Steph Curry gets credited with "changing the NBA", when it was really Mike D'Antoni

[LV Koopa]

I've always said it was the Rockets with Harden that actually changed the league. Even pre-D'antoni they were leading the league in 3 pointers attempted. Adding in D'antoni just took it to a whole new level. They showed that even with mediocre talent minus Harden you could win a crazy amount of games simply by upping the volume of three point shots even from completely average shooters. Other teams knew they didn't have a Steph or a Klay. But they did have a bunch of average 3 point shooters who can good open looks with a playmaker in the middle and compete even without having superior talent.

And it wasn't just the 3pt volume - it was abusing ways to get those average shooters open with 1 ball dominant guy spamming PnR and collapsing a defense. I can't remember correctly but I think it was the Spurs who caught on to Corner 3s being a cheat code, and D'Antoni started figuring out ways to get those guys the ball without having to run screens off-ball. And in terms of roster building it was plug and play so you could get them for CHEAP. Absolutely altered the way NBA teams (the smart ones anyway) started building rosters and drafting for 3&D guys.

Kerr took some of those principles and with Steph/Klay/Dray he could do even more. Dray (and Iggy) being a poor scorer but great playmaker AND generational defender, meant they didn't need to do Offense/Defense subs meant Steph and Klay could do A LOT of damage in short minutes. You still have teams to this day that can't find a 2 way low usage star of that caliber.

SSOL Suns, 05-09 Dallas, Houston, and GS (pre-KD) were just different. It took a while, but for years many people knew that "jump shooters can't win a chip" nonsense was going to fall.

 

[Damnshow]

If ypu want to play games on who started this trend in NBA, then it's Rick Pitino Knicks from late 80s. The team shot over 1000 threes in a single season while championship Detroit Pistons shot only 400.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

When you look at the actual timeline, it was analytics and the Houston Rockets who drove the trend more than either D'Antoni or Curry.

Natural human tendency is always to attribute narratives to the most memorable personalities rather than following the data.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

How in the fukk do you give credit to somebody for changing the ENTIRE LANDSCAPE OF A SPORT and they aint win shyt doing whatever it is you're giving them credit for

It don't work that way

Whether or not a team wins the chip has NOTHING to do with their league-changing influence. It's just what the casuals notice.

Billy Beane completely changed baseball when he was at Oakland and he won less than anyone mentioned in this thread.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I've always said it was the Rockets with Harden that actually changed the league. Even pre-D'antoni they were leading the league in 3 pointers attempted. Adding in D'antoni just took it to a whole new level. They showed that even with mediocre talent minus Harden you could win a crazy amount of games simply by upping the volume of three point shots even from completely average shooters. Other teams knew they didn't have a Steph or a Klay. But they did have a bunch of average 3 point shooters who can good open looks with a playmaker in the middle and compete even without having superior talent.

And it wasn't just the 3pt volume - it was abusing ways to get those average shooters open with 1 ball dominant guy spamming PnR and collapsing a defense. I can't remember correctly but I think it was the Spurs who caught on to Corner 3s being a cheat code, and D'Antoni started figuring out ways to get those guys the ball without having to run screens off-ball. And in terms of roster building it was plug and play so you could get them for CHEAP. Absolutely altered the way NBA teams (the smart ones anyway) started building rosters and drafting for 3&D guys.

Exactly. And it wasn't any one coach who did it, it was the fact that the front office committed to analytics.

In the real world of basketball, no one was going to change everything due to Steph because every GM knows they're not getting Steph. And really only a couple guys around the league have emulated Steph's game to any significant degree. But everyone felt they could emulate the Rockets because finding forwards who could shoot threes, spreading out the floor, and then spamming the P&R is something every team could do.

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

And Steve Kerr being the general manager of the Suns during that time watching it all happen was not a coincidence. Shout out to D'Antoni !

Kerr was also part of the 90s Bulls as a player (winning championships), and part of the late 90s/early 00s Spurs as a player too (winning a championship), where he he has spken about taken influences from.

But don't let that stop you getting off your weak ass agenda.

 

[LV Koopa]

Exactly. And it wasn't any one coach who did it, it was the fact that the front office committed to analytics.

In the real world of basketball, no one was going to change everything due to Steph because every GM knows they're not getting Steph. And really only a couple guys around the league have emulated Steph's game to any significant degree. But everyone felt they could emulate the Rockets because finding forwards who could shoot threes, spreading out the floor, and then spamming the P&R is something every team could do.

Back in the ~06-2012 timeline, analytics were known but only a few teams like Houston (Morey) really employed it. All the big sports betting people already knew about stuff like the 4 factors of basketball and were just printing money.

It's funny looking back, but the amount of terrible GMs and Front Offices that tried to emulate GS, failed, and then finally figured out Steph is 1 of 1 is comical. I remember people comparing Trae Young to Steph and I realized most people have no clue what Steph really is.

 

[Samori Toure]

Don Nelson's offenses weren't the same as D'Antoni's. Also, D'Antoni's success started to show after the rule changes in 2004 (when defenses had great advantages over the offense).

Dude really started breaking the game in creative ways.

Vanity vanity all is vanity. There is nothing new under the Sun. Not only was Don Nelson running that versions of small ball four out offense but Paul Westphal and other coaches have run variations of it since at least the 1970s. Hell that is probably where the Europeans learned it.

In fact Westphal got Phoenix all the way to the NBA Finals in 1993 playing small ball. He had Kevin Johnson running point. He had Ainge, Dan Marjle, Richard Dumas, Cedric Ceballos, Tom Chambers, Barkley and Frank Johnson.

Modern fans just had not seen it, but it was always there. It is just like in music. A douchebag like Chris Stapleton puts out a song called "Tennessee Whiskey" and people called it a great Country song and they bragged about his skills as a songwriter and musician. Well that was not a country song and Chris Stapleton didn't write it. It was in fact a remake of a classic Blues song called "I would rather go blind" by Blues legend Etta James.

 

[jadillac]

Steph Curry plays defense

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Back in the ~06-2012 timeline, analytics were known but only a few teams like Houston (Morey) really employed it. All the big sports betting people already knew about stuff like the 4 factors of basketball and were just printing money.

Agreed, but Houston didn't apply analytics to truly spamming 3pt shooting until the 2012-13 season.

In '11-'12, Orlando led the league with 27 threes/game. Golden State and Houston were back in 9th/10th with 20 threes/game.

'12-'13, Houston took the league lead (barely) with 29 threes/game. Steph set a new league record by making 272 threes that year, but he wasn't shooting at a crazy pace (just 7.7 attempts/game), he just made them at a crazy-high clip for that volume (45%). Golden State was all the way back in THIRTEENTH place on 3pt attempts, still shooting just 20 threes/game while other teams were starting to move up. Ironically, Houston set a new NBA record for made threes in a game.....in a blowout win over Golden State.

'13-'14, Houston leads the league again with 27 threes/game. Golden State has increased their volume, but is still back at 6th place with 25 threes/game.

'14-'15 was the breakthrough year. Houston goes balls to the wall and shoots 33 threes/game, blasting all previous records. On top of that, Cleveland, Portland, Golden State, and the Clippers ALL blow through the high three-point total from the previous year. Golden State wasn't special there, they were back in 4th place in 3pt attempts, with nearly 500 fewer than Houston. 10 teams shot at least 25 threes/game, a number that would have been #2 in the league recently. The final 4 teams in the NBA playoffs were 1st (Houston), 2nd (Cleveland), 4th (Golden State) and 7th (Atlanta) in three-point attempts, all shooting 26+ a game.



People started to claim that teams embraced the 3pt because the Warriors won a chip, but the league had already embraced the 3pt in the 2015 regular season, before the Warriors had won anything, and Houston had been leading the way not Golden State. Steph ended up shooting just 38% from 3pt in the Finals (25-65), Klay shot an awful 30% (12-40), Draymond shot 26% (5-19), and they struggled a lot more than they should have against a team that couldn't hit anything, so the 3pt shot didn't even come out looking great in the Finals itself and many people talked about Golden State winning due to injuries. But that didn't make them give up on the 3pt, because analytics had already told them the 3pt shot was the way to go.

It's funny looking back, but the amount of terrible GMs and Front Offices that tried to emulate GS, failed, and then finally figured out Steph is 1 of 1 is comical. I remember people comparing Trae Young to Steph and I realized most people have no clue what Steph really is.

Is that GMs or fans? Because Atlanta never really tried to emulate Golden State, they were emulating Houston from the beginning. Trae played as a ball-dominant foul-baiter surrounded by lanky 3-and-D forwards, not an off-ball sniper. They even got Capela from the Rockets they were so committed to the model, not a point-forward like Draymond.

Same goes for Luka in Dallas, Zion in New Orleans, Ja in Memphis, Giannis in Milwaukee, Russ when he was in OKC, Bron in Cleveland, you could even say CP3 on the Clippers. They're completely different star players, yet the style of game for all of their squads is more like Houston than like Golden State. Spread the court, give the ball to your star, and either run a pick-and-roll or allow him to create something against a defense that has to choose between sending help and staying home against the 3pt shooters.

I have trouble thinking of any teams that really emulated Golden State's ball movement and off-ball screens.....maybe Boston to a degree after they ended the IT experiment? But Boston didn't look for a Steph-like shooter to do it. It's not like they didn't have the talent, they could have told Kyrie to come off of screens and shoot 10-12 threes/game if they wanted to. Instead they had Kyrie shooting 6.5 threes/year......which is fewer than Marcus fukking Smart shot the next year lol.

 

[Pure Water]

 

[VegetasHairline]

Agreed, but Houston didn't apply analytics to truly spamming 3pt shooting until the 2012-13 season.

In '11-'12, Orlando led the league with 27 threes/game. Golden State and Houston were back in 9th/10th with 20 threes/game.

'12-'13, Houston took the league lead (barely) with 29 threes/game. Steph set a new league record by making 272 threes that year, but he wasn't shooting at a crazy pace (just 7.7 attempts/game), he just made them at a crazy-high clip for that volume (45%). Golden State was all the way back in THIRTEENTH place on 3pt attempts, still shooting just 20 threes/game while other teams were starting to move up. Ironically, Houston set a new NBA record for made threes in a game.....in a blowout win over Golden State.

'13-'14, Houston leads the league again with 27 threes/game. Golden State has increased their volume, but is still back at 6th place with 25 threes/game.

'14-'15 was the breakthrough year. Houston goes balls to the wall and shoots 33 threes/game, blasting all previous records. On top of that, Cleveland, Portland, Golden State, and the Clippers ALL blow through the high three-point total from the previous year. Golden State wasn't special there, they were back in 4th place in 3pt attempts, with nearly 500 fewer than Houston. 10 teams shot at least 25 threes/game, a number that would have been #2 in the league recently. The final 4 teams in the NBA playoffs were 1st (Houston), 2nd (Cleveland), 4th (Golden State) and 7th (Atlanta) in three-point attempts, all shooting 26+ a game.



People started to claim that teams embraced the 3pt because the Warriors won a chip, but the league had already embraced the 3pt in the 2015 regular season, before the Warriors had won anything, and Houston had been leading the way not Golden State. Steph ended up shooting just 38% from 3pt in the Finals (25-65), Klay shot an awful 30% (12-40), Draymond shot 26% (5-19), and they struggled a lot more than they should have against a team that couldn't hit anything, so the 3pt shot didn't even come out looking great in the Finals itself and many people talked about Golden State winning due to injuries. But that didn't make them give up on the 3pt, because analytics had already told them the 3pt shot was the way to go.







Is that GMs or fans? Because Atlanta never really tried to emulate Golden State, they were emulating Houston from the beginning. Trae played as a ball-dominant foul-baiter surrounded by lanky 3-and-D forwards, not an off-ball sniper. They even got Capela from the Rockets they were so committed to the model, not a point-forward like Draymond.

Same goes for Luka in Dallas, Zion in New Orleans, Ja in Memphis, Giannis in Milwaukee, Russ when he was in OKC, Bron in Cleveland, you could even say CP3 on the Clippers. They're completely different star players, yet the style of game for all of their squads is more like Houston than like Golden State. Spread the court, give the ball to your star, and either run a pick-and-roll or allow him to create something against a defense that has to choose between sending help and staying home against the 3pt shooters.

I have trouble thinking of any teams that really emulated Golden State's ball movement and off-ball screens.....maybe Boston to a degree after they ended the IT experiment? But Boston didn't look for a Steph-like shooter to do it. It's not like they didn't have the talent, they could have told Kyrie to come off of screens and shoot 10-12 threes/game if they wanted to. Instead they had Kyrie shooting 6.5 threes/year......which is fewer than Marcus fukking Smart shot the next year lol.

Since they hired Mike Brown, the King's have been running a similar offense. It helps that Brown was an assistant with the Warriors.

What made the Warriors different than Houston is the fact that Houston basically ignored the mid range and it was either a 3 or something in the paint.

Another thing the Warriors do and the King's currently are doing is utilizing the dribble handoff (DHO). You're starting to see a lot more teams using it.

 

[darryl]

@Gil Scott-Heroin when did this fakkit come back? Go the fukk away

 

[LV Koopa]

Agreed, but Houston didn't apply analytics to truly spamming 3pt shooting until the 2012-13 season.

In '11-'12, Orlando led the league with 27 threes/game. Golden State and Houston were back in 9th/10th with 20 threes/game.

'12-'13, Houston took the league lead (barely) with 29 threes/game. Steph set a new league record by making 272 threes that year, but he wasn't shooting at a crazy pace (just 7.7 attempts/game), he just made them at a crazy-high clip for that volume (45%). Golden State was all the way back in THIRTEENTH place on 3pt attempts, still shooting just 20 threes/game while other teams were starting to move up. Ironically, Houston set a new NBA record for made threes in a game.....in a blowout win over Golden State.

'13-'14, Houston leads the league again with 27 threes/game. Golden State has increased their volume, but is still back at 6th place with 25 threes/game.

'14-'15 was the breakthrough year. Houston goes balls to the wall and shoots 33 threes/game, blasting all previous records. On top of that, Cleveland, Portland, Golden State, and the Clippers ALL blow through the high three-point total from the previous year. Golden State wasn't special there, they were back in 4th place in 3pt attempts, with nearly 500 fewer than Houston. 10 teams shot at least 25 threes/game, a number that would have been #2 in the league recently. The final 4 teams in the NBA playoffs were 1st (Houston), 2nd (Cleveland), 4th (Golden State) and 7th (Atlanta) in three-point attempts, all shooting 26+ a game.



People started to claim that teams embraced the 3pt because the Warriors won a chip, but the league had already embraced the 3pt in the 2015 regular season, before the Warriors had won anything, and Houston had been leading the way not Golden State. Steph ended up shooting just 38% from 3pt in the Finals (25-65), Klay shot an awful 30% (12-40), Draymond shot 26% (5-19), and they struggled a lot more than they should have against a team that couldn't hit anything, so the 3pt shot didn't even come out looking great in the Finals itself and many people talked about Golden State winning due to injuries. But that didn't make them give up on the 3pt, because analytics had already told them the 3pt shot was the way to go.







Is that GMs or fans? Because Atlanta never really tried to emulate Golden State, they were emulating Houston from the beginning. Trae played as a ball-dominant foul-baiter surrounded by lanky 3-and-D forwards, not an off-ball sniper. They even got Capela from the Rockets they were so committed to the model, not a point-forward like Draymond.

Same goes for Luka in Dallas, Zion in New Orleans, Ja in Memphis, Giannis in Milwaukee, Russ when he was in OKC, Bron in Cleveland, you could even say CP3 on the Clippers. They're completely different star players, yet the style of game for all of their squads is more like Houston than like Golden State. Spread the court, give the ball to your star, and either run a pick-and-roll or allow him to create something against a defense that has to choose between sending help and staying home against the 3pt shooters.

I have trouble thinking of any teams that really emulated Golden State's ball movement and off-ball screens.....maybe Boston to a degree after they ended the IT experiment? But Boston didn't look for a Steph-like shooter to do it. It's not like they didn't have the talent, they could have told Kyrie to come off of screens and shoot 10-12 threes/game if they wanted to. Instead they had Kyrie shooting 6.5 threes/year......which is fewer than Marcus fukking Smart shot the next year lol.

That was more for the fans/spectators saying Trae was like Steph when he was more like Nash. Funny enough I never really saw it, but Trae does have some of those Harden tendencies. Wonder what Atlanta will look like with Jalen Johnson becoming a monster.

Only team I'd disagree on stylistically is the CP3 Clippers. They took a long time to really embrace 3pt bombing as they were playing "traditional" until Blake really opened up his game. Also because CP outside of his Houston years didn't lean into his iso scoring ability enough consistently imo.

Yea no team really emulated GS style because its just damn impossible to get the pieces. Damn now that I think about it there are a ton of guys that emulate Harden's step back 3s and not Steph's off ball screen action (prob because of the insane conditioning). Harden/Houston impact on the last era might be understated.

 

[Gil Scott-Heroin]

Houston didn't change the NBA.

I think cats are getting too caught up in specific team 3-pt volume. Because while other teams might have taken more 3s than the Warriors, nobody was taking more 3s than Steph.

Prior to 2013, the league-leaders in 3-pt shots were typically your spot-up shooters or players whom really weren't stars of the league. Then 2013 rolled around, and it was the start of Steph carving out his name in the finite space of superstardom, where he ended up leading the league in 3-pt attempts, which coincided with the season where the team-average 3-pt attempts started trending upwards:

2013 team-average 3s - 20 per game
2012 team-average 3s - 18 per game
2011 team-average 3s - 18 per game
2010 team-average 3s - 18 per game
2009 team-average 3s - 18 per game
2008 team-average 3s - 18 per game.

2013 was the first year where there was an increase in 3s in half a decade.

2013 league-leader in 3s - Steph
2014 league-leader in 3s - Steph
2015 league-leader in 3s - Steph
2016 league-leader in 3s - Steph (this is the season where he averaged three more 3s than the #2 player)
2017 league-leader in 3s - Steph.

By which time the league had almost entirely embraced the 3-pt shot as the way forward, and the team-average was closing in on 30 per game.

While other teams like the Rockets were certainly the first to take it to the extreme, they weren't behind the boom.

It was Steph.

It was his impact that changed the landscape of how the public saw the league, and made it appealing for other teams and stars to embrace.

It's really no different to how MJ changed the league. He wasn't the first uber-athlete, he wasn't the first to showcase flair and he wasn't the first high-volume scoring guard. The Bulls didn't even represent those elements of the game. But he is recognized for taking all those things and turning them up to max, getting the public to pay attention to a new brand of play. He's responsible for ushering an era where franchises tried to replicate his style of play and dominance.

No different to Steph.

The very fact that nobody could find the next MJ, just like they couldn't find the next Steph, during their respective periods of dominance, is exactly why they changed the game. The rest of the league were hard at work trying to chase that rainbow.