Curry has dominated this era, but would get crushed in the 90's

[cpower]

I think some of the posters here are missing the point by bringing up comparable players who were successful in the 90s. Yes they were successful but they weren’t dominant. I think Steph would have averaged like 18-20ppg in his prime and been a multiple time star but I don’t think he would have dominated the way he did in this era and been a two time MVP and perennial All NBA player. The defenses were just way more physical and could get away with so much more. I would have loved to see him play back then though and get into some fights

come on man....in 90s centers would be too slow to defend Steph. he takes them for meal every time. Just look at how 37 year old Curry dominated physical Orlando team tonight....you would be crazy to say 90s defense can do anything to this man - he literally shoots from half court!!

Watch on YouTube

[og15]

While I don't love to prop the Gil's arena guys because they say a lot of dumb stuff, they actually had honest answers given in this interview with Tim Hardaway.

Tim Hardaway on Arenas podcast said hand checking was not an all encompassing thing and was mainly effective on set up point guards standing around running the offense, and guys (mentioned, like Derek Harper) who did not have handles.

He told Brandon Jennings that they would wear him down by running him off 3000 picks, though sometimes people want to swing so far with the pendulum and act like picks didn't start working until guys were doing illegal screens. No one could actually navigate and use screens to get open until the modern era.

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

;ab_channel=MichaelJordanSportsvision

Remember this game?
No one could get open off a screen.
The guards couldn't even move, and Mark Jackson never once got by Pippen because he just manhandled him.
There was never any situation where a switch would be forced, because that can only happen with illegal screens
The elite defenders just used their hands and didn't use any fundamentals or keep their hands up, etc

When Nick Young asked him, "why is basically jail basketball considered good basketball" in reference to guys hitting people in the 90's, he actually answered honestly, instead of how many fans want to make it seem. He didn't say, "because that's REAL basketball", or any of that. He said, "because that is what we grew up with". Then he said, I like the rule changes, though some of the things being called flagrants are weak.

Too many people just have difficulty actually being honest with themselves. If people are, they will be able to say, "yes, I like this better because that is what I grew up with". And guess what? That's OKAY. Instead, it has to be made into a "because it is the best", because everything else sucked, etc, etc.

[Sedale Threatt]

While I don't love to prop the Gil's arena guys because they say a lot of dumb stuff, they actually had honest answers given in this interview with Tim Hardaway.

Tim Hardaway on Arenas podcast said hand checking was not an all encompassing thing and was mainly effective on set up point guards standing around running the offense, and guys (mentioned, like Derek Harper) who did not have handles.

He told Brandon Jennings that they would wear him down by running him off 3000 picks, though sometimes people want to swing so far with the pendulum and act like picks didn't start working until guys were doing illegal screens. No one could actually navigate and use screens to get open until the modern era.

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

;ab_channel=MichaelJordanSportsvision

Remember this game?
No one could get open off a screen.
The guards couldn't even move, and Mark Jackson never once got by Pippen because he just manhandled him.
There was never any situation where a switch would be forced, because that can only happen with illegal screens
The elite defenders just used their hands and didn't use any fundamentals or keep their hands up, etc

When Nick Young asked him, "why is basically jail basketball considered good basketball" in reference to guys hitting people in the 90's, he actually answered honestly, instead of how many fans want to make it seem. He didn't say, "because that's REAL basketball", or any of that. He said, "because that is what we grew up with". Then he said, I like the rule changes, though some of the things being called flagrants are weak.

Too many people just have difficulty actually being honest with themselves. If people are, they will be able to say, "yes, I like this better because that is what I grew up with". And guess what? That's OKAY. Instead, it has to be made into a "because it is the best", because everything else sucked, etc, etc.

Nostalgia, basically. Which is what I think 98% of what these arguments boil down to. And as somebody who doesn't have a nostalgic bone in his body, I have zero problem going with the flow and moving on with the passage of time.

The only NBA era I unabashedly hated was those last few years of the 90s and moving into the 00s where nobody ran anymore and it felt like a miracle when anybody cracked 100 points. And that was greatly tempered by the fact my team had a huge amount of success. But in terms of just popping on a random game like I had been accustomed to doing, I could count on one hand the number of teams I wanted to watch.

Otherwise, there's been a lot to like about every stage.

I just cannot put into words how much I loathe hearing the 90s characterized as some endless prison brawl where players were lucky to get off the court alive, when that was simply not the case.

[Sedale Threatt]

I think some of the posters here are missing the point by bringing up comparable players who were successful in the 90s. Yes they were successful but they weren’t dominant.

Read the thread title. Unless there was a subsequent clarification in the earlier pages I didn't read, pretty hard to misinterpret.

[Ainosterhaspie]

Nostalgia is fine until it starts changing the facts about past and present which is what keeps happening in these discussions.

[Iwasawitness]

Curry wouldn’t be winning mvps with the real rules. That’s the point.

Yes, he would. In fact he’d probably have even more.

Nice reasoning

Dude, you haven’t given me a single good reason to believe anything you’ve had to say in this entire thread. Every single thing you’ve said has revolved around a mythologized version of what the 90s actually were. They weren’t some crash course where trying to get a shot off at the perimeter came at the risk of your life. They had slightly different rules… which barely would have impacted Curry. You’re acting like handchecking (which still happens today mind you) would have heavily impacted him when we’ve seen him dominate something far greater: defenses based on movement with multiple bigs that can guard the perimeter and that game planned entirely around him.

I’m not going to sugar coat this: your thread premise is laughable. If there was a HOF for bad threads, yours would be first ballot. The only thing greater than the amount of points that Curry would average in the 90s is the amount of people calling you out for being wrong. There is no objectivity to what you’ve said here. None. Just a person stuck in this mindset that the 90s were a holy grail of hard nosed physical basketball with some of the best defenses you’ll ever see, when in reality, people were standing around like they were outfielders in a baseball game. The distance between defenders and perimeter shooters was so great, you’d think they were being told everyone had covid and they needed to social distance. But somehow, the guy who can hit three pointers routinely with people so close that he can feel their breath apparently would get crushed by that kind of defense.

Get the **** out of here.

[FarBeyondDriven]

While I don't love to prop the Gil's arena guys because they say a lot of dumb stuff, they actually had honest answers given in this interview with Tim Hardaway.

Tim Hardaway on Arenas podcast said hand checking was not an all encompassing thing and was mainly effective on set up point guards standing around running the offense, and guys (mentioned, like Derek Harper) who did not have handles.

He told Brandon Jennings that they would wear him down by running him off 3000 picks, though sometimes people want to swing so far with the pendulum and act like picks didn't start working until guys were doing illegal screens. No one could actually navigate and use screens to get open until the modern era.

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

;ab_channel=MichaelJordanSportsvision

Remember this game?
No one could get open off a screen.
The guards couldn't even move, and Mark Jackson never once got by Pippen because he just manhandled him.
There was never any situation where a switch would be forced, because that can only happen with illegal screens
The elite defenders just used their hands and didn't use any fundamentals or keep their hands up, etc

When Nick Young asked him, "why is basically jail basketball considered good basketball" in reference to guys hitting people in the 90's, he actually answered honestly, instead of how many fans want to make it seem. He didn't say, "because that's REAL basketball", or any of that. He said, "because that is what we grew up with". Then he said, I like the rule changes, though some of the things being called flagrants are weak.

Too many people just have difficulty actually being honest with themselves. If people are, they will be able to say, "yes, I like this better because that is what I grew up with". And guess what? That's OKAY. Instead, it has to be made into a "because it is the best", because everything else sucked, etc, etc.

or maybe, they are being honest with themselves and believe not because "they grew up with it" but because that's their subjective truth?

The main issue with all of these types of discussions is you have people (like myself) that actually experienced 70s, 80s, 90s, etc basketball and therefore have actual frame of references when discussing these things as opposed to the other side which is mainly people that didn't start watching until the 00s or later.

[Onus]

This wasn’t called a foul.

[ShootersShoot]

So you agree that coaches back then would have benched you for taking such 3's, but that they'd not have the same issue with Steph Curry, or if they did, they'd get fired because owners/GMs would have seen the issue and fired them for it.

I think you're overestimating the ability of these coaches - who literally held back the game for decades because they weren't comfortable with 3's - if you think they would have instantly recognized things were different if they had Curry.

Fundamentally, they just thought they knew better and without access to really good data, there was nothing to show them how wrong they were.

Its not like steph came into the league spamming threes like today...his first two seasons, he averaged under five 3pt attempts per game, or less than a prime reggie miller.

If you dont think people catch on to unprecedented talent when it comes to anything, then you dont understand how human nature works. You think 90s coaches watching steph tear guys up in practice and drain 90 of 100 threes in practice and think ehh..lets bench this guy, especially looking at the lack of mid to low end starting talent overall in that era? Nope..they probably say lets see if he can do it in actual games, which he then would proceed to.

Hmm.

First, let's be clear that what we're talking about is the nature of paradigm shifts. It's a well-studied thing with origins in the scientific community. And there's an expression for how they tend to work in practice:

Science moves forward one funeral at a time.

It's not that one person comes up with something amazing and everyone drops what they're doing to emulate. Those who believe they already know the right way typically can never get their head around being wrong.

When a field progresses more rapidly than that, it's because the data is just so overwhelming it can't be argued with, and I would suggest that NBA basketball eventually got there about 10 years ago, but it didn't come from coaches watching 3-point shooters shoot and recognizing with their eye balls the truth. It came from large amounts of data becoming readily available, along with a team (Warriors) winning a championship this way.

Re: Steph tearing up practice draining 90 of 100 3's. So, have you ever looked at the result of historical 3-point contests? When you do what you see is that guys aren't actually that much better at it than they were decades ago. Herro just won the final round of this year's contest shooting 60%, and meanwhile Larry Bird one the first one shooting over 70%.

Further, it's not like Curry's ever actually been able to lap the field in these contests despite being the clear cut best shooter of all time, which really makes clear that what makes Curry the best isn't something that you can just see by having him shoot 100 3's. To see Chef Curry cook like we know he can cook, you need to build an offense around him and have him play game-in game-out against defenses going all out, and guess what? Coaches who didn't believe in the 3 would never do that.

It's a Catch 22 situation: To get coaches to see what was possible with the 3, you needed them to take a leap of faith on something they had no faith in, so they were never going to see what was possible until others proved it.

One last thing to note:

I believe a big part of the problem that coaches of the past had is the same one that many older fans still have:

More 3-point shooting leads to more unsuccessful offensive possessions, because the FG% on 3's is worse than on 2's.

Yes, rationally we know that 3's count for 50% more than 2's, but when you're judging things shot by shot, you're talking about embracing shots that are more likely to be missed, which makes it feel like the team is less effective even when this isn't true.

All this to say that there are a bunch of things that stood in the way of the 3-point shot being embraced for decades that are actually quite understandable despite my pithy language.

So you are saying a shooter of currys caliber wouldnt have caught on at some point? That coaches, who lets be real good shooting even in that era was coveted, would continue to at least not give him a chance even after witnessing the literal best shooter ever in practice? I find it truly hard to believe. Curry would be shredding guys in practice too, not just standstill shooting. You think a young hungry steph curry cant dominate practices/scrimmages in the 90s? LOL
Ffs man. You really think hes just standing there shooting around by himself?

Curry is a volume scorer who just so happens to be the best shooter and can play point guard. Thats why he wouldnt struggle in the 90s. Hes not some shooting specialist.

[og15]

While I don't love to prop the Gil's arena guys because they say a lot of dumb stuff, they actually had honest answers given in this interview with Tim Hardaway.

Tim Hardaway on Arenas podcast said hand checking was not an all encompassing thing and was mainly effective on set up point guards standing around running the offense, and guys (mentioned, like Derek Harper) who did not have handles.

He told Brandon Jennings that they would wear him down by running him off 3000 picks, though sometimes people want to swing so far with the pendulum and act like picks didn't start working until guys were doing illegal screens. No one could actually navigate and use screens to get open until the modern era.

Spoiler:

Watch on YouTube

;ab_channel=MichaelJordanSportsvision

Remember this game?
No one could get open off a screen.
The guards couldn't even move, and Mark Jackson never once got by Pippen because he just manhandled him.
There was never any situation where a switch would be forced, because that can only happen with illegal screens
The elite defenders just used their hands and didn't use any fundamentals or keep their hands up, etc

When Nick Young asked him, "why is basically jail basketball considered good basketball" in reference to guys hitting people in the 90's, he actually answered honestly, instead of how many fans want to make it seem. He didn't say, "because that's REAL basketball", or any of that. He said, "because that is what we grew up with". Then he said, I like the rule changes, though some of the things being called flagrants are weak.

Too many people just have difficulty actually being honest with themselves. If people are, they will be able to say, "yes, I like this better because that is what I grew up with". And guess what? That's OKAY. Instead, it has to be made into a "because it is the best", because everything else sucked, etc, etc.

or maybe, they are being honest with themselves and believe not because "they grew up with it" but because that's their subjective truth?

The main issue with all of these types of discussions is you have people (like myself) that actually experienced 70s, 80s, 90s, etc basketball and therefore have actual frame of references when discussing these things as opposed to the other side which is mainly people that didn't start watching until the 00s or later.

There are posters within all these different age groups who don't fall into the same place. We have had multiple posters comment who have watched since the 70's or 80's and have a totally different viewpoint.

Everyone can like what they want, and that's my point, we have our subjective truths, but some people aren't okay with that, they must fight to make everyone believe that their subjective preferred style or era is the best one and to think otherwise is a deficiency. And I'm not simply speaking about this in one direction.

For example, I don't dislike the game in that clip I posted, and though I would say generally there was a lot of bad habits and less fun basketball style that were ingrained into late 90's and early 00's basketball, there were exceptions. On the other hand, I know that there's a lot of the hyperbole or exaggerating that doesn't actually match the average game film made about some past eras. Maybe in 10-29 years we'll have the same thing being done with regards to the 00's and 10's.

[dhsilv2]

The irony here is that Mahmoud is exactly who curry would be if Mahmoud didn’t get blacklisted.

He would have been a two time MVP? Jesus Christ the posts you’ve in this thread make my head hurt.

Curry wouldn’t be winning mvps with the real rules. That’s the point.

Steph's not winning MVPs back when they didn't play defense.?

[FarBeyondDriven]

Yes, he would. In fact he’d probably have even more.

Nice reasoning

Dude, you haven’t given me a single good reason to believe anything you’ve had to say in this entire thread. Every single thing you’ve said has revolves around a mythologized version of what the 90s actually were. They weren’t some crash course where trying to get a shot off at the perimeter came at the risk of your life. They had slightly different rules… which barely would have impacted Curry. You’re acting like handchecking (which still happens today mind you) would have heavily impacted him when we’ve seen him dominate something far greater: defenses based on movement with multiple bigs that can guard the perimeter and that game planned entirely around him.

I’m not going to sugar coat this: your thread premise is laughable. If there was a HOF for bad threads, yours would be first ballot. The only thing greater than the amount of points that Curry would average in the 90s is the amount of people calling you out for being wrong. There is no objectivity to what you’ve said here. None. Just a person stuck in this mindset that the 90s were a holy grail of hard nosed physical basketball with some of the best defenses you’ll ever see, when in reality, people were standing around like they were outfielders in a baseball game. The distance between defenders and perimeter shooters was so great, you’d think they were being told everyone had covid and they needed to social distance. But somehow, the guy who can hit three pointers routinely with people so close that he can feel their breath apparently would get crushed by that kind of defense.

Get the **** out of here.

slightly different? Let's go over what has allowed Steph to dominate this era above and beyond his incredible skill as a shooter which isn't that unique given we've had great shooters throughout NBA history.

1) this era is way less physical. No hand-checking, bumping, holding, and no shot-blockers waiting in the paint

2) illegal moving screens. Half the battle for shooters back then was
a) getting on the court given their usually terrible defense and lack of position (lots of shooters before this era were like Curry, not natural point guards but too small to play SG)
b) getting separation. Because nobody plays defense, lack of defense hasn't mattered in this era. Teams are just trying to outscore other teams and will live with bad defense which wasn't the case back then. Especially in a rigged league that actually promotes offense and actively downplays defense and doesn't want its stars to be stymied. And with illegal moving screens, now shooters like Steph more easily receive the ball with open looks and/or due to bigs being forced to switch onto them they can more easily break them down, often utilizing hesis (carries) or utilize stepback/side travels to gain separation for threes. You simply didn't have that back then. Those screens would have been called.

3) without the ability to play by a completely different set of rules, Steph would have been forced to be a completely different type of player. My guess is he'd be more of a traditional point guard like Mark Price. He wouldn't shoot more than a handful of threes a game and he'd be picked on relentlessly on defense.

4) there weren't players like Draymond and therefore a system like the Warriors run wasn't a thing so spreading the floor giving Steph even more space to work with wouldn't be possible. You couldn't play a small ball 4/5 like Draymond back then because they'd get absolutely dominated due to how many elite 4/5s on the floor that would punish him

Steph happened because he came along when there were no elite centers in the NBA. This allowed Draymond to operate as a small ball center who could spread the floor since the true centers that were still around couldn't guard the perimeter. It took them out of the paint and with Klay also being a great shooter, teams simply didn't have the personnel to stop the Warriors for several seasons. But above all, illegal moving screens, carries, travels and push offs being allowed on top of that gave Steph the opportunity to be the best version of himself. It was a perfect storm that would not have been possible back in the 90s for a variety of reasons all listed.

At the end of the day it's not that he isn't good enough. It's because he'd be constrained first by the coaching and second by the rules. I feel like you people believe you could drop Steph into a 90s game and he'd easily replicate his production if not even more. It's laughable. He'd literally take the inbounding pass and start dribbling up the court and immediately be called for a carry since today's players can't even dribble at a standstill without carrying. I'm not being hyperbolic. So he'd have to be way more careful with his dribble thus eliminating so much of his "handle" that allows him to do all the exciting things you see him do. He'd be faced up and pressured the whole way up the court and be forced to give up the ball a lot. He wouldn't be using illegal screens so there'd be no switching onto slow bigs. He'd have to do his damage against guards and wings. And do that, without being able to do outlandish stepback/side threes which let's be honest, would be called for travels, and he couldn't carry so those wings/guards defending him, with hands all over him, holding him as he's trying to fight through contact, bumping him off his spot and a shot-blocking center waiting in the paint preventing him from driving, would all prevent the majority of what you presently see him doing on the court. THIS is what people mean when they say today's players wouldn't necessarily translate to prior eras whereas it'd be so much easier for past players to translate to today. It's just a much easier league now with all the rules bent to help offensive players. It's not because we're "oldheads" or "nostalgia". We're legit talking about completely different sports.

This is like trying to compare eras across other sports and it's just as laughable. Today's goalies with their massive pads, sticks, helmets and advancement in training and nutrition, couldn't be dropped into a game from decades past when they had tiny pads and no helmets and be expected to be better than goalies from those eras. Just like an Olympic sprinter couldn't replicate their times running on the same surface, with the same sneakers and no starting block like Jesse Owens had to deal with. Or Phelps swimming in the same depths in the same pools used in 1980 being expected to beat Spitz. Sure, maybe Phelps and Usain Bolt would still be faster. But not nearly by as much as people believe because rules have changed so dramatically they're almost completely different events just like the NBA is a completely different sport.

[Iwasawitness]

slightly different? Let's go over what has allowed Steph to dominate this era above and beyond his incredible skill as a shooter which isn't that unique given we've had great shooters throughout NBA history.

1) this era is way less physical. No hand-checking, bumping, holding, and no shot-blockers waiting in the paint

No, no, no and no.

If you're going to ask me to go over something with you, don't start out your list of things with something that simply isn't true. All four of those things that you just said happen in every single game today, and didn't happen nearly as much back then as you guys like to pretend it did. I'm done with this campaign people are on to fictionalize the 90s in an effort to make them sound like the hardest era to ever play in. That couldn't be further from the truth. Waste someone else's time with that long drawn out post, because I'm not reading it.

Also, way to try to downplay Curry's greatness as a shooter. We've never seen anything like him before. No one in the history of the game is on his level. He's in his own category as a shooter.

[sashaturiaf]

Nice game by Dell

[Doctor MJ]

Its not like steph came into the league spamming threes like today...his first two seasons, he averaged under five 3pt attempts per game, or less than a prime reggie miller.

If you dont think people catch on to unprecedented talent when it comes to anything, then you dont understand how human nature works. You think 90s coaches watching steph tear guys up in practice and drain 90 of 100 threes in practice and think ehh..lets bench this guy, especially looking at the lack of mid to low end starting talent overall in that era? Nope..they probably say lets see if he can do it in actual games, which he then would proceed to.

Hmm.

First, let's be clear that what we're talking about is the nature of paradigm shifts. It's a well-studied thing with origins in the scientific community. And there's an expression for how they tend to work in practice:

Science moves forward one funeral at a time.

It's not that one person comes up with something amazing and everyone drops what they're doing to emulate. Those who believe they already know the right way typically can never get their head around being wrong.

When a field progresses more rapidly than that, it's because the data is just so overwhelming it can't be argued with, and I would suggest that NBA basketball eventually got there about 10 years ago, but it didn't come from coaches watching 3-point shooters shoot and recognizing with their eye balls the truth. It came from large amounts of data becoming readily available, along with a team (Warriors) winning a championship this way.

Re: Steph tearing up practice draining 90 of 100 3's. So, have you ever looked at the result of historical 3-point contests? When you do what you see is that guys aren't actually that much better at it than they were decades ago. Herro just won the final round of this year's contest shooting 60%, and meanwhile Larry Bird one the first one shooting over 70%.

Further, it's not like Curry's ever actually been able to lap the field in these contests despite being the clear cut best shooter of all time, which really makes clear that what makes Curry the best isn't something that you can just see by having him shoot 100 3's. To see Chef Curry cook like we know he can cook, you need to build an offense around him and have him play game-in game-out against defenses going all out, and guess what? Coaches who didn't believe in the 3 would never do that.

It's a Catch 22 situation: To get coaches to see what was possible with the 3, you needed them to take a leap of faith on something they had no faith in, so they were never going to see what was possible until others proved it.

One last thing to note:

I believe a big part of the problem that coaches of the past had is the same one that many older fans still have:

More 3-point shooting leads to more unsuccessful offensive possessions, because the FG% on 3's is worse than on 2's.

Yes, rationally we know that 3's count for 50% more than 2's, but when you're judging things shot by shot, you're talking about embracing shots that are more likely to be missed, which makes it feel like the team is less effective even when this isn't true.

All this to say that there are a bunch of things that stood in the way of the 3-point shot being embraced for decades that are actually quite understandable despite my pithy language.

So you are saying a shooter of currys caliber wouldnt have caught on at some point? That coaches, who lets be real good shooting even in that era was coveted, would continue to at least not give him a chance even after witnessing the literal best shooter ever in practice? I find it truly hard to believe. Curry would be shredding guys in practice too, not just standstill shooting. You think he cant dominate a practice in the 90s? LOL
Ffs man

I don't think you realize how hard it is to actually tell who is winning a game if you're not aware of the score. The level of impact of NBA players, while huge compared to MLB players, is quite small compared to the scores in the game. If a player is making his team 5-10% more successful on a possession basis, and he's doing so based on his shots counting 50% more than other guys which allows him to actually miss more than those other guys, it's not actually going to look like domination unless you read body language and the like.

Note that this is completely different from, say, scouts from the post-up era getting to see 2 guys go out each other and one of them coming off clearly bigger/longer/stronger/quicker while doing basically the same job on both ends of the floor. Such comparisons are vastly more concrete and it allows scouts to make those judgements quite well oftentimes by watching just a single play.

It's the more abstract stuff where you just really need sizable data to expect to make any sound conclusion, and if no coach is willing to devote his team strategy to run a particular experiment, then the domain remains blind.

And just generally, the fear of trying a new way generally means that paradigm shifts happen a long time after they could have. The archetypical paradigm shift is the Copernican Revolution, and there the author(Copernicus) delayed publishing his work postulating heliocentrism for 36 years so he would not face the social wrath (think Catholic Church, etc). The field of Artificial Intelligence basically abandoned Neural Networks as an approach for over a decade when a powerful figure's (Minsky) critique made the field afraid to try (and afraid to take him on)...but the solution ended up being to just use a little calculus.

Where there is high competitive pressure, counterintuitively, great leaps forward are often curtailed as individuals fear failure branded foolish more than they have hope in improvement through bold experimentation.

[LockoutSeason]

Steph is way bigger than any ‘90s PG except Gary Payton.

Steph would’ve been a great post player in the ‘90s.

[RRR3]

Nice game by Dell

Someone’s upset Curry passed Kobe on the GOAT list.

[michaelm]

Steph is way bigger than any ‘90s PG except Gary Payton.

Steph would’ve been a great post player in the ‘90s.

Those guys would have pushed more weights if playing in the modern game, but Curry is actually quite strong and benches impressive weights. And while not a conventional fast twitch athlete he has great stamina (“a huge motor” as LeBron has put it) probably as much as anyone in the game at his peak, which surely would have also served him well back then.

[ShootersShoot]

Hmm.

First, let's be clear that what we're talking about is the nature of paradigm shifts. It's a well-studied thing with origins in the scientific community. And there's an expression for how they tend to work in practice:

Science moves forward one funeral at a time.

It's not that one person comes up with something amazing and everyone drops what they're doing to emulate. Those who believe they already know the right way typically can never get their head around being wrong.

When a field progresses more rapidly than that, it's because the data is just so overwhelming it can't be argued with, and I would suggest that NBA basketball eventually got there about 10 years ago, but it didn't come from coaches watching 3-point shooters shoot and recognizing with their eye balls the truth. It came from large amounts of data becoming readily available, along with a team (Warriors) winning a championship this way.

Re: Steph tearing up practice draining 90 of 100 3's. So, have you ever looked at the result of historical 3-point contests? When you do what you see is that guys aren't actually that much better at it than they were decades ago. Herro just won the final round of this year's contest shooting 60%, and meanwhile Larry Bird one the first one shooting over 70%.

Further, it's not like Curry's ever actually been able to lap the field in these contests despite being the clear cut best shooter of all time, which really makes clear that what makes Curry the best isn't something that you can just see by having him shoot 100 3's. To see Chef Curry cook like we know he can cook, you need to build an offense around him and have him play game-in game-out against defenses going all out, and guess what? Coaches who didn't believe in the 3 would never do that.

It's a Catch 22 situation: To get coaches to see what was possible with the 3, you needed them to take a leap of faith on something they had no faith in, so they were never going to see what was possible until others proved it.

One last thing to note:

I believe a big part of the problem that coaches of the past had is the same one that many older fans still have:

More 3-point shooting leads to more unsuccessful offensive possessions, because the FG% on 3's is worse than on 2's.

Yes, rationally we know that 3's count for 50% more than 2's, but when you're judging things shot by shot, you're talking about embracing shots that are more likely to be missed, which makes it feel like the team is less effective even when this isn't true.

All this to say that there are a bunch of things that stood in the way of the 3-point shot being embraced for decades that are actually quite understandable despite my pithy language.

So you are saying a shooter of currys caliber wouldnt have caught on at some point? That coaches, who lets be real good shooting even in that era was coveted, would continue to at least not give him a chance even after witnessing the literal best shooter ever in practice? I find it truly hard to believe. Curry would be shredding guys in practice too, not just standstill shooting. You think he cant dominate a practice in the 90s? LOL
Ffs man

I don't think you realize how hard it is to actually tell who is winning a game if you're not aware of the score. The level of impact of NBA players, while huge compared to MLB players, is quite small compared to the scores in the game. If a player is making his team 5-10% more successful on a possession basis, and he's doing so based on his shots counting 50% more than other guys which allows him to actually miss more than those other guys, it's not actually going to look like domination unless you read body language and the like.

Note that this is completely different from, say, scouts from the post-up era getting to see 2 guys go out each other and one of them coming off clearly bigger/longer/stronger/quicker while doing basically the same job on both ends of the floor. Such comparisons are vastly more concrete and it allows scouts to make those judgements quite well oftentimes by watching just a single play.

It's the more abstract stuff where you just really need sizable data to expect to make any sound conclusion, and if no coach is willing to devote his team strategy to run a particular experiment, then the domain remains blind.

And just generally, the fear of trying a new way generally means that paradigm shifts happen a long time after they could have. The archetypical paradigm shift is the Copernican Revolution, and there the author(Copernicus) delayed publishing his work postulating heliocentrism for 36 years so he would not face the social wrath (think Catholic Church, etc). The field of Artificial Intelligence basically abandoned Neural Networks as an approach for over a decade when a powerful figure's (Minsky) critique made the field afraid to try (and afraid to take him on)...but the solution ended up being to just use a little calculus.

Where there is high competitive pressure, counterintuitively, great leaps forward are often curtailed as individuals fear failure branded foolish more than they have hope in improvement through bold experimentation.

You are saying nba coaches in the 90s would not be able to tell a guy is dominating scrimmages or not .. Do you not realize how asinine that sounds? Like cmon honestly you truly believe that?

Steph curry would dominate scrimmages in the 90s lets be real man and it would be very noticeable. Stephs a volume scorer, hes not some shooting specialist. He doesnt need a system to get buckets. You think the offense was built around him his rookie year when he was averaging 17.5ppg?

And ok lets say his only job is to hit spot up threes..he would so incredibly good at it. Like he would be hitting over everybody and getting minutes and looks because of that alone. His teammates would trust him because they watch the literal best shooter in practice everday, who also happens to be dominating them in scrimmages, but shh dont tell the idiot pro coaches. Or wait, maybe 90s nba players cant tell if steph can do it in games or not and wouldnt pass to him..am I doing this right? Thats exactly how you sound btw

..and lets say the team has no starting level point guard. Steph would be the primary ball handler easily.

[LakersLegacy]

In 16 season 14 career 50 point games