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To Three, or Not to Three…
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Shawn Jones
DIRECTOR, ATHLETICS
Shawn has 30 years of head basketball coaching experience combined with 11 years as an athletic director. He has coached in Colorado and Texas, and has taken teams to three Final Four tournaments and a state championship. He has seen numerous players of his continue on to compete at the college and professional level of the sport. He is also proud to have seen many of his athletes become high school and collegiate coaches themselves. As director of athletics, Shawn is a key member of Ballogy’s team, driving the company’s athletic strategy, partnerships, coach engagement, and product vision. He has been married to his high school sweetheart for 32 years and they have raised three wonderful children together. Shawn has a passion for player development and the desire to assist coaches with effective, time-saving tools of administering and assessing skill development drills.
I challenge you to watch any athlete—boy or girl—over the age of 9 or 10. Where do they go as soon as they step on the court? Yep, straight to the three-point line. Why? What makes that little arc so magically enticing to every shooter?
Maybe it’s the Steph Curry or Caitlin Clark effect. Every kid wants to drain it from downtown. What they don’t realize is those athletes shot thousands of reps each summer inside the three-point line before they were ever good enough to step outside it.
We live in an instant-gratification world. Kids want to skip the grind, the long days of boring, repetitive practice, and jump straight to highlight-reel threes. I remember one of my favorite high school players to watch, Phil Forte from Flower Mound Marcus in Texas. His shooting routine—on his own—wasn’t just shots; it was makes. Every day he had to make 480 shots. Not shoot. Make. Most kids today don’t even shoot that many in a day, let alone make them.
Phil was named MVP of the Texas State Tournament in 2012, led his team to back-to-back state titles, starred at Oklahoma State, and now coaches at the University of North Texas. His teammate? Marcus Smart, who went on to the NBA.
I tell that story for this reason: Phil, a 6’0” guard, had to grind daily to become one of the best shooters in the country. He didn’t just stroll into the gym and chuck threes like scud missiles. He mastered mid-range pull-ups, catch-and-shoot wings, floaters, glass shots, corner jumpers—you name it. All at game speed. All with free throws between series. All for years.
The three-pointer may be the shot du jour in today’s NBA, but every sniper you see out there put in years of reps inside the arc. Kids just don’t get that.
This season we watched the OKC Thunder win it all behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s MVP and Finals MVP. And how did he dominate? Pull-up jumpers. Mid-range fadeaways. Scoring in the paint. SGA proved the long-lost art of the two-point game still wins championships.
That’s the lesson for us. Youth coaches, high school coaches—we have to hold players accountable to master the 8–15 foot shots. Scoring is scoring. Putting the ball in the basket consistently is all that matters. Once form and strength improve, then move them back to 19, 20, 25 feet. But if they’re breaking form just to reach the rim, they’re too far out.
Nobody criticized SGA for thriving inside the arc—he took home the MVPs. Nobody criticized Phil Forte for living in the mid-range—he took home tournament MVP. Teach your players to own the twos before they chase the threes.
To Three, or Not to Three… That’s the question. The answer? Not until they’ve mastered the two.