According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the league will encourage more players to fire up last-second shots from distance by no longer counting misses as the player’s, but rather a “team miss.
“The NBA will implement a new change for the 2025-26 season: unsuccessful end-of-period heaves will now be recorded as a missed field-goal attempt for the team, not the player, sources tell ESPN,” Charania wrote in a post to X Wednesday. “Those long heaves will no longer impact an individual player's percentages.”
The NBA will now classify a shot as a “heave” if it comes within the final three seconds of a game’s opening three quarters, is shot from further than 36 feet from the basket, and the play in which it’s a part originates in the backcourt.