I'm going to settle on you being deliberately obtuse. However:
What you are saying, if I understand correctly, is that Bird broke his hand in college, shot worse after he broke it, and is therefore a better shooter than Curry. Ok. That is 110% nonsensical.
Regardless, I will stand by the statement that Curry is an empirically better shooter. To prove my point, I gave a link. With numbers. I can't change what the numbers say, unless you think B-R is lying on my behalf. Not a story about a broken hand -- although, since I've broken my shooting hand before, I could provide an anecdotal story about how badly/not badly it affected my game, come to think of it.
How the game has changed is an interesting discussion that I find infinitely more fun (and generally worthwile), but I'm definitely not going to sit here and read refutations that consist of "sorry, I'm making no effort to understand what you've said in the slightest, but I know you're wrong because I said so." (That's not about you, Beat LA. )
Play basketball sometime and shoot 3's. Then try to do that fadeaway and tell me which is more impressive and more difficult.
Do you think it was a coincidence that the NBA's three point numbers exploded when they shortened the three in 1995-1996? Do you think it was a coincidence that Carmelo Anthony set the international three point record on a FIBA court with a shorter three point line?
Since you seem to want it nice and simple: It is harder to shoot a ball into a basket the further away from the basket you are. That is a fact. Therefore, a three point shot is a fundamentally harder shot to make than a 16 footer. There are easy 25 foot shots and easy 16 foot shots and fadeaway 16 footers of the wrong foot and fadeaway 25 footers off the wrong foot -- everything else being equal, the shot that is closer to the rim will be easier to make.
I am not at all being deliberately obtuse, and it's just common sense in regards to Bird's injury, which you, yourself, pointed out (intentionally or not I don't know). How many people move better after they hurt their ankle? How does that not make sense to you? If he was better than Curry before the injury (and for the record, I look up a lot on basketball reference.com, so I hardly think their information is anecdotal or tinted with nostalgia ), would he not be better if it had never occurred? Does a car stop just as well as it normally does if any of its brakes are worn out? Again, it's just common sense.
As for the NBA shortening the 3-point line, you're only serving to make my point, so thank you. I know that Curry can hit 3s from the parking lot, lol , but if he played in Bird's era with more physical defense and a longer distance from 3, do you not think that his numbers would be altered, and perhaps, drastically, because saying no is completely nonsensical.
The shortened three point line was only in effect from 1994-'97. It has no bearing on Curry vs. Bird in that regard: the point was that the league, as a whole, shot better from three during that span, because closer shots are easier to make than longer ones.
You still haven't offered up any actual proof that Bird was a better shooter than Curry before he broke his hand, by the way. Repeating something over and over does not make it true. I'll ne more than happy to admit that I'm wrong if you can actually show me that this is the case, but you haven't, you've just said it.
Also, I would say this is friendly. It's the internet, so maybe that's being lost.
Well, between you not knowing of Bird's injury and my lack of knowledge concerning the shortened 3 point line, I'd say we're even, lol
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As for the proof, I figured that you would just look up their respective stats when you were on basketball reference.com, but I guess not. Here they are -
Bird's college numbers -
76-77 .544 fg% .840 ft%
77-78 .524 fg% .793 ft%
78-79 .532 fg% .831 ft%
Curry's college numbers -
06-07 .463 fg% .408 3pt% .855 ft%
07-08 .483 fg% .439 3pt% .894 ft%
08-09 .454 fg% .387 3pt% .876 ft%
Now, in fairness, I realize that Bird played without the 3 in college, so here are Curry's fg% minus the 3s -
06-07 .488
07-08 .540
08-09 .519
So let's see, even though he had one year in which he compared to Bird in terms of fg%, he still never once bested Larry's field goal percentages, and like I said before, these are pre-injury numbers for 33, but all of this is hardly evidence of Curry being an empirically better shooter. It should also be noted that Bird took more shots over his college career than Steph, so you can't say that his percentages were due to a smaller sample size or a crap conference, because Davidson is hardly a powerhouse, either, lol
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Now, since you cited their comparison via basketball reference.com, have a look at Curry's playoff shooting numbers - they're drastically lower than Bird's in terms of overall fg%, are slightly lower in 2pt%, are worse than Larry at the line (where Bird attempted more, anyway), and the highest percentage he's ever shot, overall, would be this year's .461, which Bird somehow managed to do after getting in a bar fight in 1985, lol
. Call me when Curry hit's at least 50% overall during a postseason, which Bird did twice, at .524 in 1984 and .517 in 1986. 86 also put Bird in the 50-40-90 club. In the playoffs.
Wow. The only other guys I could find (in a rather superficial search, btw, lol
) who accomplished that are Ray Allen and Calvin Murphy, and both did so in half as many games, and most of the other guys like Miller, Price, and Mullin (who I somehow forgot to add) only did so in 3-7 games, so they don't measure up in that regard, either.
In the end, I don't see how you can emphatically states that Curry is a better shooter than Bird, even in an easier era, but I guess that we'll have to agree to disagree
. Whatever.