Are one-legged 3-pointers the future of the NBA? Probably not for Steph Curry

Steph Curry pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and tapped the YouTube app. 

“Did he make it?” Curry asked as he queued up Jayson Tatum’s recent one-legged 3-pointer against the Kings.

Curry’s eyebrows raised as he watched Tatum, in fact, make it. The all-world Celtics forward snaked off a screen and noticed center Jonas Valanciunas on his heels in drop coverage. Instead of setting his feet and lifting for a jumper, Tatum launched off his left foot like he was skipping into a shot.

Tatum is just a small drop of what’s becoming a 3-point floater wave. LaMelo Ball, the audacious Hornets point guard, has launched more than 50 — after trying just eight last year — according to one analysis. Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama has the shot in his bag. Trae Young uses it to avoid getting blocked. Even LeBron James has run into several this year.

“If you’ve got confidence in it, it’s actually a really productive way to create natural space, because nobody’s really ready to guard an unorthodox shot like that,” Curry told The Standard. “If you make it, take it.” 

Curry stretched the bounds of imagination with his 3-point range. He has hit more than 4,000 regular-season threes in his career, ushering in an era in which players are encouraged to shoot from any position. 

The one-legged 3-pointer is an evolution of Curry’s influence. He first sank one more than a decade ago, and although he hasn’t incorporated it into his game regularly, his creativity helped popularize it. 

“I did my first one back in 2013, San Antonio,” Curry said. “It wasn’t like I did it [again] the next game or later that game. It’s just kind of a ‘feel’ thing. Probably for Tatum or for Wemby, when you have ultimate confidence and flow before all that, whatever part of the season you’re in where you’re just feeling it, you can try to get aggressive, try to see how far you can push it.” 

The last major 3-point innovation after Curry was James Harden’s stepback — the move that changed how we look at traveling. Now, seemingly every perimeter player uses that tool to generate separation off the bounce. 

Curry is skeptical that the one-legged 3-pointer will catch on quite like that. He theorized that the shot is more of a gadget for “unorthodox” players like Ball and Wembanyama than a skill the typical shooter could apply.

But some evidence, tangible and anecdotal, points in the direction of wider adoption. 

Ball, for instance, shoots a higher percentage off one leg (40%) than he does overall (34%). Wembanyama said on the podcast “The Young Man and the Three” that it’s actually easier for him to shoot off one foot because he can use momentum instead of generating force from a stand-still base. 

“You can really focus on the target,” Wembanyama said. 

Nick Hauselman, shooting coach and founder of the popular Youtube channel BBallBreakdown, has long advocated for the running 3-pointer. Each of his players at all levels end every workout by hitting a one-legged three, and he plans to mix it into more practice plans. 

Hauselman loves that the shot is becoming more of a weapon rather than just a heat-check gadget or end-of-clock prayer. When players are getting downhill, it can be more natural for them to just rise up instead of setting their feet. When right-handed players are fading to their left, their shooting arm and hip are already square with the rim, allowing shooters to jump off one foot. The motion can be quicker and more fluid. 

Hauselman expects a “dramatic rise” in the shot over the next few years. 

“It won’t slow down; it’ll continue to increase,” he said. “Five years from now — and I hope it’s faster — I have a sense you’d probably see maybe 10% of threes taken this way. And maybe more if they start really making them. We need a little bit more data as far as what the percentages are versus the other way, but I’d be surprised if it was lower than the conventional shots.” 

On-court trends often start in Europe before making their way to the States. There, Serbian guard Jovan Novak shoots everything off one leg — even off the catch — and Austrian guard Thomas Klepeisz takes so many that observers have nicknamed it the “flamingo shot.”

The first person Curry saw intentionally attempt a running three was Juan Carlos Navarro. He enunciates each name — “Juan. Carlos. Navarro.” — out of apparent respect for one of the players who has inspired him. 

Curry even shouted out the Spanish guard when he hit his one-legged 3-pointer in this year’s All-Star Game at Chase Center. 

But outside of the All-Star Game, Curry hasn’t really participated in the trend. He hasn’t attempted a running three in a real game this year, and the last one he hit was in 2021 over then-Grizzlies guard De’Anthony Melton. 

Warriors sharpshooter Buddy Hield said he’s been practicing the one-legged shot since training camp and drained one in October.

“You gotta find that fine line,” Hield said. “When you do it, if you make it, it’s good, but if you miss it, it’s a whole like, everybody says, ‘Buddy’s shooting a fucking stepback one-legged three.’ So you’ve got to make it if you do it.” 

Sitting on the sideline after a morning shootaround in New Orleans, Curry watched the Tatum video again, then a third time — studied it, broke it down. 

“I don’t know why he tried that,” Curry said. “Yeah, it’s almost like a two-foot stop would be harder to create rhythm, especially if the ball’s kind of hanging, so you just let the momentum take you into the shot. But that thing, that’s a ‘feel’ thing. I’m pretty sure he didn’t choreograph that before, like, ‘I’m about to shoot this one-legged three.’ As soon as he came off the screen, he knew how much space he had, and he needed to get a shot off. Ten on the clock, so … that’s nice.” 

Curry doesn’t work specifically on his running three but tries a variety of shots randomly to work on different balance and footwork patterns. “I’ll sprinkle one in every once in a while,” he said.

Around the league, though, those sprinkles are becoming splashes. 

“Everybody I show it to loves it,” Hauselman said. “I don’t think we’d see Dame [Lillard] and Steph and LeBron — we wouldn’t see these guys doing it without knowing it was viable.”