RE: Bird's Shooting %

[Charles Jowett <jowett_charles@waters.com>]

C'mon Dan, there's no way Bird can be compared with Walker. One of Bird's
best attributes was that he scored a lot of points while shooting at a
very high percentage. This year, Walker is shooting at 41.9 %. For a
forward, that is exceedingly low. Bird, at the time, was the first player
in history to shoot over 50 % from the field and over ninety percent from
the line in the same season. For the most part, Bird shot either above or
close to fifty percent from the field while scoring over 20 points a game.
At the tail end of his career, why people were getting on him so much,
saying that he was only a shadow of his former self, besides his declining
numbers, was his FG percentage. Even then, he shot about 45.4%. 

=======================================================
Birds Career %'s for regular season games from the Boston Globe, 
Wednesday, August 19, 1992, page 66.

Year   FG% FT%  Notes
79-80  47.4  83.6
80-81  47.8  86.3  Championship year
81-82  50.3  86.3
82-83  50.4  84.0
93-84  49.2  88.8  Championship year
84-85  52.2  88.2
85-86  49.6  89.6  Championship year
86-87  52.5  91.0
87-88  52.7  91.6
88-89  47.1  94.7  Played only 6 games
89-90  47.3  93.0
90-91  45.4  89.1
91-92  46.6  92.6

Charles