Crazy Lebron FT stat

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Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#1 » by 12footrim » Sun Apr 10, 2022 6:50 pm

Ok so one of the biggest knocks on Lebron career IMO is his FT shooting. He's a career 73.4% FT shooter, not terrible but certainly not what you'd expect from a Goat contender IMO. He's even talked about goals of cracking 80% the last few years like it's hitting 50 home runs or something. Anyway I came across his High Schools stats.....

Lebron James shot 79.7% FT's as a High School freshman. He averaged 18ppg so this had to be on some decent sample size.

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How weird is it that his all time best season FT shooting in competitive basketball is when he was 15. That had dropped to 59% by his Jr year and is still higher than his all time NBA high of 78% in his age 24 seasons. You would think after all the 10's of thousands the guy has shot between then and now he's have an over 80 seasons considering the first time he picked up a basketball in organized play he was 80%
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#2 » by Long2_noD » Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:05 pm

It's uncommon, but not unheard of.

Dwight was 67% shooter as rookie. Considering he came straight out of HS, he was actually projecting OK for a guy his size.
He never exceeded (in his prime) 60%.

Some guys just lose their FT touch the more ripped they get.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#3 » by scrabbarista » Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:11 pm

And he's 74% career in the playoffs and only hit 80%, exactly, in one postseason run: 2014. He is what he is.

By contrast, Jordan only shot under 80% in one of his 13 playoff runs: in 1989, when he shot .799.

I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA's and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).

I don't really do arguments on who's the greatest anymore, though. I think James has done enough that it's a perfectly fine opinion. Same for KAJ and MJ. I happen to think MJ is the best ever, but I don't think it's a question that can really be answered definitively. Not since LeBron won his fourth title, anyway.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#4 » by BK_2020 » Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:24 pm

Shaq was a .592 FT shooter his rookie season, one of his best years.

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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#5 » by 12footrim » Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:33 pm

scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
.


I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#6 » by LAL1947 » Sun Apr 10, 2022 7:38 pm

Nobody cares anymore, the king is dead. Long live the new king, HalleLuka! :P

The league really needs to figure out how to bring Luka's talents to the Lakers, sooner rather than later. Hope Lebron does Lakers Nation a favor and successfully pushes for a Luka-swap to Dallas, where he can get a shot at ownership as well as to play with his son.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#7 » by twyzted » Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:04 pm

12footrim wrote:
scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
.


I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.


Every season where he shot over 1 threes per game he was 35%.
Every season where he shot over 2 threes per game he was 38%

In the playoffs he was always at the league avg or above and in top20 in 3p%.
During the first 3peat he shot 39% at 2.4 attempts in the playoffs.

And that aba comment makes no sense, yes aba had 3ptrs but that dosent mean that you could find courts with 3pt line on them.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#8 » by twyzted » Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:06 pm

LAL1947 wrote:Nobody cares anymore, the king is dead. Long live the new king, HalleLuka! :P

The league really needs to figure out how to bring Luka's talents to the Lakers, sooner rather than later. Hope Lebron does Lakers Nation a favor and successfully pushes for a Luka-swap to Dallas, where he can get a shot at ownership as well as to play with his son.


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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#9 » by scrabbarista » Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:12 pm

12footrim wrote:
scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
.


I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative.


Here's my original thread, so you can understand some of my reasoning: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1930800&hilit=question+for+those+who+watched+MJ+play

In MJ's last championship run, he was running on fumes to the point that he chose to retire rather than come back for another season so grueling. I've posted a whole thread on the number of games/minutes he was playing. I think it averaged out to about 48 minutes per two days over a period of about nine or ten months during that season, if you include the preseason and playoffs. Something like that. Maybe it was every 2.5 days. For nine or ten months! Anyway, it was beyond anything we can really conceive of given today's standards for how much (i.e., how little) stars are expected to play. He did that in the season he turned 35.

In that season, he took 1.5 3PA's per game during the regular season. Is there a reason his 3PA's went up from 1.5 to 2.0 in the playoffs that season, and his percentage went up from 23% to 30%, despite having tired legs while being in the last stretch of that grueling nine or ten month stretch, and despite facing better defenses? Yes, the reason is because 1.5 is such a low number of attempts that it isn't representative. Especially considering the player-role in question: a large portion of those 1.5 attempts were probably at the end of shot clocks and the end of quarters and the end of games, when the ball always would've been in MJ's hands and there was no precedent or practice of protecting percentages the way players do today. I've seen Jordan chuck up a full-court shot at the end of a game that his team won by 10. That shot went into his percentages. That's how little players cared about 3P% in those days. (Or, he had money on the line :lol: . J/k. They really didn't care.) It may also have something to do with the elimination of back-to-backs during the playoffs in an era when back-to-backs were far more common than now.

As to your "ping pong argument," then why didn't Jordan lead the league in blocks, if he was that competitive? Or in charges taken? The answer is because it was irrelevant. His competitive nature drove him to win, and to do what was necessary to win. If it wasn't necessary to winning, which 3P% obviously wasn't, then it wasn't relevant. I can promise you MJ wasn't out here saying, "Man, I just won three straight championships and a gold medal, but Jeff Hornacek has a better 3P% than me, so I guess I'm still a loser. I better get to shooting three's!" :lol:

I'm curious what your evidence is to support the idea that "he tried." Because I do have evidence that his low number of attempts actually hurt his percentage. If we ignore the shortened-line seasons, Jordan's top two seasons in attempts were also his top two seasons in percentage (.376 in 1990 and .352 in 1993). So, the evidence seems to say that the more "he tried" (i.e., shot), the better he shot. There's more on this in the link I provided, specifically regarding how he shot much better from three in the playoffs, when he was presumably trying harder.

As to his Wizards time, your argument that he should be faulted for not adding new elements to his game at age 39 and 40 is, uh... Most players start to shoot worse from everywhere that late in their careers, even from the free throw line. The body just isn't as comfortable and loose anymore, and shooting suffers as a result. This would be even more expected from a guy who was his team's primary creator at that age.

I know you aren't really interested, because A) you responded to my "take" before asking to read the original thread that I specifically referenced as containing my reasoning for the take, and B) you used a phrase like "so stupid,"

but I'm just posting in case someone else is interested.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#10 » by 12footrim » Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:51 pm

twyzted wrote:
12footrim wrote:
scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
.


I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.


Every season where he shot over 1 threes per game he was 35%.
Every season where he shot over 2 threes per game he was 38%

In the playoffs he was always at the league avg or above and in top20 in 3p%.
During the first 3peat he shot 39% at 2.4 attempts in the playoffs.

And that aba comment makes no sense, yes aba had 3ptrs but that dosent mean that you could find courts with 3pt line on them.


So you found and isolated a couple of stretches where he didn't completely suck at shooting 3's, even on low volume dare you to take them wide open and still miss. Of course he wasn't going to jack three's in the years he completely sucked. It is what it is, the dude was a poor 3 point shooter for his career, especially if you take out the little baby line that helped him out so much in the 2nd 3peat. That's just the fact, like 28% without it for his career and he only got worse by the end even as contemporaries like Sam Perkins added three's. A freaking center from his college team. Jordan certainly tried like all the guy his age to become a three point shooter he just wasn't capable. It's ok to actually admit the reality, it doesn't mean he wasn't great. Just that he was never going to be a 3 point shooter.

Jordan's hero's growing up were David Thompson and Dr J, and he's said his favorite team was the Carolina Cougars of the ABA. My point is he would have had exposure from the start to a 3 point shot. You don't need a line painted on a court to understand how far out it is. They don't have FT lines painted on most blacktops and back yard goals either where he was practicing.

Either way it's a dumb excuse when you had so many contemporaries that didn't suck at 3 point shooting and just pretend like he could have if he wanted. He tried too add it just like them and the fact is he failed to. Larry Bird, Dale Ellis, Danny Ainge, Trent Tucker, Sam Perkins, John Stockton, Terry Porter, Chris Mullins, Joe Dumars, Jeff Hornseck, Chuck Person, Kenny Smith Dell Curry, Drazen Petrovic, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Kerr etc. These are all guys from the same era that are 56 to 65 years old. Jordan just turned 59. We don't have to make excuses for them not adding a three because they actually could shoot from distance. Jordan couldn't and never was going to .Some players just can't. Two of his college teamates on the list.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#11 » by UcanUwill » Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:00 pm

FTs come and go often for players, its psychological, I believe Westbrook became worse and worse too, Biderins went form 70% to arguably the worst FT shooter ever, Plumlee this year became so bad he started shooting with his left just to do something.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#12 » by DoItALL9 » Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:08 pm

twyzted wrote:
12footrim wrote:
scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
.


I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.


Every season where he shot over 1 threes per game he was 35%.
Every season where he shot over 2 threes per game he was 38%

In the playoffs he was always at the league avg or above and in top20 in 3p%.
During the first 3peat he shot 39% at 2.4 attempts in the playoffs.

And that aba comment makes no sense, yes aba had 3ptrs but that dosent mean that you could find courts with 3pt line on them.
Be careful bringing context to the debate Lmao

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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#13 » by Sark » Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:19 pm

It's easy to understand why.

The more muscle that a person packs on, the less fluid his shooting form becomes.


As for the Jordan thing, most of his early 3 point shooting was end of shot clock/quarter/half/game heaves. That's why his percentage was terrible. He wasn't shooting set plays. He was shooting desperation shots.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#14 » by tria » Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:51 pm

LAL1947 wrote:The league really needs to figure out how to bring Luka's talents to the Lakers, sooner rather than later. Hope Lebron does Lakers Nation a favor and successfully pushes for a Luka-swap to Dallas, where he can get a shot at ownership as well as to play with his son.

No, please no...
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#15 » by FreeThrowLine » Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:09 pm

12footrim wrote:Larry Bird, Dale Ellis, Danny Ainge, Trent Tucker, Sam Perkins, John Stockton, Terry Porter, Chris Mullins, Joe Dumars, Jeff Hornseck, Chuck Person, Kenny Smith Dell Curry, Drazen Petrovic, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Kerr etc.


You know what else all those great shooters have in common? Not a single one of them had close to the ability that Jordan had when it came to the quickness of their first step in getting past a defender and then finishing in traffic in the paint

Jordan has repeatedly stated that he didn’t develop a better 3 point shot because he didn’t want to fall in love with the idea of taking it and bailing out the defense.

A guy with his skill set taking more 3’s in that era would have meant less fouls on opposing players, especially opposing bigs and the Bulls never had a C that could get opposing bigs in foul trouble.

Additionally his mid range game was so good and his ability to drive and draw the defense opened up better looks for the Paxson, Hodges, Armstrong, Kerrs etc. the smart play is to give those shots to the specialists that really couldn’t contribute much in other ways.

None of those Bulls point guards were great defenders or great at creating for others.

He bought into the system and played the role that best helped the team win.

Anyone that watched the man play could see he was a great shooter, all those off balance, fade away shots with defenders draped all over you are much harder than an uncontested 3, but within the offense the Bulls were running, it really wouldn’t have been beneficial to have him chucking 3’s all game

When you watch those games and see just how many of his attempts from 3 were bail out, half court, shot clock winding down attempts, you realise there needs to be better context when viewing the overall percentages

As far as his Wizard days, you ever played basketball? When you can’t get the same lift on your shot due to things like knee injuries, it has a detrimental effect on your shot especially from distance and even moreso when you’re getting older and playing alongside a bunch of scrubs
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#16 » by twyzted » Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:11 pm

12footrim wrote:
twyzted wrote:
12footrim wrote:
I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.


Every season where he shot over 1 threes per game he was 35%.
Every season where he shot over 2 threes per game he was 38%

In the playoffs he was always at the league avg or above and in top20 in 3p%.
During the first 3peat he shot 39% at 2.4 attempts in the playoffs.

And that aba comment makes no sense, yes aba had 3ptrs but that dosent mean that you could find courts with 3pt line on them.


So you found and isolated a couple of stretches where he didn't completely suck at shooting 3's, even on low volume dare you to take them wide open and still miss. Of course he wasn't going to jack three's in the years he completely sucked. It is what it is, the dude was a poor 3 point shooter for his career, especially if you take out the little baby line that helped him out so much in the 2nd 3peat. That's just the fact, like 28% without it for his career and he only got worse by the end even as contemporaries like Sam Perkins added three's. A freaking center from his college team. Jordan certainly tried like all the guy his age to become a three point shooter he just wasn't capable. It's ok to actually admit the reality, it doesn't mean he wasn't great. Just that he was never going to be a 3 point shooter.

Jordan's hero's growing up were David Thompson and Dr J, and he's said his favorite team was the Carolina Cougars of the ABA. My point is he would have had exposure from the start to a 3 point shot. You don't need a line painted on a court to understand how far out it is. They don't have FT lines painted on most blacktops and back yard goals either where he was practicing.

Either way it's a dumb excuse when you had so many contemporaries that didn't suck at 3 point shooting and just pretend like he could have if he wanted. He tried too add it just like them and the fact is he failed to. Larry Bird, Dale Ellis, Danny Ainge, Trent Tucker, Sam Perkins, John Stockton, Terry Porter, Chris Mullins, Joe Dumars, Jeff Hornseck, Chuck Person, Kenny Smith Dell Curry, Drazen Petrovic, Mark Price, Reggie Miller, Steve Kerr etc. These are all guys from the same era that are 56 to 65 years old. Jordan just turned 59. We don't have to make excuses for them not adding a three because they actually could shoot from distance. Jordan couldn't and never was going to .Some players just can't. Two of his college teamates on the list.


Couple of stretches?
In 89/90 season he shot 37.6% on 3 attempts per game in 82 games.
In 92/93 he shot 35.2% on 2.9 attempts per game in 82 games.
Then in 58 playoff games between 91-93 he shot 38,7% on 2.4 attempts per game.

That is a little more then cOuPlE oF sTrEtChEs. That is 222 games of 881 games played without bAbY lInE.

Like i said when he shot 3ptrs at a volume he was at or over league average. That isnt really failing is it?

Or can we safely assume that Lebron is even worse at shooting 3s because he is always around or under league average?

And no he said himself
“My three-point shooting is something I don’t want to excel at because it takes away from all phases of my game, Jordan said. “My game is fake, drive to the hole, penetrate, dish-off, dunk. When you have that mentality of making threes, you don’t go to the hole as much. You go to the three-point line and start sitting there, waiting for someone to find you. That’s not my mentality, and I don’t want to create it because it takes away from the other parts of my game.”

Unless he just lied back then in case some guy on the internet would say otherwise, when shooting threes was used more.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#17 » by BK_2020 » Mon Apr 11, 2022 1:42 am

MJ could've been great a three point shooting, but he decided he wanted to suck at it because being good at it would've made him a worse player. This is the truth, because MJ said so himself.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#18 » by sp6r=underrated » Mon Apr 11, 2022 1:59 am

12footrim wrote:
scrabbarista wrote:
I've already posted a whole thread about Jordan's three-point shooting and the effect of era and player-role on his 3P%. But their respective free throw percentages are a good clue as to who was the more talented shooter (and, consequently, how their 3P%'s may have looked had they played in different eras), since 3PA and 3P% changed so drastically in (perceived) importance during the time between MJ and LeBron's births, debuts, primes, peaks, declines, and retirement(s).
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I completely disagree with you on the 3 point shooting take. If you take out the years the line was moved up to just with in Jordan's range he was like a 28% career three point point shooter. Even his last championship run with the Bulls when they moved it back he was 23%. When he came back from retirement the last time with the Wizards knowing he needed a 3 more than ever he was as god awful as he'd ever been and he had decades of trying to add it and only got worse.

This is a guy that got beat in ping pong by Laettner and obsessed over how to get better at ping pong just to beat him. Do you seriously think after the humiliation of the 1990 three point shooting contest where he's the worst performance ever in it that he wouldn't have added a good three if he was actually capable?

Any time people say this it's so stupid to me because the guy was never going to be a 3 point shooter. He tried, the 3 point line was around since 1980 and he even grew up as an ABA fan so he had exposure from the minute he picked up a basketball to the 3. There are plenty of contemporaries that literally has ZERO issue the same age or even older making three's. I guess we just ignore that and pretend like the guy never tried and just couldn't shoot 3's, doesn't fit the narrative. Hell even his college teamate Sam Perkins figured out how to shoot a 3 and he was a center.


We've seen an enormous improvement in 3 point shooting over the last fifteen years. There are a couple of possibilities

1. Today's players are naturally better shooters. Quite silly if you understand human evolution but a common opinion
2. Shooting coaching has improved dramatically.
3. Players who grew up when 3 point shooting was common are better.
4. Players spend more time practicing shooting now.

The 2nd through 4 hypothesis are environmental and are correct.

If you accept the environmental hypothesis there is every reason to think Jordan would be a good, not elite, 3 point shooter. Jordan is an 83% ft shooter. His FG% from 16 to the 3 point line is good.

Almost every player with that profile can shoot the 3 at a pretty good clip in today's era.

Jordan was a sub 30% 3 point shooter because most teams and players didn't realize how valuable 3 point shooting was.
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#19 » by BK_2020 » Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:02 am

Demar Derozan is actually an elite 3 point shooter and you are deluded if you think he can't just wish himself to .400 from there. He shoots 83% from the free throw line for his career, and he is elite from 16 to the 3 point line.
You just don't know basketball if you think DDR is bad at shooting the three. Who cares if his 3 point % is bad?
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Re: Crazy Lebron FT stat 

Post#20 » by BK_2020 » Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:05 am

Jimmy Butler is one of the best 3 point shooters in history. You are deluded if you think he can't just wake up one day and shoot .400 from the three. You don't believe me? He's a career 84% from the free throw line.

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