You do know that Dale Brown went back and charted every game of Pete, he would have avg 57 ppg. if they would have had the 3 pt line
If Pete had grown up with a 3 pt line, I think it may have taken away some of the beauty of his game. He would have scored more points but not had as many of his improvised, off-balance, twisting, unorthodox moments. Keep in mind that he was before my time so just an opinion. His career was filled with "what ifs?". First year with the Hawks took the entire season to win over his teammates but he fully converted them. 2nd season (I think) was his serious illness that caused him to drop 20-30 lbs and took the entire season to put the weight back on. Then, he found his basketball soulmate in Dr. J and they dominated for five exhibition games before the NBA ruled the Hawks didn't have Dr. J's rights like they thought. Finally, he goes to the Jazz and is at the top of his game but the franchise didn't have any complementary players. When they finally start to put the pieces together around Pete, he blows out his knee. Then, he goes to the Celtics and plays well as a role player but retires the year before the Celtics win it all.
I agreed somewhat that the 3 pointer might have taken a little away from the rest of his game but maybe not. He was born to pass and put all of those moves on in order to get a shot. Anyway I still can't believe the Olympic coach left him off the team, he would have made that entire team even better. Was it Iba that coached that team?
I'm still irked that Chuck Daly picked Christian Laettner over Shaq for the Dream Team. Everybody knew who the better pro was gonna be.
I may be wrong but I think Coach K was on that staff and had something to do with the Laettner selection. I never liked Laettner and was somewhat anti-Duke. However, I remember Laettner getting off to a good start in his NBA career and someone mentioned last week how difficult it is to get over an achilles tear with Laettner as one of his examples. With Laettner having such a great college career and the team already having David Robinson and Patrick Ewing, I can see why they went with him over Shaq.