We all know about the obvious unbreakable NBA records. John Stockton's career assist and steals totals, LeBron's potential scoring record wherever that ends up, Michael Jordan having 10 scoring titles, ones like that. However, I stumbled across another seemingly unbreakable record currently owned by Derek Fisher, a record that is far less prestigious than the aforementioned ones.
This is a list of the 5 players with the most career games shooting under 30% from the field:
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Derek Fisher, 425
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Jason Kidd, 364
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Robert Horry, 352
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Jamal Crawford, 339
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Brian Shaw, 321
As you can see, the gap between 1st and 2nd place is pretty large, and it's by far the largest gap anywhere on this list. The closest active player to Fisher in this state is PJ Tucker, the 2nd (I think) oldest player in the NBA, currently at 253 games. There's not a single player on a trajectory to even come close to Fisher's mark. The closest that I can find is Marcus Smart, who at 29 years old currently in his 10th season is at 174 games, but he would need to continue playing at his current rate for another like 15+ years in order to reach Fisher's mark.
Combine all that with the fact that the NBA today is more efficient than ever before, and I think it's safe to say that Derek Fisher's NBA record of most career games shooting under 30% from the field will never be broken.
Efficient as in points per shot, sure, but the rise of 3s makes it more likely to have nights with low field goal %.
I see a low volume good defensive player getting there while shooting corner threes.
If he has two 1/4’s and one 2/4 every three games he’s still shooting a passable 33% from three.
Exactly; at that rate you would need to play <640 games to tie Fisher's record. You could actually have an even higher overall percentage--like if you shoot 1/4, 1/4, 3/6 you would have the same number of <30% games but be shooting 35.7% overall, for example.
Plus the fact that players are playing longer, any "total games" based record is easier to hit. The fact that no current players are close to on pace means this isn't a guarantee, but I doubt it's unbreakable.