Drop coverage died because of the pull-up, not the three

Guards learned to shoot comfortably from just inside the arc, and the standard screen defence had no answer.

The usual story is that the three point line broke drop coverage. I think that is close but slightly wrong, and the difference matters for what you do about it.

Drop was built to concede something. The big sits back, protects the rim, and the ball handler is offered the space in the middle of the floor around the free throw line extended. For decades that was a sensible bargain, because a contested midrange jumper off the dribble was among the worst shots in basketball and everybody knew it. Concede the worst shot, protect the best one. Simple.

What changed was not that guards started shooting more threes over the screen, although some did. It was that a group of them became genuinely comfortable rising into the exact space that drop hands out. The shot the scheme was designed to give away stopped being a bad shot for a handful of players, and against those players the entire logic inverts. You are not conceding a low value attempt any more. You are conceding a high percentage look to somebody who has practised it ten thousand times.

The responses all cost something. Play at the level of the screen and the big has to defend in space and get back, which is where the roll man becomes a problem and where interior defenders' legs go. Switch, and you get a mismatch somewhere, usually a small on a big, which is the scenario that quietly rebuilt the case for interior scoring. Blitz, and you are four on three behind the ball, which is a lot of trust to place in the rotation.

None of the answers are free. Which is why the good defences do not pick one. They pick per possession, based on which of the two players in the screen is more dangerous, and that requires bigs who can do several things and guards who communicate quickly.

The part I find genuinely funny is where this leads. Chase the pull up out of the game and you push offences toward the switch, and the switch gives you a mismatch on the block.

The most modern defensive coverage in the sport keeps producing the oldest offensive action in the sport, and everybody pretends not to notice.