San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The tall and the short of it
From deep: Kerr paved way, Curry perfected it
Give Stephen Curry a few more great seasons and he will own every NBA 3point shooting record in the books. Save one.
The NBA career record for 3point shooting accuracy, 45.4%, is held by Steve Kerr. Kerr had a respectable 15year NBA career, playing mostly off the bench, then faded into obscurity, but this dogged reporter tracked him down to talk about 3point records, shooting and Curry.
Kerr lives in a place called Golden State. And, what a coincidence, he coaches Curry’s team, the Warriors.
Theoretically, Curry could catch and pass his coach for that career 3point accuracy record. Curry sits at 43.3%, so catching Kerr would be a long shot, but Curry is a long shot.
During our phone conversation, I commented that the previous night’s game was a perfect scenario for Kerr: The Warriors won, but Curry had a lousy shooting night, thereby decreasing his chances of ever catching Kerr.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Kerr said, laughing. “That is definitely false.”
True, that false. Kerr is Curry’s most eloquent admirer, the Keats to Curry’s Grecian urn, and in our discussion the Warriors coach was about to take his respect to a cosmic level.
Kerr broke in as an NBA head coach seven seasons ago, equipped most notably with a revolutionary offense designed to maximize Curry’s 3point shooting.
So far, so good. The Warriors won the NBA title that first season. The next season, Curry exploded, as he went from 286 made 3s — then the NBA record — to 402 as the Warriors won 73 games.
Kerr knows not only how to design a 3dominant offense, he also knows how to shoot the 3. Along with his NBA record, he holds the NCAA men’s record for career 3point shooting accuracy, 57.3% (minimum 100 attempts). In Kerr’s senior season at Arizona (198788), the NCAA adopted the 3point shot and Kerr sank 114 of 199.
He also made at least one 3pointer in all 38 Arizona games, easily the NCAA record, though Kerr was not aware of that record until our discussion.
“That was a fun team,” Kerr said, “and I had an incredible shooting season, until the last game. I shot 2for12 (in a semifinal loss to Oklahoma), a game that still haunts me. We had a great team, so I was shooting wideopen shots all season, I just got into a groove and stayed in it, until that last miserable game.”
Kerr’s shooting form was technically sound but unremarkable. Curry’s shot is a wonder of physics, a cheat code. I asked Kerr if he would have tried to copy any of Curry’s form back in the day, had they been contemporaries.
That’s when Kerr went deep. “I would copy not so much the stroke, but the confidence,” Kerr said. “And I know it’s hard to copy confidence, but I look at Steph now and I think, ‘I should have shot a lot more.’ I know it’s a different game, back then we were much more deliberate, especially in the ’90s, and I’m not sure coaches would have gone for quick 3pointers, like we encourage now. But I was my own worst enemy. I was too cautious, I was too selfconscious.
“There’s a lot of times I watch Steph and I just admire the fluidity and the flow and the grace with which he plays. There’s this feel, there’s this sort of beautiful flow. I felt that on the very best night of the year, but I think Steph seeks that feeling night in and night out, he sort of lives in that flow.
“That’s what I would take from Steph. I think I was actually better than I thought I was. I didn’t have the belief and that
willingness to let go that’s so beautiful about Steph’s game. That’s one of the things I admire most about him, is he never gets in his own way, he never inhibits himself. He just plays.”
Is it a fearlessness?
“It’s a fearlessness, it’s a belief, but it’s also, I think, an extension of his handeye. It would be hard to say to someone who didn’t have good handeye coordination, ‘Emulate Steph.’ But if you have good handeye, if you’re a player with good touch on the ball, good feel, I think it’s a quality that can be emulated, just that search for the elusive flow that every sports psychologist writes about. That’s what embodies Steph, that feeling.”
That feeling had been exhibited in the Warriors’ previous game, when Curry was ice cold but kept shooting.
“At 2for15, my god!” Kerr said. “I mean, at 2for9, I would be curled up in a corner, sucking my thumb, calling for my mama. And he’s just out there, and he’s just flowing, searching for it. Almost observing, rather than judging, like a Buddhist — just observing the circumstances, and that’s why he’s so likely to catch fire. He doesn’t allow himself to go down a bad path.
“Looking back, I wish I’d taken more (3s), I wish I’d gotten out of my own way.”
Kerr was no slouch. He helped blaze a trail that Curry turned into an Autobahn. Kerr’s 3point exploits that one season at Arizona helped legitimize the college 3pointer, which was on trial, scorned by many as a cheesy gimmick.
In the NBA, the 3pointer was adopted for the 197980 season, but for many years the 3 was strictly a desperation heave, not part of any team’s offense. In Kerr’s eighth playing season, 199596, he became a much more active 3 shooter, going from 170 3s attempted the previous season, to 237, shooting them at a 51.5% clip. That was the season the Bulls started their second threepeat of the Michael Jordan era, and Kerr’s longrange sniping gave a ton of court cred to the 3ball.
So Kerr’s shooting helped usher in a new age of bombs away, a trend boosted by coaches like Steve Kerr. But he waves off any comparison with Curry as a shooter.
“Steph makes more in two seasons than I made in 15,” noted Kerr, who said he and Curry have never discussed Kerr’s 3point shooting record. “I just shot when I was wide open, the degree of difficulty is not even close. I mean, it’s nice to have that record, and it’s definitely a badge of honor for me, but when I think of what Steph and Klay (Thompson) do, they’re playing a different game than when I played.”
But they’re playing it on the backs of giants — players and coaches — who paved the way.