1.5: The Paint Opens, 2001 to the Present

Chapter 1: History and eras

Illegal defense removed, the pick-and-roll and spacing take over, Nash and the Suns make the case early, and the 2022-23 take-foul change; the era Chapter 3 describes.

No new terms introduced. No diagrams.

This is the era the rest of this site is written about. Every action in Chapter 3 and every coverage in Chapter 4 is the current game, and the current game begins when the rules stopped guaranteeing an attacker one-on-one space and stopped allowing a defender to stand in the lane. What happened afterwards is that the sport spent twenty years discovering that the answer to both was spacing.

Era
The paint opens, 2001 to the present
Begins
2001: illegal defense removed and defensive three seconds introduced for 2001-02. The date is a stated gap; see lecture 1.4.
Ends
The era is current. It has no end boundary.
What it looked like
Help may come from anywhere but may not wait in the paint, so the offense spaces the floor, drives the gaps and shoots from the corners.
Era 1: The paint opens: help has to be earned rather than parked.

1 What the two rule changes did to the floor

Removing illegal defense allowed a defense to be anywhere. Defensive three seconds stopped it being in the lane, because a defender there must be “actively guarding an opponent within three seconds.”1 Together they replace one arrangement of the floor with another.

Under the old rules, an offense that cleared a side got a genuine one-on-one, because the defense was forbidden to zone up behind it. Under the new ones it does not, because help may come from anywhere; but help also cannot sit and wait at the rim. So the offense’s problem changes from “beat your man with no help coming” to “make the help come from somewhere it cannot afford to leave”. That is the whole of lecture 3.10: the gap, the drive, the kick-out, the skip pass.

Three consequences follow, and each is an entire lecture elsewhere on this site.

The pick-and-roll becomes the main action. A ball screen is the cheapest way to make two defenders guard one attacker, and the rules now permit the defense a dozen answers, which is why lecture 4.3 has six coverages in it and lecture 3.4 has five actions invented to beat them.

Spacing becomes the organizing idea. 5-out and 4-out 1-in exist to keep help far away, and the corner three becomes the shot an offense is built to produce because it is the shot the help defender has to leave to guard.

The big man’s job changes. The center of lecture 3.10 is a screener, a roller and a rim protector; the post-up that was the whole offense in lecture 1.3 becomes one option among many, used mostly against a mismatch.

2 Nash and the Suns

The case for the current game was made publicly, and early, by one team.

Player
Steve Nash, point guard, Phoenix Suns
Standing
Most Valuable Player, 2, in 2004-05 and 2005-06.2 Hall of Fame, Class of 2018.3
Second bearing
Each is on one publisher.(single publisher)
Why he mattered
The player whose team made the case for pace and spacing in the first seasons after the paint opened, several years before the rest of the league agreed.
Player 1: Steve Nash: two MVP awards for playing the way the rules had just started to reward.

NBA.com’s review of the first of those seasons describes what it looked like at the time: “Nash set the league ablaze with a frenetic pace that resulted in a league-best 62 regular-season wins for the Phoenix Suns and an MVP award for Nash.”4 The word the page reaches for is pace, which is the measurement lecture 2.1 takes up.

3 Duncan, and the era’s overlap

The other player carded here won the league’s highest individual award in the first two seasons after the rule change, playing the position the change was supposed to have devalued.

Player
Tim Duncan, forward, San Antonio Spurs
Standing
Most Valuable Player, 2, in 2001-02 and 2002-03.5 Finals Most Valuable Player, 3, in 1998-99, 2002-03 and 2004-05.6 Hall of Fame, Class of 2020.7
Second bearing
Each is on one publisher.(single publisher)
Why he mattered
The last player to win the league’s highest individual honor as a traditional big man on both sides of the rule change that opened the paint.
Player 2: Tim Duncan: MVP in the first two seasons of the new rules, and Finals MVP in the last season of the old ones.

His Finals MVP rows straddle the boundary: one in 1998-99, under the old rules, and two afterwards.8 That is worth stating because it is the honest version of what a rule change does. It does not end careers or reverse who is good. It changes what a team has to do to get a shot, and the players who were already good at the new thing get better.

4 The take foul, 2022-23

One later rule change is on file with a primary source, and it is the one lecture 4.1 is built around. The league announced in July 2022 that “beginning with the 2022-23 NBA season” the penalty for a transition take foul would be that “the offensive team will be awarded one free throw, which may be attempted by any player on the offensive team in the game at the time that the foul is committed.” and “the offensive team will retain possession of the ball.”9

A question this raises, answered here rather than left open. This chapter’s rule is that an era begins and ends at a dated rule change, and the 2022-23 take foul is a dated rule change with a primary source, which is more than either of the two gaps in this chapter can say. So why is it not a sixth era boundary? Because a boundary in this chapter has to mark a change in how the game is played, not merely a change in the rule book, and the take foul removed one tactic from one situation. Illegal defense in 2001 changed what a defense was allowed to be; the shot clock changed what a possession was; the three-point line changed what a shot was worth. The take foul changed none of those. It is recorded here as considered and declined, so that a later reader finds a decision rather than an oversight; if its effects ever earn a lecture of their own, the question is worth reopening.

It is a small rule with a clean mechanism: it made a tactic uneconomic rather than illegal. The team that fouls to stop a break now gives up a free throw and the ball, so the trade that made the foul worth it no longer works. That is the shape most modern rule changes take, and it is why this chapter’s boundaries are rule changes rather than trends: a rule changes the arithmetic on a specific day.

Hand-checking is not sourced here. The elimination of hand-checking is usually dated to 2004-05 and is usually named as a cause of the era’s scoring increase. NBA.com’s season review of 2004-05 is on file and does not mention it.10 So this lecture does not assert it. What would close the gap: the league’s own announcement of the rule change, or a rulebook edition carrying its adoption date.

5 Where this chapter hands over

Chapter 1 has been about dates. Chapter 2 is about measurements: how much the three-point rate actually changed, what pace is now, where shots come from, and which of those claims this site can source and which it cannot. Chapters 3 and 4 are the game this era produced, action by action and coverage by coverage.

Footnotes

  1. NBA Official, “RULE NO. 10: Violations and Penalties”, https://official.nba.com/rule-no-10-violations-and-penalties/, retrieved 2026-09-21. Section VII, verbatim: “Any defensive player, who is positioned in the 16-foot lane or the area extending 4 feet past the lane endline, must be actively guarding an opponent within three seconds.” Saved as nba-rule-10-violations.↩︎

  2. NBA.com, “NBA MVP Award Winners”, https://www.nba.com/news/history-mvp-award-winners, retrieved 2026-09-21. Counted rows: Nash, “2005-06 — Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns” and “2004-05 — Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns”; Duncan, “2002-03 — Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs” and “2001-02 — Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”. Saved as nba-mvp-winners.↩︎

  3. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, inductee list, https://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/, retrieved 2026-09-21. Under PLAYER: “Steve Nash” then “Class of 2018”; “Tim Duncan” then “Class of 2020”. Saved as hoophall-inductees.↩︎

  4. NBA.com, “Season Review: 2004-05”, https://www.nba.com/history/season-recap/2004-05, retrieved 2026-09-21. Verbatim: “Nash set the league ablaze with a frenetic pace that resulted in a league-best 62 regular-season wins for the Phoenix Suns and an MVP award for Nash.” The page does not mention a hand-checking rule change. Saved as nba-recap-2004-05.↩︎

  5. NBA.com, “NBA MVP Award Winners”, https://www.nba.com/news/history-mvp-award-winners, retrieved 2026-09-21. Counted rows: Nash, “2005-06 — Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns” and “2004-05 — Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns”; Duncan, “2002-03 — Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs” and “2001-02 — Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”. Saved as nba-mvp-winners.↩︎

  6. NBA.com, “NBA Finals MVP Award Winners”, https://www.nba.com/history/awards/finals-mvp, retrieved 2026-09-21. Counted rows for Duncan: “2004-05: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”, “2002-03: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”, “1998-99: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”. Saved as nba-finals-mvp.↩︎

  7. Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, inductee list, https://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/, retrieved 2026-09-21. Under PLAYER: “Steve Nash” then “Class of 2018”; “Tim Duncan” then “Class of 2020”. Saved as hoophall-inductees.↩︎

  8. NBA.com, “NBA Finals MVP Award Winners”, https://www.nba.com/history/awards/finals-mvp, retrieved 2026-09-21. Counted rows for Duncan: “2004-05: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”, “2002-03: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”, “1998-99: Tim Duncan, San Antonio Spurs”. Saved as nba-finals-mvp.↩︎

  9. NBA, “NBA Board of Governors approves heightened penalty for ‘transition take foul’”, https://www.nba.com/news/nba-board-of-governors-approves-heightened-penalty-for-transition-take-foul, retrieved 2026-09-17. Verbatim: “Beginning with the 2022-23 NBA season”, then two bullets, “The offensive team will be awarded one free throw, which may be attempted by any player on the offensive team in the game at the time that the foul is committed.” and “The offensive team will retain possession of the ball.” Saved as nba-2022-take-foul.↩︎

  10. NBA.com, “Season Review: 2004-05”, https://www.nba.com/history/season-recap/2004-05, retrieved 2026-09-21. Verbatim: “Nash set the league ablaze with a frenetic pace that resulted in a league-best 62 regular-season wins for the Phoenix Suns and an MVP award for Nash.” The page does not mention a hand-checking rule change. Saved as nba-recap-2004-05.↩︎