The NBA Three-point Contest is a standardized, multiple choice test.
Just fill in every blank with a make or a miss.
No points for creativity like its freeform creative essay of a cousin, the slam dunk
contest.
But everyone who’s stared down a Scantron knows that no amount of studying guarantees
you perfection under the pressure of test day.
And one three-point contest gave us the bleakest possible combination of unprepared competitors,
flukey performances, and just straight-up bad shooters.
Especially when you put it in the context of a great All-Star Weekend, you’ll see
that 2000 was the worst NBA three-point contest ever.
February 12, Y2K.
Oinklamp, Snaliforny 36-year-old Jeff Hornacek is gonna retire
at season’s end after one last playoff run with the Utah Jazz.
But first he’s gotta defend his crown as three-point champion.
It’s not last year’s crown.
1999 had no All-Star weekend at all because of the lockout.
But the year before that, Hornacek bested an impressive lineup of elite shooters and
multiple former three-point champions.
He outshot veteran contest titans like Reggie Miller, Glen Rice, Dale Ellis, and Hubert
Davis.
This year, our friend Hubert’s back.
He’ll finish this season number 1 in three-point percentage.
Terry Porter’s in a three-point contest for the third time in his career, and he’ll
finish top ten in percentage as well.
So we’ve got some contest veterans here, but only one of these contest vets is making
it out of this first round.
There are 5 racks with 5 balls, worth one point each, except for the two-point moneyballs
at the end of each rack.
So that’s 30 available points, and Porter scores just a 15.
In front of his son, too.
Terry looks disgusted.
And he thought he had more points!
I thought I had 19.
He thought he had 19.
He didn’t.
Hubert Davis does even worse.
After an okay start, he collapses on the last two racks to finish with just 14 points.
Davis hit 12 of 25 shots, which is 48 percent, which is worse than he’ll shoot in actual
games this season with defenders trying to stop him.
Hornacek might still be winded from winning the 2-Ball Contest with Natalie Williams earlier
tonight, but he does well enough with a 17-point first round, even if his kids don’t look
too impressed.
So, those are the three returning contest vets.
There are 5 other shooters, and history tells us the league will have searched far and wide
to find the best possible people to fill out the lineup.
Craig Hodges was such a deadly shooter, famous for hitting 19 straight shots in one contest,
that he got invited to the 1993 event even though his career had ended.
If this generic NBA jersey is available for purchase somewhere I would like to own it.
I just love the league!
You can fall out of the league and still get an invite, and in fact ...
… Rimas Kurtinaitis participated in the 1989 contest even though he never played in
the NBA.
So there’s reason to believe the league cast a wide net for this lineup.
They’re not afraid to reach.
Let’s check out the 5 newcomers.
Mike Bibby was an awful shooter last year as a rookie for the Vancouver Grizzlies, but
he’s hitting from outside this season, and will go on to be a proficient shooter over
his 14-year-career.
Tonight?
A 15 in the first round, which isn’t gonna do it.
Bob Sura comes with some red flags.
He’s shooting well this season, but hit just 20 percent of his threes last year and
has an injured toe.
He also embarrassed himself in the dunk contest as a rookie, so All-Star Weekend just might
not be his scene.
And … yeah.
Sura is cold, coming out of the gates with 10 straight misses.
His former coach, Mike Fratello, is openly disavowing his development.
He never had a good shooting coach, did he, Mike?
I wasn’t in charge of that at the time.
Sura scores just 9 points out of 30, which is gross, but not the worst opening round
ever.
In Michael Jordan’s first and only round of 3 point contest participation, he put up
a five.
A five.
And he turned out okay, so there’s hope for you yet, Bob.
Our other 3 newcomers are also on the younger side, and they’re all on their way to becoming
legendary, Hall of Fame caliber players.
Allen Iverson is here.
He’s not a good outside shooter and never will be, but he’s hit 35 percent from downtown
so far this season and … I mean, it’s Allen Iverson.
The dude is one of the faces of the league and got almost 2 million fan votes to become
a starter for tomorrow’s All-Star game.
If there’s an opportunity to include Iverson, you include Iverson.
Actually, hold that thought because Iverson doesn’t even come close to finishing his
first round before time expires, and posts a score of just ten.
This might be a good time to mention that Iverson considered pulling out of this contest,
was pushed to do so by his coach and, oh, semi-related: recently broke the thumb on
his shooting hand.
It really makes you wonder who else could have taken that spot.
Like, we’ve established that the NBA is willing to reach for 3-point talent, but like
… just look who’s already in Oakland for the weekend.
Just looking at some All-Stars … he would have been good, he would have been good … he’s
having a good shooting year...
he’s one of the best shooters ever, though maybe he said no after falling short in prior
contests.
Allan Houston was here tonight for the 2-ball competition, will also be in tomorrow’s
game, and ranks among the league’s best three-pointerers … but he’s not in the
contest.
Or they could have had someone who’s in Oakland for last night’s Rookie-Sophomore
game.
Wally Szczerbiak.
Lamar Odom.
Cuttino Mobley.
Michael Dickerson.
Paul Pierce.
All those youngsters can shoot a bit, and they’re around.
Gotta think they would have said yes to an invite.
And then there’s Vince Carter.
Vince is hitting lots of threes in his second season, and he’s the star of the weekend,
having accumulated the most fan votes for the main event on Sunday.
But Vince is understandably absent because he’s saving himself.
Later tonight, Carter is going to resurrect the slam dunk contest, surpassing brilliant
efforts by Tracy McGrady and Steve Francis to win with some of the most iconic dunks
ever.
That new crop of young dunking stars makes you wish there were an equivalent cohort to
carry the torch for the next generation of great shooters.
Oh wait, there totally is.
Ray Allen and Dirk Nowitzki will one day rank among the greatest shooters ever, rack up
tons of All-Star berths, win championships, and surely enter the basketball Hall of Fame.
They will go on to mean just as much to the art of shooting as Vince and friends mean
to attacking the rim.
But not tonight.
Tonight, Allen is still regarded as more of a slasher than a shooter.
We’ve never seen a dunker or a great athlete win this competition yet.
Ray Allen, Bobby Sura, Allen Iverson I’d put in that category.
Allen gets that label despite the fact that he, like Bob Sura, totally mailed in the ‘97
dunk contest.
Hmm.
Here, Allen starts very cold, but makes good use of the moneyballs to finish with 16 in
the first round.
That should be enough to make the final round, where Ray will have to …
… get out there and eliminate all the befuddledness.
Yeah.
And here’s the 7-foot German kid.
He shot terribly his rookie year, as players coming over from Europe often do.
But now he’s used to the longer three-point line, hitting a way better percentage, and
… boom, that’s a group-leading 18 in the opening round.
We’ve got ourselves a three-man final with so much potential for a good story, which
is what makes what we’re about to see suck exponentially.
Allen is a first-time All-Star this weekend, and combining that honor with a shootout victory
would really make this a breakout weekend.
Instead, he farts out a score of 10.
That ties our pal Hubert’s 1998 stinker for the worst final round score to date.
Ray’ll win next year, and he’ll go down as one of the greatest shooters in the history
of Earth, but not tonight.
Nowitzki could become the first foreign player and the first 7 footer to win this event.
But he finishes the final round with 11.
That last moneyball saved him from the bottom.
And regarding those squandered firsts: Peja Stojakovic of Serbia will get back-to-back
wins in ‘02 and ‘03 and Dirk will claim a crown for tall guys in ‘06, all signs
of the league’s increasing global reach, and its positional revolution.
But not tonight.
Tonight, the winner will be Jeff Hornacek.
His kids look overjoyed!
He wins with a final round score of 13, making him the only shooter ever to claim the trophy
by getting less than half of the available final round points.
Jeff’s the champ for the second time in a row, you know, if you can count two things
separated by a labor-related work stoppage a row.
Only Larry Bird in the ‘80s and Hodges in the ‘90s have three-peated in this event.
Doesn’t the possibility to match that streak entice Jeff to a potential return?
Are you sure you want this to be your last year?
Yeah.
Oh.
Okay.
But you can’t blame Jeff.
He won by failing in a failure of a contest.
The veterans sharpshooters failed to perform.
The league failed to surface the right young guys from a pool of possibilities.
And the two future icons they did include failed to make a mark.
The NBA always has enough shooting talent to make the three-point contest great, but
sometimes that talent just goes unused, or goes missing at the worst possible time.
It’s like studying hard then freezing up on test day.
And that’s what made 2000 the worst.
It was just a boring, pitiful waste.