Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry has never been afraid to put up an audacious half-court shot at the buzzer However, a lot of NBA players are afraid of doing so which is exactly why the NBA has instituted a "heave rule" for this season.
Because players are afraid of impacting their shooting percentage by throwing up a crazy shot at the end of a quarter, the new rule makes it so that any shot taken 36 feet away from the basket with three seconds or less remaining in the first three quarters will count as a team shot attempt, but will not count against the individual player's stats.
Stephen Curry and others are not impressed by the NBA's new heave rule
Already, some commentators like Richard Jefferson have denounced this rule as "cowardly." He fired off a social media post on the change, saying: "This is cowardly! We don’t want it to count towards your %…… UNLESS YOU MAKE IT. You want the positive without the potential for negative. PROFESSIONAL SPORTS 2025."
It does seem a bit silly that players would care that much about their shooting percentage especially since a player is unlikely to put up that many "heave" shots over the course of a season.
Curry very much agrees that the heave rule is a silly one, stating his previous frustrating that players wouldn't take a shot at the end of a quarter in fear of hurting their shooting percentages.
"I used to be like the grumpy old guy sitting on the porch yelling at people who didn’t take that shot because they were afraid of what it does to their shooting percentage," Curry said (via Tim Kawakami of The San Fransisco Standard).
The 2x MVP believes the rule is pointless and unnecessary, urging fellow players just to play the game and stop worrying about what is a limited number of attempts anyway.
"That's too much to think about. Just play basketball...I could care less. I get, what, 10 extra field goals maybe throughout a whole season? Much ado about nothing," Curry said.
This is the exact attitude one would expect from a guy who has seven-minute long half-court compilation videos on YouTube. The guy is the greatest shooter, and the greatest Warrior, of all-time so he is understandably not going to have a ton of patience for players afraid of impacting their field goal percentage by taking a wild shot.
No one is better at nailing a half-court shot than Curry, so do not be surprised if he hits at least one or two more this season as he enters an incredible 17th year with the Warriors.