Valuing raw 3pt% has come to an end

[Frankie]

Steph attempted over twice as many per game, that in itself solidifies who is better.

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

[Lunartic]

Lubron is and always has been a better shooter than Curry, many, many advanced stats and the eye test proves this

[dhsilv2]

As an old-school, old fogey, I still prefer to rely on my eye test over any other way of judging players. Stats are good, and fun and all that but they just don't always tell the real story. A guy gets 5 rebounds that come right to him, whereas another guy fights his butt off pulling down 4 hard-fought boards. Stats will say the first guy is better, but I'll still take the second guy.

As long as you watch 2000 games a year and take notes on them. I think that works well. If you aren't doing that..I'd guess it's pretty misleading.

[Marrrcuss]

Steph attempted over twice as many per game, that in itself solidifies who is better.

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

[dockingsched]

The poll wasn’t serious, Jesus people.

The point was that no one should be taking raw 3pt%as face value, and if you do, then you should be prepared to call Lebron better than Steph, which no one should be. The poll is supposed to highlight how ridiculous that stance is.

[dockingsched]

Is anyone seriously arguing that this proves Lebron is a better shooter than Steph?

No and this is the whole point of the thread.

Yup, just using it as another example why 3pt percentage shouldn’t be that valuable. Seen some posts saying that people don’t use it that way anymore, but that’s not true.

Just recently there were people talking about a guy like Giddey being a 3pt threat just cause of how his percentage over a small stretch without any context at all.

[Yoshun]

This is true for any statistic. They all need to be used in context and in conjunction with other evaluation methods.

3pt% has it's place, but other factors (like volume) need to be taken into consideration.

[ShootersShoot]

Honestly, pretty impressive for the 39 year old. I know the 3PA is not that high compared to say a guy like steph, but Bron's game has never been about volume three point shooting. The fact that he is getting career highs in 3pt% and it being a very high percentage is incredible, simply incredible.

[JonFromVA]

Steph attempted over twice as many per game, that in itself solidifies who is better.

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Not quite the right metaphor, there's just a lot more context to the NBA problem and how a player's decision making affects winning.

[Marrrcuss]

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Not quite the right metaphor, there's just a lot more context to the NBA problem and how a player's decision making affects winning.

Meh, he's also not coming off pics, doesnt have a point guard like Dray, and doesnt have a Klay that they are afraid to leave.

[Haldi]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

[ShootersShoot]

Steph attempted over twice as many per game, that in itself solidifies who is better.

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Its more like what if a drug was considered 1% more effective than another, but the other drug has cured more than double the amount of people. And if the 1% more effective drug was tried on more people, the effectiveness with regards to percentage would most likely decrease. If we tried both drugs on the exact same number of people, most likely one drug's effectiveness would remain 40% while the other will most likely decreases below 40%.

[JonFromVA]

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Not quite the right metaphor, there's just a lot more context to the NBA problem and how a player's decision making affects winning.

Meh, he's also not coming off pics, doesnt have a point guard like Dray, and doesnt have a Klay that they are afraid to leave.

There isn't much to question about either player given their age and where they're at in their respective careers.

[John Murdoch]

I pay less and less attention to traditional counting stats the more I learn about the game. I feel like every year I watch I deepen my understanding of what is important and what isn’t, and I think pure counting stats are so heavily context dependent as to be secondary in basketball discussions.

Jordan’s scoring titles don’t move me at all but his first step, ludicrously stable posture when shooting and dribbling, lift, and off ball game does. Luka’s 33-10-10 is whatever, his genius level use of leverage around screens and skip passing is what draws my attention. LeBron this year has been incredible aesthetically shooting 3s his balance and follow through have been so disciplined, that’s what I’ll remember not the percentage.

Use your eyes and focus on the artistry and talent of the players and coaches and pay less attention to the PPG and FG%. Smooth it out with some impact metrics but don’t get too caught up in it.

Bro been workinh with Reddick on and off the court lol srs tho i have def noticed that too..he jumps less but snaps the wrist more consitantly and its paying off

[Marrrcuss]

Yep 40% shooter on 12 attempts per game is obviously a much better perimeter shooter than 41% on 5 attempts per game. Like its not even close. In fairness, I have never seen anyone make this claim anyway. It seems a bit captain obvious-y that further context matters when looking at 3 point % efficiency

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Its more like what if a drug was considered 1% more effective than another, but the other drug has cured more than double the amount of people. And if the 1% more effective drug was tried on more people, the effectiveness with regards to percentage would most likely decrease. If we tried both drugs on the exact same number of people, most likely one drug's effectiveness would remain 40% while the other will most likely decreases below 40%.

[ShootersShoot]

As a research guy, all of this sounds stupid as fugg to me.

If the drug from the clinical trial i am working on cures a higher percentage, but you tried your drug on more people....fugg it, nevermind. This lebron thing has yall silly af,

What makes it even worse is some of you look at lebrons total of points and say its because of more years, a longevity stat. Its the same premise, mofos!!!

Its more like what if a drug was considered 1% more effective than another, but the other drug has cured more than double the amount of people. And if the 1% more effective drug was tried on more people, the effectiveness with regards to percentage would most likely decrease. If we tried both drugs on the exact same number of people, most likely one drug's effectiveness would remain 40% while the other will most likely decreases below 40%.

Its just basic logic. You really cant understand such a simple concept?

If Lebron shot more threes, would it be likely the percentage stays the same, increases, or decreases based on historical data?
As a research guy, you really should reconsider your career if you cant even understand the theory behind sample size.

That is literally the premise of this thread, volume and its affect on percentage. Christ, the sheer ignorance of some people..

[SelfishPlayer]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

In life there is a bias towards innovators and early adopters. When guys witness in real time innovators and early adoptors perform excellently, it is hard to then 40 years later give credit to someone that is literally 10% better than the innovator and early adopter. It took 40 years for that guy and his era to catch up. The current great would need to be just as advanced and superior to his contemporaries as the innovator was to his back in his era. LeBron may be a better three point shooter than Bird, but LeBron isn't an unquestionably better three point shooter than all of his competition like Bird was.

[og15]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

I think what you're citing here is interesting, but some differences make it not a direct comparison because now we're delving into somewhat hypothetical, while what the OP listed is directly comparable data.

In seasons with 1.5+ attempts, Bird shot 38.9% or higher in 7/8 seasons and 40%+ in 6/8 seasons. Obviously it was a different time. Generally most teams can create open looks (catch and shoot corner three, transition, pick and pop, etc) up to 6-7 3PA for a guy like Bird who had excellent off ball screens and would be used as a screener and in movement, so one would expect that if it is strategized (like we do now) which means he's working on it, you wouldn't expect the percentages to go lower than the 40%+ range he shot on ~2-3 attempts. We already know Bird could come off movement and make shots effectively and we know he had range, so obviously we can envision that we have many options of how to generate good 3PT shots for him.

Obviously as we know, the fewer 3PA you take as a first option (below ~2-3 per game), generally the lower your 3PT% will be due to heaves, late clock, etc having a disproportionate impact on percentage as they become a larger amount of total attempts at lower amounts.

The affect of attempts on 3PA is not linear for first options, it is more likely to have a positive correlation to 3PA up to around 3 attempts, then stabilizes, then depending on the player, it will decrease at a certain point, probably around 7-8+ when you start taking a higher percentage of difficult ones to get that many up.

So there is some nuance, and we shouldn't look at the relationship of percentage to attempts as a directly linear one where more attempts = lower percentage. Initially it is opposite, then there's a threshold where it starts to reduce percentage, but that threshold is different for different players too.

[Haldi]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

In life there is a bias towards innovators and early adopters. When guys witness in real time innovators and early adoptors perform excellently, it is hard to then 40 years later give credit to someone that is literally 10% better than the innovator and early adopter. It took 40 years for that guy and his era to catch up. The current great would need to be just as advanced and superior to his contemporaries as the innovator was to his back in his era. LeBron may be a better three point shooter than Bird, but LeBron isn't an unquestionably better three point shooter than all of his competition like Bird was.

This is amazingly said right here, and really highlights what I mean. Sadly, for most of this forum, its much worse than that. The way most talk around here is that Bird is BOTH 10% better than everyone AND an innovator/early adopter lol. Its really weird this sports obsession with lifting legends(and they very much are legends) up to levels of play they were never at. Just think of all the threads that say things like "how much would (insert name) average today?" I can't think of any other sport that does this at this level, is it cause its harder to tell in basketball? I dont know...

And no, Lebron is not unquestionably better than his competiton today, compared to how Bird and the MJs were in the 80s/90s, I have to completely agree with that and I always have. If thats the main argument for why Jordan is the GOAT over Lebron or Bird is the 2nd GOAT shooter behind Curry, than sure, I'd agree with that. But if the question - "who is the best basketball player" is really about who was the best at playing the sport of basketball compared to everyone who ever played basketball (or the same for shooter), well the answer is a bunch of players playing today, or at least a few. Shooters would be even more obviously, that skill has absolutely skyrocketed.

Also, its not really Lebron's fault that he isnt more than, lets say like you said 10% better than everyone hes playing against today. It is MUCH easier to be way better than others when a professional sport is newer than when its been around for a long time. In this case the difference is really when the sport became way more popular. The league had been around a good 30 years or so before Birds, but it wasnt a very popular sport. Once the popularity really went off, thanks to the MJs and the Bird, the level of competition in this sport became absolutely ridiculous. The amount of training it took for teenagers and even kids I'm sure more than doubled. This is the MAIN reason why players today are much better. We're talking about thousands and thousands more hours in some cases of playing and practicing the sport. I made it to college ball in Canada (so not very far lol), training pretty damn hard but I also played a ton of baseball and football and enjoyed life lol. I can't imagine how much better I would be at ball if I had focused that much more time into it, it would be ridiculous. And I still wouldnt even sniff how much time Curry has probably spent perfecting this craft. Its sad the amount of haters this guy has, what he did to this sport is absolutely magical. And yet we have a tons of older fans here that think he's a weakling and wouldn't be that good in the 80s or 90s lol. Again, just weird.

But yea, thanks for a great response and so true. I wasn't expecting that to be honest

[Haldi]

Its amazing to me how many people are calling out the OP here, and saying “of course we don’t do this and know that Curry is a better 3 pt shooter”, yet when it comes to comparing Lebron to older players in 3 pt shooting, all that goes out the window. I wrote a long post about this a few weeks ago and got laughed at for saying Lebron is a much better 3 pt shooter than Bird ever was. A couple games after that post, Lebron led a 20 point comeback against the Clippers that included 6 3pt shots in the 4th quarter, all of which except for one wide open shot, were well contested/off the dribble/step backs. Basically a bunch of shots we’ve never seen Bird even attempt, let alone hit, let alone hit 6 of them in ONE quarter lol.

I keep seeing people here say things like, my eye test is good enough that i can evaluate these stats and still understand why Curry is better… yet when it comes to Bird, he would somehow be a top 3 or top 5 or top 10 3pt shooter today lol. The mental gymnastics you need to do for all that is impressive.

Truth is, if you can truly take in account the shot difficulty and most of all, the type of defense that is thrown at you, which I haven’t seen mentioned once here, and you leave all your bias against today’s players and favoritism for the good ole boys, you’d soon realize not only is Lebron is a much better 3pt shooter than Bird ever was… in fact, you’d have to go pretty far down the list of today’s best shooters to place Bird in the right spot. Bird had a couple feet of room before his defender pretty much every time he had the ball behind the 3pt line. Imagine defending Curry or Lebron like that lol.

It’s fascinating to me how much people want to keep claiming that players in the earlier years to mid years of the league were so much better than todays, I’ll never understand this, it’s mostly only in this sport. Imagine talking to a super fan of skateboarding (another very young sport) and them claiming Stacy Peralta is a much better skateboarder than todays top guys. There’s teenagers that are better than that guy ever was lol. And of course its a very different sport but the evolution evidence is the same. I saw a like 14 year kid on YouTube do a 1080 on a half pipe lol. That didn’t exist in the 80s…

Anyways, sorry to highjack your thread OP but it’s a really good thread btw, I completely agree with you and I can only hope that people are able to use that same thinking energy and transfer it their comparisons of older players too… but I doubt it.

I think what you're citing here is interesting, but some differences make it not a direct comparison because now we're delving into somewhat hypothetical, while what the OP listed is directly comparable data.

In seasons with 1.5+ attempts, Bird shot 38.9% or higher in 7/8 seasons and 40%+ in 6/8 seasons. Obviously it was a different time. Generally most teams can create open looks (catch and shoot corner three, transition, pick and pop, etc) up to 6-7 3PA for a guy like Bird who had excellent off ball screens and would be used as a screener and in movement, so one would expect that if it is strategized (like we do now) which means he's working on it, you wouldn't expect the percentages to go lower than the 40%+ range he shot on ~2-3 attempts. We already know Bird could come off movement and make shots effectively and we know he had range, so obviously we can envision that we have many options of how to generate good 3PT shots for him.

Obviously as we know, the fewer 3PA you take as a first option (below ~2-3 per game), generally the lower your 3PT% will be due to heaves, late clock, etc having a disproportionate impact on percentage as they become a larger amount of total attempts at lower amounts.

The affect of attempts on 3PA is not linear for first options, it is more likely to have a positive correlation to 3PA up to around 3 attempts, then stabilizes, then depending on the player, it will decrease at a certain point, probably around 7-8+ when you start taking a higher percentage of difficult ones to get that many up.

So there is some nuance, and we shouldn't look at the relationship of percentage to attempts as a directly linear one where more attempts = lower percentage. Initially it is opposite, then there's a threshold where it starts to reduce percentage, but that threshold is different for different players too.

I agree with most of this, but I'm never a fan of the whole " we can imagine that Bird could hit much higher difficulty shots than he did if they ran plays like that for him back then... but hey, they didnt". There's a reasons those plays weren't an option back than, its cause no one was that good of a shooter that they could shoot very high difficulty shots like that without being very inefficient, including Bird. There is a massive difference between coming off a screen and setting your feet perfectly, catching the ball and the defender just jogging over to you and then having plenty of time to release, compared to what Curry does. There is a massive difference between someone setting a pick for you, guy barely fights through it cause he doesnt think you're gonna shoot from out there so you shoot a wide open shot from one or two slow dribbles compared to a fast action tight cover pick and shoot where your defender fights hard through the screen but gets caught just long enough to know you have a split second to shoot if you go around hard. Same thing with stepbacks or any shotgun resets where the guy is still right behind you and so many others. If Bird was to try all of these kinds of shots, he would be wildly inefficient, he'd probably hit like 1 in 10 because he was THAT good for back then, where most of us would be 0 out of 10 lol. THAT's why they didn't do that back then. Its not cause coaches were big meanies, or it was uncool to shoot threes (which I've heard here before lol). Its cause the level of practice had not reached there yet. It would've taken Bird an insane amount of practice to get to that level. But we know he never did.

Sure, we can imagine that IF Bird had done all of Curry's practice and training, he could be as good at shooting. But thats the whole point, is that he didn't. Hell,a guy like Lebron, who isnt even one of the league's top shooters, trained way harder at that (and everything else for that matter) than Bird ever did. I really hate when we try to give guys attributes that they never had. We know exactly how good of a player Bird was, and I dont mind saying, if Bird played today, exactly how he was back then, there are some things he would adapt to quickly. But he would not become an insanely better three shooter just like that. That takes years and years of insane training, which if we reran Bird's career arc and he trained exactly as much as he did, but focused on those things more, there would be a lot of great Bird qualities we'd lose.