The explosion of a three-point shootout ushered in by Stephen Curry, alongside his compatriot 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 by playing wide on the offensive perimeter, the entire league attempted to follow suit by duplicating that model. While no one was able to do it like Golden State, it produced a large number of guys who made threes willy-nilly and set new records at breakneck speed. That said, it’s absolutely crazy to think that Draymond Green will fall in NBA history as a more prolific three-point shooter than Larry Bird.
No, that’s not a typo, Green passed Larry Legend on the all-time three-point list. Without context, this all sounds like the greatest oxymoron in NBA history. But after playing his entire career in an era where everyone made threes at will, Green surpassed a player considered one of the purest shooters to ever 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 won the first three contests the NBA ever held. The Boston Celtics great also won three straight league MVP awards in the mid-1980s. There was just something about Bird and 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 talking to you about it afterward. But having played in an era where the further one was from the basket, the worse the shot was considered, it became something of a footnote, statistically, in many three-point shooting metrics. But when you come back and look at Bird, it’s easy to understand why he was seen as such a threat all over the field.
None of this is meant to belittle Green as, knowing his style, it must have come as a shock to most to learn that he had made 650 (and counting) threes during his career. For younger fans who have only heard Bird’s name occasionally, more context is always helpful. Attempts per game tell a big part of this story. So far, Green has averaged 2.6 3-point attempts per game. Bird didn’t even average two attempts per game at the time, finishing his career at 1.9.
It’s a case of two completely different eras, but it’s still crazy to see Green surpassing Bird on this list. The way it is I’m shooting it this year (over 43 percent from behind the arc), Green will pass a few more shooters before all is said and done. This doesn’t take away from what Bird accomplished, he just came in an era where the emphasis was still on getting a high percentage of looks and not showing off your range. If Bird had come along a few decades later with such an open game, there’s no telling what kind of gaudy numbers he would have dropped in his operations.
