Rob Parker, anchor of Fox Sports Radio, has made it clear that he is okay with being proven wrong about his fiery opinions in the past. Additionally, he recently expressed a viewpoint toward Golden State Warriors player Stephen Curry that is, in fact, viewed negatively by the vast majority of basketball fans.
Parker and Kelvin Washington talked about Stephen Curry’s recent accomplishment of making his 4,000th three-point shot in his career on Sunday’s episode of Parker’s radio show, The Odd Couple. Of course, no other player has ever accomplished this feat.
Parker expressed his contrarian view that Curry does not possess this distinction, despite the fact that some may view this milestone as another evidence that he is the best shooter to have ever picked up a basketball.
“He’s just not the greatest shooter of all-time,” said Parker. “That’s where we’re going to put this. Because I’m still going to say I would take a lot of other players in a big moment. This is what I’m saying, we can open this up sooner than later because I really want to hear from people and hear what I’m saying. When you call someone the greatest shooter, it means under any circumstance, you would want them to have the ball when you need a basket. I don’t care what they all say. He has had 14 looks with a chance to tie and win the game in the postseason. And he hasn’t made one of them.
“Tell me this, if he had all the threes and he was 7-14 or whatever, then you could look at it and say ‘Man, you remember all of those big shots when the game was on the line.’ The biggest threes he made came in the Olympics. And they don’t even count in the NBA. Only one of those shots was considered a clutch shot. Not by Rob Parker, but by the NBA and their definition of a clutch shot. Down by five or less with five minutes to go. When he made those shots in the Olympics, they were up by six, and it gave them a nine-point lead. If you are up by six, that’s three baskets they need to beat you. That’s not a clutch shot.
“That’s all I’m saying. I think he is disqualified from being considered the greatest shooter. Is he the greatest three-point maker? Without question. I would be lying to you if I sat here and said he wasn’t, he is. But there is a difference between the two. I really believe that. I would give Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Michael Jordan, any of those people, the ball with the game on the line before I gave it to Steph Curry.”
Parker’s argument is flawed mostly because the statistics he uses to support it are out of date. Parker seemed to be referencing a 2022–2023 NBA postseason statistic that stated Curry had failed to make a game-winning basket in the last forty-five seconds of an NBA Playoff game.
Curry’s current shooting percentage of 6-39 on these game-winning attempts in the last 45 seconds isn’t great, but it’s also not as horrible as Parker is making it seem.
Curry’s numbers are significantly more comparable to some of the players Parker stated he would prefer to have shoot with the game on the line when you consider the NBA’s definition of a “clutch shot,” which is any shot attempt made in the final five minutes or overtime of a game when the score is within five points.
Under those circumstances, Curry’s postseason shooting percentage of 40.1% is actually higher than Reggie Miller’s 39.8% and not far off Ray Allen’s 42.8 field goal percentage and Michael Jordan’s 41.9 field goal percentage.
Regardless of what the NBA decides to call it, the term “cluster” is and will always be very subjective.
