Playoff mid-range — why it comes back in every postseason chess match

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Every May the three-point analytics crowd rediscovers that mid-range shots appear at elevated rates in playoff basketball and interprets it as a failure of modern offensive philosophy. The real explanation is simple: playoff defenses are specifically prepared for the plays that generated catch-and-shoot threes in the regular season. When corner three actions are taken away by a defense that has game-planned for them specifically, the mid-range pull-up becomes the pressure release valve. It's not that mid-range is secretly good. It's that eliminating it specifically opens corner threes, and when those get taken too, mid-range is the second-best available option. Context over ideology.

Every May the three-point analytics crowd rediscovers that mid-range shots appear at elevated rates in playoff basketball and interprets it as a failure of modern offensive philosophy. The real explanation is simple: playoff defenses are specifically prepared for the plays that generated catch-and-shoot threes in the regular season. When corner three actions are taken away by a defense that has game-planned for them specifically, the mid-range pull-up becomes the pressure release valve. It's not that mid-range is secretly good. It's that eliminating it specifically opens corner threes, and when those get taken too, mid-range is the second-best available option. Context over ideology.

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