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The explosion in three-point shooting ushered in by Stephen Curry, alongside fellow splash bro Klay Thompson, has literally changed the game we all know and love over the past decade. Once Golden State proved that you could win a championship playing largely on the perimeter offensively, the entire league attempted to follow suit in duplicating that model. While no one has been able to do it quite like Golden State, what it produced was a lot of guys jacking up threes all willy-nilly and setting new records at breakneck speed. All that said, it’s absolutely wild to think that Draymond Green will go down in NBA history as a more prolific three-point shooter than Larry Bird.
Nope, that’s no typing error, Green has leaped over Larry Legend on the all-time three-pointers made list. Without context, that all sounds like the biggest oxymoron in NBA history. But having played his entire career in this era where everybody jacks up threes at will, Green has surpassed a player who’s considered one of the purest shooters ever to step on a basketball court.
Bird is one of only two players to win The Association’s annual three-point contest three times. Former Chicago Bulls sharpshooter Craig Hodges is the other, but Bird was so good at it, that he took the first three contests the NBA ever held. The Boston Celtics great also took home three consecutive league MVP awards in the mid-1980s as well. There was just something about Bird and the No. 3.
Larry Legend was one of the most feared shooters of the 80s and was known for trash-talking opponents — calling his shot Babe Ruth style, then telling you about it afterward. But having played in an era where the further you were from the basket, the worse that shot was considered, he’s become somewhat of a footnote, statistically, in many three-point shooting metrics. But when you go back and watch Bird, it’s easy to see why he was viewed as such a threat from anywhere on the court.
None of this is meant to downplay Green because, knowing his style, it must’ve come as a shock to most finding out he’d made 650 (and counting) threes during his career. For younger fans who have only heard Bird’s name mentioned from time-to-time, more context always helps. Attempts per game tell a large part of this story. Green has averaged 2.6 3-point attempts per game to this point. Bird didn’t even average two attempts per game back in the day, ending his career at 1.9.
It’s a case of two entirely different eras, but it’s still crazy to see Green pass Bird on this list. The way he’s shooting it this year (over 43 percent behind the arc), Green will pass a few more shooters before it’s all said and done. This takes nothing away from what Bird accomplished, he just came along at a time when there was still an emphasis on getting high-percentage looks and not showing your range. Had Bird come along a few decades later with such a wide-open game, there’s no telling the kind of gaudy numbers he would’ve dropped on his ops.
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