In the 2020-21 season, the NBA made a total of 74,822 three-pointers. Despite being a season of 72 races, it was the second-most in history after the 2018-19 season.
Clearly, three-pointers are now more common than ever. But what you may not know is that in the 1987-88 season, when Stephen Curry, the greatest scorer of all time, was just born, a Denver Nuggets guard named Michael Adams was shooting three-pointers in an unprecedented way.
After the Sacramento Kings selected Adams with the 66th pick in the 1985 NBA Draft, few were excited about it. And that excitement is even less after his first two professional seasons have passed.
The Boston College standout player was dropped at the end of the season and he has been on the decline during his rookie season. He then joined the Washington Bullets, and while he played more than 20 minutes a night, Adams remained a prolific and inefficient scorer. By his third season, the 1.78-meter-tall guard had moved to his third team, the Washington Bullet Trade, who sent him to the Nuggets after coming to Hall of Famer Bernard King.
At the time, Denver's head coach was Doug Mo. The former ABA All-Star is known for his running style, coaching games with plenty of cover and scoring after shifting the ball. With a young and agile defender like Adams, Mo gave him the opportunity to play freely.
In Adams' second season in the NBA, he made just 102 three-pointers and averaged just 1.6 per game. He also hit only 27.5 percent of that. But in Moy's first season in charge, the diminutive Adams turned into a completely different player.
As the Nuggets' starting point guard, Adams made 379 three-pointers that shocked the league while improving his shooting percentage to 36.7 percent. Even in a team that encourages high-intensity offense, Adams has 288 more three-pointers than the second-most Nuggets player, Mike Evans. But that was just the beginning, as the player from Hartford, Connecticut, led the league on three-pointers over the next three seasons, shooting 466, 432 and 564 three-pointers in 1990-91.
In the 1990–91 season, Adams became a household name. The 28-year-old is known for his iconic and unconventional push shots, averaging a career-high 26.5 points per game. At the time, only Michael Jordan, Carl Malone, Bernard King, Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing averaged higher points per game. That means the third-round rookie has scored more points than future Hall of Famers like Dominique Wilkins, Chris Mullin and David Robinson.
Adams' best performance was now in the March 23, 1991 game against the Milwaukee Bucks. In overtime, the guard scored 54 points on 7-of-16 three-point range. He tied with Alex Inglish for second-place single-game scoring in Nuggets history, behind David Thompson's 73 points.
After the best season of his career, Adams is no longer what he was. The three-pointer was traded back to the Bullets in 1991 in exchange for an eighth pick in the draft. Although he was named to the All-Star team in Washington that season, his 18.5 points dropped sharply from the previous year. His overall score is also declining year by year.
By the time Adams left the NBA, he was already one of the players with the most three-point shooting percentages and shots in history. In addition, he holds the record of shooting at least one three-pointer in 79 consecutive games. That record is now held by Curry, who shot three-pointers in 157 consecutive games from 2014 to 2016.
I hope you remember that long before Stephen Curry entered the league, michael Adams at the top of the league brought up the NBA's three-point wave — before he came to Denver, the league had only shot a total of 8,913 three-pointers. In 1990–91, his final season with the Mo and Nuggets, that number rose to 15,812. In the 1995-96 season, his final year, the NBA made more than 38,000 three-point shots.
Nowadays, when it comes to three-pointers, people only remember Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Stephen Curry. Adams is largely forgotten in NBA history, but things shouldn't be the way they are. The guy who shot weirdly was shooting three-pointers before it became popular, and he shot very, very much, he was the real forerunner of the times.
If Adams' peak form continues a bit longer, he's likely to be considered one of the most iconic long-range shooters in the NBA.