NBA Introduces New Rule for the 2025-26 Season
The NBA will implement a significant change for the 2025-26 season, modifying the way desperate shots at the end of each period are recorded.
The new regulations, approved at the league’s board of governors meeting, stipulate that missed shots from long distance at the end of the quarters will be counted as team shot attempts, and not the player’s.
This modification seeks to encourage a greater number of long-distance shots by players. The league already tested this rule in the Summer League in July.
The NBA competition committee has supported this modification in recent months.
For statistical purposes, the NBA will instruct teams that any shot taken in the last three seconds of the first three quarters, and launched from at least 36 feet away from the baseline, will count as a team shot attempt, but not as an individual attempt.
Many players have avoided taking long-distance shots at the end of quarters to protect their individual shooting percentages. The league hopes this “desperation shot rule” will solve this problem.
According to SportRadar data, last season players made approximately 4% of the shots taken in the last three seconds of the first three quarters of a game, from a minimum distance of 36 feet. According to their tracking data, Stephen Curry of Golden State made four shots under these criteria last season, and Nikola Jokic of Denver, three.
