the nba league is 75 years old and it's a league where amazing happens but it's also a league where the unexpected happens as well and over the years we have seen some unbelievable stat lines broken records and superstars achieving astonishing feats here are the most unusual nba facts steph curry hit more threes in two seasons than larry bird in his entire career larry bird came to the league in 1979 the same year the nba instituted the three-point shot in the nba finals that season in which the los angeles lakers played the philadelphia 76ers both teams made only one three-pointer out of 20 combined attempts in six games played 40 years later in six games of the 2020 nba finals the miami heat and the la lakers hit a total of 153 trees out of 428 attempts larry bird who was considered the king of shooters for a long time had hit only 649 threes in his entire 12-year nba career steph curry who has since taken over that proverbial throne made 688 just in his two mvp seasons it just shows how the game has evolved and how much emphasis there is on the three-pointers in today's nba mj has the worst record in a three-point shooting competition entering the 90s jordan was the biggest star in the league and was already considered the most complete basketball player ever despite all the high-flying dunks and electrifying highlights mj had one weakness he was never a great outside shooter and he had hit exactly 58 threes the first five years of his nba career with a minuscule 20 success rate but in the 1989-1990 season things started to look up and jordan shot an excellent 39 behind the arc before the all-star break he decided it was time to break the narrative that he's not a good shooter and to put his name in the three-point shooting contest unfortunately for him he only made his narrative louder as he had hit only 5 shots of 25 which remains the worst result ever in a three-point shooting contest the utah jazz won the game after a 36 point deficit on november 27 1996 when utah played against denver it seemed that it would be one of the longest and most unpleasant nights to be a jazz fan stockton and malone trailed the nuggets by a whopping 36 points as the scoreboard showed an almost unreal 70-34 score in the first half i'm sure that jerry sloane gave them a good ribbing in the locker room and it worked as the rolls were reversed in the second half the jazz outscored the nuggets 73-33 over the rest of the game and won the game 107-103 it was the biggest comeback ever as there was only one other comeback in nba history of at least 30 points playing for 12 nba teams with 10 trades in his career trevor ariza made history during the 2020 offseason as a player who has been traded the most times in nba history but because ariza hasn't even suited up for some of the teams he's been traded to and because he was traded to the same teams multiple times he's played for a total of nine franchises which is three shy of an nba record chucky brown jim jackson tony mausenberg and joe smith were four players who share the unflattering record of playing for 12 different teams and are a true embodiment of the term journeyman dennis rodman seven games with zero points and 20 plus rebounds some say that bill russell and wilt chamberlain are the best rebounders ever but people who are looking at numbers through more context will all agree that there hasn't been a rebounder better than the worm dennis rodman while russell and will played almost 48 minutes and nights with the fastest pace and lowest field goal percentage in league history dennis led the league in rebounding for seven straight years while averaging 35 minutes a night in the era where the pace was much slower rodman was one of the most unique characters in league history both on and off the court but you always knew what you were going to get out of him he wasn't going to be on time and sober all the time and he won't care about scoring the ball but you know that he's going to play suffocating defense and that he is going to out rebound every 7-footer out there even though he's only 6'7 there have been a total of 10 games with zero points and 20 plus boards in nba history and rodman had seven of them he holds the record with 28 rebounds without a point and he even had a game with 20 rebounds without a single field goal attempt lebron is the only player to average 25 points per game for 16 straight seasons as the old saying goes the best ability is availability and there haven't been many players in the nba that embody this saying more than lebron james the king has never suffered a serious injury in his career and because he invests more than a million dollars a year to keep his body in shape he's still widely considered as the best player in the world at the age of 36 and even though he's a natural passer who averages more than seven assists per game he has a great chance to become the nba's all-time leading scorer he currently sits in third place behind carl malone and kareem abdul-jabbar but if he stays healthy james will likely surpass both of them in the upcoming years lebron is the only player in nba history to average over 25 points in 16 seasons and he did it in every year except his rookie year no other player has more than 12 seasons averaging over 25 not bad for a past first player right in 2016-2017 if russell westbrook had 30 10 and 10 in a game his averages would go down with russell westbrook there is no in between he's either adored or hated by the fans and when he's on the court he has no friends and always goes 100 miles an hour in 2016 after kevin durant decided russ was not going to be in his next chapter westbrook went berserk he played like a man possessed and against all odds he single-handedly willed his team to the playoffs and he did it in a spectacular fashion by averaging a triple double for the whole season something that hasn't been done since oscar robertson in the 60s russ averaged 31. 6 points 10. 7 rebounds and 10.
4 assists which means that if he had 30 10 and 10 splits in one game his season averages would actually go down which is bonkers 10 game winning and losing streaks in one season 10 game winning streaks happen almost every nba season and so do the 10 game losing streaks but to manage both within the same year that's something special and it has been done only once by the phoenix suns in 1996 1997. the sun's opened the season with 13 straight losses after which they acquired jason kidd from the dallas mavericks but he got injured in his first game as a son when he returned he led the team to a miraculous run which included a 10-game win streak and pushed the suns to the playoffs as the seventh seed and even though he was one of the best point guards ever kidd became an owner of one negative record as a member of the in a game against the knicks in 2000 jason turned the ball over 14 times which is a record that still stands today mj never lost three games in a row in the 90s michael jordan was a freak of nature and as soon as he stepped a foot into the league he had already been its most talented player however despite all the individual accolades and redefining endorsement deals for athletes mj never enjoyed playoff success in the 80s it took jordan 4 years to win his first playoff series and once he did that he got his bottom kicked by the pistons for three straight years but in the 90s it was a whole different story with phil jackson as head coach and the emergence of scottie pippen the bulls repeated twice and jordan cultivated the aura of invincibility going six out of six in the finals since the year 1990 the bulls never lost three games in a row with jordan in the lineup which is just one of the many testaments to his greatness scoring over 100 points for nearly two years straight the denver nuggets are the epitome of run and gun basketball multiple iterations of the nuggets were score first play defense later or never and they've produced some of the most attractive basketball teams ever the alex english and kiki vandaway era in the 80s was succeeded by equally potent run and gun in the 90s with the coach paul westhead while the 2000s nuggets gave us carmelo iverson and j.
