I mean, Bird was someone who didn’t want to shoot threes. You think if Bird wanted to shoot 10 threes a game, his coaches would’ve told him, no?

Not only the coaching but the officiating. You can now take multiple steps in any direction today to lose your defender. You can now kick your legs out to land near your defender’s feet and magically get three free throws after the refs foul that defender for landing in your zone. Bird would’ve been in shooter’s heaven if he got those advantages.

Ehhh I don’t know about that. He shot like 33% on 3s vs top 10 defences for his career.

In his best seasons he averaged 2 made 3s per game against bottom 10 defences on like 45% 3pt shooting.

I think he just couldn’t get the shots off vs good teams.

That’s actually very unsurprising, since shooting a lot of 3s even at a great percentage makes it nearly impossible to average 50 overall fg%.  even shooting 45% from 3 is enough to sink an otherwise good fg%

just looking stuff up and posting for posterity so y’all can bring it up later

Players with 50–40–90 season:

• • Larry Bird - 1987 & 1988 (2×)
• • Mark Price - 1989 (1×)
• • Reggie Miller - 1994 (1×)
• • Steve Nash - 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 (4×)
• • Dirk Nowitzki - 2007 (1×)
• • Kevin Durant - 2013 & 2023 (2×)
• • Stephen Curry - 2016 (1×)
• • Malcolm Brogdon - 2019 (1×)
• • Kyrie Irving - 2021 (1×)

Why do you shoot so many threes? Because there are no fours!

Antoine’s problem was that he continued to shoot a high volume of 3s even when they weren’t going in. Shot 32% one season and still led the league in attempts. Yeah, when he’s doing that, people are gonna write about how he should stop taking so many.

The O’Brien Celtics were 15 years ahead of their time: Walker, Pierce, Tony Delk, Shammond WIlliams.

That’s a great example because I thought Walker was a wild player with bad shot selection that hurt his team back then. The culture around the 3 has changed so much. 

College Ball (albeit with a much easier 3) embraced three point shooting much earlier than the NBA.

The early 90’s games between the Nolan Richardson Arkansas Razorbacks and the Rick Pitino Kentucky Wildcats featured great 3 point shooting.

We have repeatedly seen that volume over time can lead to shooters becoming much better at threes. I don’t know why people think if guys like Bird had more volume they wouldn’t have gotten more efficient.

Bird is a victim of this as well. He was an all-time great passer.

Every assist is not equal, unlike points. So when John Stockton racked up assist after assist pick and popping to Malone. Or passing into the post for a turnaround jumper assist. Magic was working to get under basket layups. Obviously this wasn’t for all assists, but I think you could put it like this:

Magic could do everything Stockton could do, Stockton couldn’t do everything that Magic could do. (In regards to passing)

Yes. We were robbed of years of peak Magic. It’s incredibly sad.

Nobody gives Stockton that credit

The irony of the discussion is that neither are really “classic” point guards, even if they are listed there. Magic was a point forward basically (in terms of defensive matchup and year, he was largely matched up against 2s, 3s, and 4s). And Steph is very much a score first guard who is relatively short and quick so matched up against opposing teams’ similar.

The discussion is like the prime example of why positions are kind of stupid imo, and more talk should be about role instead

Hmmm I wonder why a Warriors fan wouldn’t approve of this comment lol

Nephew response

I mean, when your contemporaries (who himself was a top-10 all time great) at the peak of their careers are calling you “god himself on the court,” is it really a narrative? Magic earned his MVPs, no way around it, but retroactively devaluing Jordan’s career as pure narrative is also a bit much

MJ is my favorite athlete TD of all time but how does it knock him in any way for another possibly top 5 player in the history of basketball to win awards over him? It’s probably just that people literally weren’t born during this time and don’t remember it, not some MJ propaganda lol

MJ was pretty damn impressive out of the gate. Both Magic and Bird had better teams when the three played together, but even so I think Magic and Bird elevated their teammates more than MJ. Personal stats only tell part of the story. MJ might be the GOAT but I would pick Bird or Magic to build a team around.

Mike was amazing, he also never beat a dynasty its prime or close to its prime*. The lakers were basically done for in the 1991 finals ( they had injured players and Kareem had retired at that point), he never beat Bird’s Celtics in the playoffs, he retired when Hakeem won his first chip and lost before getting to play him in 95. He also missed out on the start of the Lakers and Spurs in the finals by a year and 2 years respectively. Even if he had very strong playoff opponents he didn’t have the same playoff opponents as other all time greats in the finals.

His 91’ performance against the lakers was legendary, I’m surprised it isn’t touted more. I’m not the first or last to say that his numbers don’t do him justice.

I think he has a really strong case to be the goat, I really do, but even if he was he wouldn’t be standard deviations above whoever 2nd place it. It’d probably be accurate to say that either he or LeBron are the greatest to play and the difference between the two is that of a hairs breadth.

*Expected reply:‘He was the dynasty’

My reply to that reply: Yes, but I would’ve liked to have seen the Bulls play against an all-time team.

P.S. I think Jordan is indicative of a broader trend, once upon a time there was very little documentation of every little blunder somebody would make. I’ve seen Jordan at the start of a finals game play so bad that it had my jaw on the floor, he picked it up later in the game and Pippen kept up the pace so it isn’t really that notable. There was a possession in which he smacks the ball against the side of his head and turns it over. He was a human, not God. Compare that to this generation, everything they ever post can and someday will be scrutinised. No mythmaking is possible. I’m personally comfortable with that, but many others prefer the idolatry of the past.

Which is incredibly stupid because skinny Jordan being punished with year after year of losing throughout the ‘80s and getting bully-balled by the Bad Boy Pistons before essentially building himself into the superhuman MJ we think of and ascending to the throne as Magic and Bird aged out, then wreaking total havoc for virtually the entirety of the ‘90s is a way cooler narrative.

23 made threes in a season with around league average make, really once a game someone was like “fuck it why not” and threw one up

It’s like the interview he had with Magic there (Leno?). He was saying he spent all his time shooting and practicing in his spare time. When someone asked him why, he said because he’s sure Magic is doing the same thing.

Yeah I mean Jayson Tatum had more three pointers as a rookie (105 on 43% shooting) than Larry bird did in his first 3 seasons combined. It wasn’t prioritized.

That’s because Magic and Larry prioritized winning the game.

What has prioritizing three pointers done for Steph and his team? Virtually nothing. Larry Bird and Steph Curry are within <0.5 points per game and put up the same assists per game. (And Steph Curry has played the entirety of his career in a league that changed rules and officiating over and over again, with the stated purpose of making it easier for shooters to score.)

But Steph Curry had to abandon his job as point guard to shoot those threes.

When you crunch the numbers, Steph is getting less than 2 points per game - less than a basket - by taking those attempts as 3s instead of 2s, and he spends too much of his time too far away from the basket to make a direct assist to a better positioned teammate. Draymond is not as good of a playmaker as Steph was. If that is only costing his team just 1 assist per game, then that wipes out everything Steph is gaining by those 3s and Steph is actually hurting his team’s chances of winning by standing around making all those 3 point attempts.

Between assists and points, Larry generated the same offensively for his team as Steph, and he didn’t have to abandon his job as forward to do it. Larry put up higher rebounds, blocks and steals than either Steph or Draymond. (Larry Bird is the best rebounding primary small forward of the modern era.)

Bird put up higher points, assists (by far), rebounds, steals and blocks than Tatum. Tatum is getting less than 1 point per game by shooting 3s instead of 2s. If he played a little closer to the basket when his team has the ball, rather than hoping for someone to pass him the ball in 3 point range, he might manage to snatch a couple offensive rebounds for his team to continue an opportunity to score.

If Tatum and Curry prioritized winning the game like Magic and Larry then their win percentages might approach Magic’s and Larry’s.

They do not.

He was a career 32.1% 3PT shooter in the playoffs. On low volume (for today). Shooting contests are not the same as in game. 

Joker said he watched Magic highlights growing up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi2Wx8vb9qI&t=45

Magic never seems to get any flak for his defense, which is kind of crazy to me. 6’9 pg should naturally be an elite defender, but he was never even close to making an all defensive third team. That is genuinely embarrassing

People say “magic wasn’t a defender” but that really doesn’t mean anything. His skillset provided his teams to allow for a better defensive lineup than others given how much of a mismatch he was for his position. There is a reason nobody has ever averaged as many steals as him at his height, for a career.

Magic being such a mismatch allowed the Lakers to have wings play as guards on defense and have a huge size advantage on the perimeter. Michael Cooper (one of the best defenders ever) has talked about how he would not be the defender he was on any other team, because no one else had magic that allowed him to play out of position. So he would not have gotten as many minutes because most lineups wouldn’t have allowed him to play shooting guard