Kobe Bryant set an NBA record for missed shots, with 13,421 — how long would it take NBA legends to catch him?
Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers set a new NBA record for futility — he’s the new leader in missed shots for a career, with 13,421. He passed by John Havlicek‘s previous record of 13,417 in the middle of the fourth quarter in a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday night.
All this missing got us thinking — how long would it take other NBA stars (both former and current) to catch Kobe’s record? We dusted off the old box scores (and the invaluable basketball-reference.com) to figure it out.
We took the career regular season misses of each player and divided it by the number of years they played in the league in order to figure out an average. From there, we made some simple calculations to figure out how many years it would take them to catch the King of the Clang, Kobe Bryant.
Before we get into the list, here’s the format:
Kobe Bryant
19 seasons — 13,421 misses — 706 misses per season — (how much player is short of record)
(amount of seasons to break record — at what age)
There are a few statistical issues that we run into. For historical players, it’s not an issue, but for the younger players, I ran into the issue of whether to use the current season’s stats. It skews the numbers down a bit for the young players, as they’ll miss a lot more shots this season — but are being credited for a full year. For the veterans, it doesn’t skew the numbers too heavily.
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