Stephen Curry's America: How Underestimated Distance Shooters Are Changing The Name Of The Game
As the seconds in game five dwindled down, Damian Lillard, shrouded in the shadow of playoff disappointments past, strolled up the floor, hit a side-step and dropped in a 37-footer over Paul George’s outstretched 6-foot-11 wingspan to wave the OKC Thunder out of the playoffs.
It was the lemon wedge on top of the long island iced tea that was his 50-point, series-winning performance.
After the game, Paul George called the game-winner a bad shot.
“I don’t care what anybody says, that’s a bad shot,” George said. “But, hey, he made it, that story won’t be told that it was a bad shot, um, you live with that.”
By conventional wisdom, George is right. Even for George – one of only two players ever to average 38% from three shooting nine triples a game, joining Stephen Curry, who has done it four times – that is a bad shot.
But in Stephen Curry’s America, for a select few players, that is one of the deadliest shots on the floor.
It was Feb. 27, 2016, when Curry redefined the NBA and the limits that a three-point shooter could reach when he hit 12 of 16 triples, broke his own record for threes in a season and rocked the Thunder with a transition 37-footer with 0.6 seconds left.
That season, Curry was one of only eight NBA players to shoot at least 25 threes from 28 feet out, and he shot an astonishing 47% on them. Of those eight, only two others made 10, Klay Thompson – whose career-defining shot was a wide-footed 30-footer over Russell Westbrook in the 2016 playoffs – and Damian Lillard.
This season, 44 players have shot 25 threes from 28 feet, 11 have taken over 50 and six over 100, but only three players – Curry, Lowry and Lillard – have made over 50 of their attempts.
Going even further out, Lillard and Trae Young have shot a better percentage from 30 feet out this season (playoffs included) – 39.2% (20-51) for Lillard and 35.3% (24-68) for Young – than their career percentages for all three-pointers (36.8% for Lillard, 31.4% for Young).
Still, none have been better than Curry, who has shot 65-163 (39.9%) from 30-feet out since 2015-16, which this season would make him the 11th-best three-point shooter with at least 160 attempts.
What a little over three years ago was a heave that only the most rogue players would dare take has become the featured shot on some of the most iconic plays of this generation.
And, while defenses still give shooters space from that distance, more players and coaches are taking notice of the merits of long-distance shooting.
Look at the (expected) next round of matchups in the playoffs.
The Warriors and Rockets are the two greatest three-point shooting teams of all-time with the owners of 11 of the top 15 three-point shooting seasons of all-time, and that’s no mention of Eric Gordon and Kevin Durant, who are both in the top-15 of 28-footers made this season.
The Blazers’ star player just authored one of the great game-winners of all time and is 54-138 on 28-footers this year, while Jamaal Murray of the Nuggets shot 36.7% with 152 triples this year.
The Bucks’ starting center, Brook Lopez, just broke the record for threes by a 7-footer and is fifth in the NBA shooting 40-108 from 28 feet, while Malcolm Brogdon was just the 10th qualifying player to author a 50-40-90 season.
The 76ers have the 12th and 13th best three-point shooters by percentage this season, and they play beside one of the few NBA stars whose game does not feature a three-point shot.
Kyle Lowry has quietly been one of the best distance shooters in the league, and Kyrie Irving is flat-out one of the best shot-makers in the NBA, no matter the distance.
The three best teams left by popular opinion – Golden State, Milwaukee and Houston – were also the top three teams in shots per game and makes from 25 feet during the regular season, and Boston was fourth in makes.
The NBA is becoming a sniper’s paradise overtaken by both undersized and oversized shooters, and nobody has more kills than the two 6-foot-3 guards with ties to Oakland who have been underestimated and disrespected their entire playing careers.
It’s poetic that these defining, star-making shots that have reimagined the way we play basketball have come against the Thunder, whose supernova is the antithesis of the new order of elite guards: a righteously-indignant freight train whose defining features are his out-of-this-world athleticism, reckless abandon and, now, record-breaking inefficiency.
Since he entered the league showboating and flying around the court like the Tasmanian Devil, Westbrook has been a darling in the NBA. His game and attitude have little-to-no nuance: he is more athletic than you, can run faster and jump higher and wants it more, and that, historically, has won in the NBA.
But in only two years Westbrook, who averaged a triple-double for the third straight season but had one of the worst shooting seasons of all-time, has gone from MVP and unanimously a top-five NBA player to a relic of the past.
Curry, Lillard and Trae Young are reckless in their own right. It’s the reason so many doubted the Warriors’ or any other jump-shooting teams’ ability to win championships: shooters have a perceived lack of athleticism, which is what wins in the NBA, and by conventional wisdom the farther away you move from the basket, the worse you are going to shoot. Its’s a numbers game, and until the last few seasons, the numbers haven’t added up.
But its a measured recklessness, a trust that defenses, no matter how many times they have been burnt, will underestimate deadeyes just enough to allow for myth-busting shots.
For years players like Westbrook, LeBron James and James Harden, who are physically dominant and more representative of the great line NBA players, have been currying favor with pure athletic nobility. But Curry and Lillard – who are winning games with finesse, dead-eye shooting and a cold-blooded streak from being overlooked for years– are changing the game and, slowly but surely, changing the narrative on jump shooters.