Back to the actual discussion, since it's been taken off topic by the usual insufferable Lebron fans, seriously the same posters you can count on to come into any MJ topic and try any angle to make him look bad because they know their hero will never overtake him
Regarding 3 point shooting in that era and MJ specifically, it wasn't anywhere near part of a teams offensive makeup at the time, nor was it part of the Bulls strategy when you run a triangle offense.
Nor did the coaches or MJ want to bail out other teams by having him jack them up all game when his biggest strengths on offense involved his first step, getting to the basket and finishing and putting defenders in foul trouble + making them work on defense
In the last
82 game season, Lauri Markkanen attempted 332 threesIn Jordan's rookie year
the entire Bulls team attempted 161, less than half of Markkanens attempts, in fact it wasn't until Paxson and Hodges started putting them up in the 88/89 season that the entire team took more than what Lauri put up in the 2019 season
In Jordans entire 15 year career he never attempted more than 297 in any season, in fact in 9 of those season he attempted under 100 threes and had one season he attempted exactly 100
The 4 seasons he attempted 200+ threes (2 with the shortened line) his percentages were the highest (excluding the 50% he shot in the first come back in just 17 games)
96/97 he shot
37.4% on
297 attempts (shortened line)
95/96 he shot
42.7% on
260 attempts (shortened line)
89/90 he shot
37.6% on
245 attempts92/93 he shot
35.2% on
230 attemptsIn the 11 other seasons he played he only attempted
more than 100 threes in a season
one time
In just
170 games Markkanen has attempted 1,050 threesIn
1,072 games MJ attempted 1,778 threesIt's a completely different approach now than it used to be and yes anyone that watched knows that MJ wasn't the type to dribble out the clock without heaving it up. Those attempts, plus all the ones he had to try and bail out an offense that relied on him with the shot clock running down would have had
some impact on his actual 3 point percentage.
If you take just 1 bail out 3/heave every 2nd game that's around 40 a season. When you consider the majority of his season he didn't even attempt 100 total you can imagine what kind of effect that would have. Even just 1 of those every 4 games is a large % of your total attempts.
I believe is more than what today's stars do as they intentionally take that extra dribble to protect their stats, or don't even attempt the shot as I was shocked to see many times in the playoffs this season