San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Coaches slow to adopt 3-pointer into strategies
mark, stands on the shoulders of pioneers, including his father, his current coach, and a long line of players who gradually changed the game, from a post-centric offense to a longball-shooter’s paradise.
“I’d love to meet Steph one day,” said Brian Taylor, who led the NBA in 3-pointers attempted (239) and made (90) in 1979-80 season, when the shot was introduced to the league. “When you talk to him, tell him how great he’s got it, having the freedom (to shoot the 3), not having to worry about looking over to the sideline at the coach yelling at you that it’s not a good shot. ‘What are you
doing, Brian?’ ‘It’s like a layup to me, coach.’ ”
Taylor said that with a laugh, but the frustration is real. He was a fine player, a 6-foot-2 shooting guard from Princeton (and the younger brother of Bruce Taylor, 49ers cornerback from 1970-77). The 3-ball was perfect for Taylor’s game, but in his 10-year pro career (four in the ABA, six in the NBA) he enjoyed just one season of unrestricted shooting, with the San Diego Clippers under progressive coach Gene Shue.
Taylor’s 90 made 3s in ’79-80 were more than 19 of the league’s 22 teams made. Then Shue was replaced by Paul Silas, who, like most coaches then, didn’t like the 3.
“He was screaming every time I shot it,” Taylor said with a chuckle.
The NBA was in crisis mode that ’79-80 season, and the 3-ball was brought in as a desperation gimmick. The league was suffering from media reports of widespread recreational drug use among players, attendance was down, and owners feared — wait for it — they had maxed out ticket prices. So the league dug up the 3-point shot, last used in the ABA, which folded three years earlier, with four of its teams joining the NBA.
That season, rookies Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would revive the league, but the 3pointer left many hoops purists feeling repulsed.
Eddie Gottlieb, a major voice in NBA matters at the time and former owner of the Philadelphia
Warriors, expressed the league’s prevailing sentiment in a Sports Illustrated feature published in 1967, when the ABA debuted with the 3-pointer: “What is it but an admission that you are dealing with inferior players who can’t do anything but throw up long shots . ... You encourage mediocrity when you give extra credit to this sort of thing.”
Most coaches saw the 3 as a bastardization of the sport, and most players had never practiced such long shots.
No team had a set play for a 3. The Los Angeles Lakers, led by Magic, won the NBA title that season, and took just 100 3s, mostly buzzer-beaters, and made 20.
The Lakers had drafted a long-distance shooter in the first round after drafting Johnson, UCLA’s Brad Holland, and many thought Holland would be a 3 guy. But Lakers’ coach Jack McKinney and assistant Paul Westhead, who replaced McKinney when he suffered a head injury, had zero plans for the 3. Holland went 3-for-15 from behind the arc that season.
“The 3 was beyond us,” Westhead said of he and McKinney. “If Jack had a plan (for the 3), he never told me. We were just trying to get the ball into (center) Kareem (AbdulJabbar) and win the championship.”
Rick Barry, who played in both the ABA and NBA, trailed only Taylor in 3-pointers attempted that season, his first with the Rockets after becoming a perennial All-Star with the Warriors. Barry said he took most of his 3s on transition pull-ups, when no layup or dunk was available.
But even with his future Hall of Fame credentials, he ran into the prevailing anti-3 sentiment.
“I got Player of the Week one week,” Barry said. “I think I went 4-for-6 (on 3s), 6-for-9 and 8-for-12, something like that. (7-for-10, 1-for-5 and 8for-11, actually.) And the coach (Del Harris) came to me and said, ‘I think we’re going to back off on the 3-point shots.’ And I said, ‘Excuse me? Why would you want to do that?’ And he said, ‘I’m thinking of going with a bigger lineup.’ I said, ‘Well, if you’re going with the bigger lineup, don’t you think I should take more 3s, because you’ve got the two big guys in there to rebound misses?’ ”
Harris did not agree.
Whatever slow progress the 3 made toward legitimacy could be credited mostly to players, pushing their shooting limits and their coaches’ patience.
“Coaches frowned on guys even practicing shots from that distance,” said Mike Bratz, a 10-year journeyman in the ’80s. “When I was with the Suns, (coach) John McLeod didn’t so much discourage it, it was kind of like, ‘Look, if you take one, you better make it.’ ”
Bratz played two seasons for the Warriors. He got a rare start during the 1984-85 season, and on the first play found himself wide open in the corner, behind the arc.
“There’s no one around me,” Bratz recalled, “and I get the ball, and I go, ‘Man, I’ve never seen anyone take a 3-pointer this early in the game.’ I fired it
up and fortunately it went in. (Teammate) Lester Connor was howling. He said, ‘Man, you’ve got some big balls to take that shot!’ ”
Bratz had been the NBA 3-point leader in ’80-81, its second season, but that title didn’t earn him much cred with coaches.
“You had to be a star player, or your coach had to have a lot of confidence in you,” Bratz said. “Otherwise, if you miss that shot, you’re coming out.”
Celtics general manager Red Auerbach had opposed the 3, but crusty old Red wasn’t about to ignore a useful weapon. When the Celts made four consecutive runs to the NBA Finals under coach K.C. Jones, from ’84 to ’87, winning two, they leaned into the 3. Even so, the Celtics had no designed 3-point-shot plays.
Larry Bird led the league in 3s made in ’86-87, with 90. The following season teammate Danny Ainge took the 3 crown with an astounding 148 made.
What accounted for such a big leap?
“I think it was just the process of the whole team buying in, the coaching staff and all your teammates,” Ainge said. “We had a saying on our team, ‘The (3-point) line’s not there for decoration. Use it.’ ”
Also contributing to the evolution of the 3: Dell Curry, Steph’s dad, whose long career included a four-season stretch, ’93 through ’97, when he averaged 149 made 3s per season, among the league leaders, and connected on 41.4% of those shots.
Steve Kerr also pushed the 3-pointer up the credibility ladder as a player. Kerr’s career bloomed in his sixth season, 1994-95, his second with the Chicago Bulls. Michael Jordan was back from his year in baseball, and Kerr’s 3-ball shooting (89 of 170, 52.4%) took defensive pressure off Jordan. They teamed up three more seasons, each ending in a
championship.
When the Warriors hired Kerr as head coach, he arrived determined to make the 3 a major part of the Warriors’ attack, and to maximize the quality and volume of Curry’s looks.
Kerr credits Mike D’Antoni for leading the 3-point revolution as head coach of the Suns, but there’s no question that the offense Kerr and assistant Alvin Gentry created for the Warriors was a significant advancement.
“I just wanted a lot of them,” Kerr said. “With Steph and Klay (Thompson), I wanted to play with pace. I wanted to shoot a lot of 3s, but I didn’t have a number in mind. It was more just a philosophy.”
And a good one for Curry, especially. In Kerr’s first season with the Warriors, Curry hit an NBA record 286 3s, and the following season he made 402, as the Warriors won 73 regular-season games.
The once ugly 3-pointer had achieved classical beauty. And now, as Curry takes the 3 to the moon and beyond, the pioneers view him with respect, awe and a tinge of envy.
“The thing that amazes me about Curry,” Bratz said, “is that he can shoot from so many different angles — off-balance, off the dribble, guys in his face. He’s just developed an art for getting the shot off. I love watching him. There’s no one like Steph; he makes more difficult shots from distance than anyone I’ve ever seen. He creates a rhythm to his shot, from his legs. Steph just has a tremendous feel and rhythm for the shot.”
Barry said, “I love watching Steph play. He has so much fun, you just know he’s enjoying it so much. He’s definitely worth the price of admission . ... Steph is both a shooter and a scorer. You can lock down a shooter, you can’t lock down a scorer. How the hell could you possibly think that someone could lock down Steph Curry?”
Many of the deep shooters of yesteryear might have been 3-point superstars, had they come along at the right time.
“In today’s game, I would have been a fantastic 3-point shooter,” Ainge said, while readily acknowledging Curry as a standalone talent.
“Steph is as exciting a player as has ever been in the NBA,” he said. “Just the variety of shots he has. I tweeted about six years ago that he was the greatest shooter in NBA history, and he has improved his range since then . ... He’s also a great passer, a great creator and has such a variety of shots in his bag that I think he’s one of the most exciting players ever.”
Chris Paul, now with the Suns, is Curry’s longtime rival, and Paul has been witness to Curry’s development, and to the evolution of the 3. Paul preceded Curry into the NBA by four seasons, and before Curry’s rookie year, he took him along on a family trip to Disneyworld so the two men could work out, prepping Curry for his pro debut.
“When I first came into the league, it was straight midrange (jump shots), and shoot 3s here and there, because there were a lot of good post players,” Paul said. “The game has changed, and you gotta be able to change with it.”
Did Curry play a major role in that change?
“Hell, yes!” Paul said. “You watch basketball like I do, you’re involved in the grassroots of basketball, you’ve seen Trae Young when he was younger, and seeing him come down across halfcourt and pulling up and shooting, that’s all Steph, you know what I mean? You see the way kids shoot the ball now, so deep, that’s been the influence Steph definitely had.”
Taylor, the NBA’s original 3-point ace, treasures his moment in the 3-point sun.
He pulled out an official box score from a game in the ’80-81 season, against the mighty Lakers at the Forum: Taylor went 4-for-4 from 3, scored 31 points and had nine assists in a 122-118 Clippers win. Magic Johnson took the Lakers’ only 3, and missed it.
Taylor, who went on to be an educator, starting 15 charter schools in Los Angeles, watches Curry with profound admiration and maybe some vicarious joy.
“Man, the freedom!” said Taylor. “And it’s just so much fun, how good he is, not only a great shooter, but amazing with the ball. To watch him do his pregame warm-up, dribbling between the legs — you remember, in our day, we were not allowed to (dribble) between the legs or behind the back.
“It’s exciting for me to see as a former 3-point champ, I guess you could call me. It’s great to see, because people say, ‘You guys couldn’t play in today’s game.’ I say, ‘Oh, yeah? I wouldn’t have to look over to the sidelines, getting yelled at for shooting a 3. I’d have so much freedom. It would be fun to play like Steph.”
So said one of the fellows who helped make Steph Curry possible.