Seven years ago, Curry used superb shooting skills to directly harvest the MVP + championship ring.
This way of abandoning traditional shooting and under-the-basket offense and directly using consecutive long-range shots to open up the score soon became a trend in the league, and there were more than one team following suit.
Under the general trend, pure pitchers have caught up with the good times and their value has soared.
In the past, playing the NBA was a comprehensive job, testing the comprehensive competition of speed, endurance, bounce and skill, but when the demand for pitchers soared, many tall pitchers who did not have the ability to hold the ball, could not attack strongly, and did not grab rebounds suddenly found a foothold in the league.
For example, the former fragrant feast, Bertans.
Pitcher's "lucky history"
Bertans is a typical case, 5 years after being selected, he has never had the opportunity to step into the NBA. A European player with a height of 2.08 meters, dynamic talent and defense but not NBA-level competitiveness.
The unpromising Bertans has been playing in the Europa League until the NBA's offensive area gradually moves towards the three-point line, the storm has begun, and Bertans was brought into the NBA by the Spurs in 2016.
In the 2021-22 season, he averaged 5.8 points and 1.8 rebounds per game, which is not beautiful but has a high salary. There are traces of that luck: In the 2019-20 season, he shot more than 200 three-pointers with a 42.4 percent shooting percentage, making him the second most efficient pure pitcher in the league.
Washington backhanded a 5-year, 80 million extension, and then... No more then.
There is also a stark case, Ryan Anderson. In the three-point team Houston Rockets, who have been a three-point pitcher for a long time, there is basically no other task on the court except waiting at the top of the arc three-point line. In those years, the situation of quality pitchers was mostly similar, growing tall, casting well, and quality contracts could not run.
Awkward positioning, pitchers who can't beat high-end innings
How quickly the shooter's heat comes, how fiercely it regresses.
The playoffs have become a breaking point
In the playoffs, the head coaches tried to use the influence of pure pitchers at the beginning, but soon found drawbacks: in addition to shooting, the drawbacks brought by pure pitchers are likely to become the breaking point of the high-end innings.
Facing durant and the Splash Brothers' Warriors, the Rockets used a high-intensity infinite change of defense to directly clamp down on the Warriors' passing system. The Warriors directly abandoned the extremely smooth passing strategy of the regular season and turned to face the challenge: take out a one-on-one single with Durant and Curry as the core, and use the star ability to solve the battle.
To the point of exhaustion, any player who can't make a great contribution on the defensive end will be pinned to the end of the bench, and the pure pitcher is the first to be assigned to see the water dispenser.
Find the feel, more accidental
At the same time, many good pitchers have his attributes: to find the feel through shooting.
Even high-quality, such as the Splash Brothers, there are times when the feel is not good. But when a player is positioned as a pure pitcher, rather than a star who can influence the game in multiple dimensions, the fault tolerance rate is naturally much lower.
For example, the Nets' Joe Harris, when the feel is not good, the defensive end is also "named", the side effects of the offensive and defensive ends are easy to let the team fall into a passive situation early, and when the current 3 shots are missed and 5 shots are missed, it is difficult for the team to give the opportunity to help him find his feel in the fierce and anxious game.
Pitchers who have been achieved in the small-ball storm are facing serious challenges
The regular season has a role, and it doesn't come in handy until the playoffs. The free market, where pitchers are rising, is "cooling" among the increasingly sane team managers.
Bertans became a hot potato for the Wizards, Joe Harris was temporarily unable to play, temporarily sparing the Nets the headache of Joha's contract, and the league's only remaining pitcher, Duncan Robinson, inevitably appeared in the trade rumors, and if there was a suitable deal, the Miami Heat could send him away before the pitcher's value plummeted.
Pitchers who were extremely highly praised finally fell because of defensive flaws and the further evolution of the league's offensive trend. After all, managers and coaches have high-level defense and blue-collar workers with a little bit of shooting ability than shots who are too pure to be pure.