Great stat I saw today: the 95-96 Bulls made 544 3-pointers that year. The 2015-2016 Warriors, if you took away every 3-pointer that Curry made, would still have 675. The game has changed indeed!
I was brushing up on Zache Lowe yesterday and came across this (extremly HN-friendly) gem from a few years ago[0] about the Raptors' program for mapping ideal defensive positions, and I couldn't get over the part where the analytics team was begging the coaches to make players shoot more 3s. I guess all it took was a coach known for being a sniper in his playing days having two of the three best shooters in the league to make that analytical dream a reality.
The game has changed because defense is almost non-existent during the regular season. The NBA (outside of the playoffs) is basically street ball at this point. Quite frankly I'm surprised people are still willing to pay money to go to a game and watch it.