A Quick Guide - Sports

How big is the basketball court?

The NBA basketball court is 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. In meters it is 28.65 m long and 15.24 m wide. The WNBA and NCAA use the same court size of 94 feet long and 50 feet wide.

How big is the basketball court?

NBA basketball court 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. In meters it is 28.65 m long and 15.24 m wide. The WNBA and NCAA use the same court size of 94 feet long and 50 feet wide.

The middle school court is slightly shorter, 84 feet long and 50 feet wide. The junior court is even smaller, typically 74 feet long and 42 feet wide. A FIBA ​​court (used during international games such as the Olympics) has a length of 91.86 feet and 49.21 feet wide.

For Junior High School, NCAA, WNBA, NBA, and FIBA, the rim is exactly 10 feet from the ground. The rims on each level of the game are 18 inches in diameter. The shields are also the same size in each of these levels. The adjustable shield is 6 feet wide and 42 inches (3.5 feet) high.

In 3 points The distance between the lines varies depending on the level of the game. The NBA three-point line is 23.75 feet from the hoop and 22 feet at the corners. The FIBA ​​three-point line is 22.15 feet from the hoop and 21.65 feet at the corners. The WNBA uses the same three-point line as FIBA.

At the NCAA level, three-point distance is 20.75 feet for both men and women. At the high school level, the distance between three points is 19.75 feet for both boys and girls. Middle school uses the same three-point distance as middle school.

Distance to free throw The line is measured from a point on the floor directly below the backrest.

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