The way basketball is now played looks entirely different from when the NBA was first conceived in 1949. Space and pace is the name of the game today and the ability to shoot from distance, enabling lineups to provide more driving lanes to the rim, is a skill teams continue to covet more and more.
One needs to look no further than the 2016 Finals: the Golden State Warriors led the league in three point attempts and percentage, while the Cleveland Cavaliers were third and seventh in those respective categories. Beyond that series, of the teams who ranked in the top-10 in three-point attempts, nine made the playoffs; similarly, teams ranked one through eight in three point percentage all found themselves in the postseason.