Welcome to a new series called IAQ — Infrequently Asked Question. In these articles, I hope to address basketball queries people may have that maybe they’re a little too embarrassed to ask. Maybe they fear they will seem “stupid” or “bad” if they ask the question in public. Don’t worry, I’m proudly stupid myself, so you are safe here.
All idiots are welcome in these articles. Please put on your personalized hat, and sit in the assigned chair.
Today’s question feels like the perfect starting point. If dunks are really, super likely to go in, and 3-point shots are worth more than your average 2-point dunk, why don’t people do 3-point dunks too?
It seems like the basic evolution of basketball. You might remember this:
Zach LaVine, at one point, could dunk from the free-throw line while doing a windmill. Unfortunately, you cannot dunk a free throw, so this serves little practical purpose. However, had LaVine simply refused to age and instead got stronger, he’d probably be dunking from the 3-point line now.
You could extend this to a few people — Aaron Gordon, Ja Morant, Mac McClung. It seems a matter of choice that they keep getting injured, aging, or not trying to add this facet to their game.
According to a Reddit comment about a season 10 years ago, the average dunk conversion rate was 92.74 percent. With the added degree of difficulty to do it from the 3-point line, let’s assume it’d be closer to 90 percent. An offense built only around dunk-3s would, objectively, have an offense that tops out at 2.7 points per possession. Which is a lot.
Are dunk-3s the future of the NBA?
Now I know what you’re wondering, “This is so obvious. Why isn’t everyone doing it?”
Yeah. It’s really weird. So I asked Google’s Gemini AI what it thought. The response was, “NBA players don't dunk from the 3-point line primarily because of the extreme physics and athletic capabilities it would require.”
I find that appalling. The lack of belief in the breadth of human possibility is something that could only come from a robot. Don’t ask AI things.
But we do have to take into account that no one has a dunk-3 yet and it may not be possible. According to this Reddit post, long jumpers get about 1.62m of height. The World Record for long jump is also about 29 feet. A straight-on 3-pointer is about 23 feet away from the basket.
Then there are also high jumpers. If someone can just combine all of this stuff into a single basketball player, we could have dunk-3s by Thanksgiving.
I don’t want to wait any longer. I want dunk-3s now.
There are some adjustments that can be made.
The NBA arena can just shorten the dimensions of the court by a third. The hoop can stay at the same height, but everything else just get squished in. Bam. Dunk-3s.
Or the NBA can hollow out portions of NBA arenas, so people can get a run up for a dunk-3 alley-oop from one of the corners. It’s a shorter distance to jump, so people can probably do it. I don’t feel like double-checking, and AI is just going to be a jerk again. You’re nice though. I like you.
Certain players can be designated as the 3-point dunker in every contest. Like, just their dunks are worth 3-points. Kind of defeats the purpose, but it’s an option. I’d like to see that with Jalen Brunson.
We can just start considering all shots dunks. For fun. If everything is a dunk, then we already have 3-point dunks! Hooray!
In conclusion
Anyway, there is clearly a lot to consider when it comes to this question. I think the ultimate reason people don’t dunk from the 3-point line is because they fear radical change. Or because it’s impossible. It’s one of the two.