Bojan Bogdanovic holds the record for the most 3-pointers scored by a Utah Jazz player in a single game — 11. Donovan Mitchell holds the record for most 3-pointers made by a Jazz player in a single season — 232.
“I believe I’m top five in makes, and I deserve to be in it.” — Jazz guard Malik Beasley on desire to participate in 3-point contest
Malik Beasley would like his name to be at the top of those lists in the record books.
Currently, Beasley is fourth in the league in total 3-pointers made this season with 161, which is on pace to beat Mitchell’s record. In order to beat it, Beasley would have to average 2.4 made 3-pointers through the remaining 30 games, which seems doable considering he is averaging 3.1 per game so far this season.
As for the Jazz single-game record, Beasley reached that benchmark once before, hitting 11 3s in a game last season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, so he’s pretty confident he can do it again and beat Bogdanovic’s record.
But beating records is not the only thing Beasley wants to do. He also wants to be in the NBA’s 3-point contest during All-Star Weekend here in Utah next month.
“I feel like I’m going to win it,” Beasley said when asked why he wanted to be in the contest. “I’m not going to be there just to be there. I believe I’m top five in makes, and I deserve to be in it.”
Beasley is right that he is top five in 3-pointers made. But, there’s a little more nuance to being in the 3-point contest than just being a volume shooter.
The NBA invites players to participate in the 3-point contest based on a number of factors. Made 3-pointers and shooting percentage are among them, but so is status and what a player can do to draw an audience.
Over the last five years, the only time a bench player, who had either made fewer than 100 3-pointers, or shot less than 38% from deep, was invited to participate in the 3-point contest, it was Seth Curry, brother of Stephen Curry and I think that you can deduce why the NBA wanted that to be the showdown.
Seth Curry had only hit 66 3-pointers before the All-Star break in 2019, but he was shooting at a 46.5% clip and his last name is Curry. Beasley doesn’t have the luxury of the Curry name, and although he is fourth in made 3-pointers this season, he’s shooting at a 36.2% rate.
The data on previous 3-point contest participants is actually pretty interesting, and I collected it for the last five years so you can look at it here.
There are some huge asterisks next to the 2021 3-point contest because that was during the shortened 2020-21 season, in which teams had only played about 37 games before the All-Star break, and the All-Star festivities were held in Atlanta without fans and only All-Stars participated in the event. This cut down on the number of people that would be required to travel to Atlanta during a time when COVID-19 was still at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
But outside of that year, the NBA has been pretty consistent in who they invite to participate. There is certainly some latitude for players with less star status who have both a huge number of 3-pointers made and impressive 3-point efficiency, but the league also prefers to invite top-tier stars who have high numbers in those categories.
If you look at the list of contestants and wonder why there are some who have less than stellar stats, there’s a reasonable explanation for it. They are usually past 3-point contest participants or winners — which was the case for Devin Booker in 2019 and 2020, having won the contest in 2018, and Eric Gordon in 2018 having won it the previous year — or they are All-Stars who are incredibly popular (Trae Young), or they are literally one of the best players ever who is retiring (Dirk Nowitzki in 2019).
So if we’re looking at how the NBA has gone about filling out the 3-point participant field in the past, they would probably be more likely to invite Lauri Markkanen before they would Beasley.
Markkanen has the highest 3-point percentage in the league among players who have made more than 100 3-pointers this season (43.3%) and he’s a starter who is likely to make the All-Star squad, representing the host team.
But none of this is stopping Beasley from doing his best to make his case. He even shot a little promo video with the help of the Jazz content staff that the Jazz shared on its social media pages. The video features Beasley shooting 3s off ball racks, as is done in the contest, while the voices of NBA analysts and pundits like ESPN’s Zach Lowe and the Ringer’s Chris Vernon praise the shooting ability of the Jazz guard.
Following the Jazz’s win over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday, when Beasley hit 5 of 11 from downtown, Beasley said that he had yet to receive an invite from the league to participate in the 3-point contest.
Sources within the league are always tight-lipped about anything that has to do with All-Star competitions, votes, participation, etc., and were no different when I tried to find out how many players had already been asked to take part in the 3-point contest.
But here’s what we do know: We know all of the above data, we know that Mike Conley has already been asked to be a participant in the Skills Competition and we know that the league is probably going to announce the participants prior to the trade deadline, as they did last season.
The 2021-22 trade deadline was Feb. 10 and the All-Star competition participants were announced on Feb. 8. This season’s trade deadline is Feb. 9.
So, if Beasley is hoping to have his name on one of the lists, he might have to show some increased efficiency over the next couple of games. And as for breaking Jazz records, the trade deadline is an important date to keep in mind too, because if Beasley ends up being a part of a Jazz deal, all hopes of beating those records would be dashed.
