Why Triple 4,000 Stephen Curry will be just a springboard
Perhaps the most notable aspect of this new milestone is that Curry will pass faster from 3,000 to 4,000 than 2,000 to 3,000, despite being four years older.
Better health has helped Curry accelerate their progress. Last season, he reached 70 games for the first time since 2016-17and is on its way to doing it again this season.
Greater availability would allow the 36 -year -old to maintain his prodigious pace until thirty. Curry now has five of the six best triple seasons in the history of the NBAincluding last season at the age of 35. Curry has already scored more triple at 30 years than Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony throughout his career.
Curry is still an All-Star that records star numbers and signed a new contract extension last summer that extends until season 2026-27. Ultimately, 4,000 could be a mere step station.
We can estimate how far Curry could get using the ‘favorite toy’ model, which Bill James originally developed for baseball and John Hollinger statistics later modified later for use in the NBA. Calculate the total career of a player in a particular statistic, depending on his recent history, age and height (because the eaves players tend to have longer races than very low or high players).
For example, let’s see 4,500 triples in his career, which Curry should achieve with two more good seasons. The model gives a 96% chance to achieve that milestone, which is an amazing 51% higher than the total of Allen’s career.
Let’s dream higher.
Curry became the first player to reach 3,000 triples and now 4,000. Why not 5,000? That is more difficult, but it is perfectly feasible, since the model gives Curry a 39 % chance of reaching 5,000 triples in his career. He even has a 6 % chance of reaching 5,533 triples in his career, as many as Allen and Miller together.
In general, The model estimates that Curry will retire with a total of 4,893 triples. But that is only the projected average result, which means that there is a 50 % chance of exceeding that total already high. After all, LeBron James is currently challenging all conceivable aging curvesand Curry could fit into a similar profile.
Even a minor version of Curry opening the court at 40 would be an absolute nightmare for defenses. How long could you stay in the NBA squad, entering from the bench every night to score some triples, such as your coach, Steve Kerr, at the end of her own prolific triple race?
Who could overcome Miller and Allen?
At the beginning of this season, a reporter asked Curry about Thompson’s effort to overcome Miller and keep the fifth place in the triple classification of his career.
“Wait. Have you said fifth? ”, Curry interrupted, before answering laughing. “It’s crazy because I surpassed Reggie three years ago and he was second, and now it’s fifth.”
Thompson surpassed Miller shortly after, and now James is a few games to overcome Miller too. In a few years, the former king of the triples will have fallen from the second to the seventh place in the classification of his career. And Miller is about to fall much more.
We can also use statistical models to project how many more active players will overcome Miller and Allen, the ancient kings of the triples. (Keep in mind that all these calculations assume that the NBA does not institute changes in the rules to stop the increase in triples).
Two players who have already surpassed Miller are on top of this list. At this time,Fill occupies the third place of all time in triple career, only behind Curry and James Harden. But Damian Lillard (98%) and Thompson (97%) have almost insured to overcome Allen in a year or two.
The next active player who should overcome Miller is Paul George (97% probability of exceeding Miller, 60% likely to overcome Allen). Despite a bad start in Philadelphia, George is only 211 triples scored behind Miller and should reach that figure easily. Other veterans with many possibilities are CJ McCollum (92% Miller, 37% Allen), Kyrie Irving (51% Miller, 13% Allen) and Kevin Durant (69% Miller, alone 6% Allen Because he is the most veteran member of this group, with a wide history of injury). All of them are good bets to overcome Miller even though their careers began before Curry led the triple revolution, so they did not accumulate as many triple at the beginning as the next generation of NBA stars.
That is the next group to consider, since almost all NBA stars in golden age in the modern game try many, many triples. Jayson Tatum (89% Miller, 85% Allen), Donovan Mitchell (89% Miller, 60% Allen) and Anthony Edwards (84% Miller, 68% Allen) lead the way. Luka Doncic (77% Miller, 45% Allen) It also has a solid triple projection, although sufficient matches have been lost to not overcome previous leaders in triples. Other stars found below the list are Tyrese Haliburton (52% Miller, 32% Allen), brings Young (51% Miller, 26% Allen) and Devin Booker (48% Miller, 22% Allen).
Young stars demonstrate how important health is when making these calculations. For example, Edwards and Lamelo Ball They entered the NBA in the same Draft class, and Ball has scored slightly more triple per game (3.0) than Edwards (2.9). But as Ball has lost so many games, Edwards already has 53% more total triples, which gives him a much more optimistic projection for the rest of his career.
The list of triples of all time, constantly changing
One of the main advances of this era in which the triples are a constant is that it is not necessary to reach stardom to reach the heights that Miller and Allen reached in their day. Other bases that have been widely used and have solid possibilities to overcome that duo are Jalen Green (59% Miller, 39% Allen), Tyler Herro (58% Miller, 36% Allen), Jordan Poole (58% Allen, 35% Miller), D’Angelo Russell (58% Miller, 26% Allen), Zach Lavine (47% Miller, 19% Allen) and Anfernee Simons (46% Miller, 26% Allen).
The most surprising candidates are not stars at all, but specialists in the most productive shooting era in the history of the NBA. Buddy Hield (94% Miller, 68% Allen) He has already eclipsed the 2,000 triples in his career and is on his way to exceed 200 for the seventh consecutive season, which gives him a clear path to continue climbing positions quickly. Malik Beasley (89% Miller, 64% Allen) It occupies the second place in triples scored this season and will become the fourth player in the story (along with Curry, Hield and Thompson) to succeed more than 1,000 triples between 25 and 28 years.
Beasley’s teammate in the Detroit Pistons, Tim Hardaway Jr. (65% Miller, 24% Allen), He is also the favorite to continue ascending in the triple classification, since he has just reached 1,800 triples in his career. AND Coby White (54% Miller, 33% Allen) and Michael Porter Jr. (45% Miller, 26% Allen) They have approximately 50-50 shots to catch Miller.
It is worth emphasizing the distinction in the type of player here. Miller and Allen are members of the Hall of Fame who were appointed for the 75th anniversary team of the NBA. Meanwhile, Role players such as Hield, Beasley and Hardaway are the favorites to overcome them in the race classification despite never having been part of an All-Star team, much less being on their way to the Hall of Fame.
Will someone reach Curry?
The triple inflation of the league inspires an analogy between sports that helps explain what will soon happen with NBA record books: Curry is the triples what Babe Ruth went to the homers.
In December 1919, when the Boston Red Sox sent Ruth to the New York Yankees, the leader of home runs of the MLB career was a 19th -century batter named Roger Connor, who connected 138 young people on the way to Cooperstown. Ruth beat him in 1921 and soon left Connor in the dustfinally ending his career with 714 homers.
However, Ruth was not alone; He had headed a whole movement of home runs. By December 1929, a decade later, eight players had surpassed Connor in the classification of all time. By 1939, 32 had done it. And today, a little more than a century after Ruth took her sport from the era of the dead ball, Roger Connor is tied in the 670s in terms of race home runs. Most of the players who preceded him never touched the Hall of Fame.
The NBA triple trajectory may not be so extreme, but the pattern is consistent. As Curry observed, Miller was second in the career classification of career just a few years agoand the statistical models project that it will fall outside the top 25 for when the current generation of players has finished launching.
However, that does not mean that the crowd that follows Curry will end up reaching it. Ruth himself remained the king of home runs for more than half a century, until Hank Aaron surpassed him in 1974, and Curry is so extraordinary that his triple reign could easily last so long.
Only five other active players have at least 20% chances of joining Curry in the 4,000 triple clubaccording to the statistical model of the ‘favorite toy’: Tatum with 31%, Harden with 28%, Edwards with 26%, Thompson with 21%and Lillard with 20%. The two youngest members of that quintet are the only two -digit players of reaching 4,500 triples in their career (where, again, Curry is insurance), with Tatum with 17% and Edwards with 15%.
Maybe some young man currently anonymous enters the NBA in the future, when the teams try 50 or 60 triples per game, and overcome Curry in a few decades. But it will probably need to do much more than 4,000 to do it, because who knows how far Curry could continue its own record?
Chris Herring of AM850 contributed to this story.
