Best Pure Scorer in the NBA

Call him dumb.  Call him hilarious.  Call him loud-mouthed and nonsensical.  But there’s no denying Charles Barkley is provocative—perhaps the most clamorous figure in basketball today. 

And Sir Charles didn’t disappoint last week when he dropped, almost on schedule, another eye-opening line when he called Carmelo Anthony the best pure scorer in the league.

Initially, there was some head-shaking on my part, thinking Barkley was merely caught up in the moment of Melo’s magnificent series against the Dallas Mavericks, in which he averaged 27.0 easy points per game, hitting one clutch shot after another. 

But following a period of digestion, and the eventual pondering of the phrase “Best Pure Scorer” itself, the whole thing confused me, even more so than when I first contemplated the topic. 

Amid all my bewilderment, only one conclusion was deduced: I cannot say whether or not Melo is the purest because I don’t know what purity consists of.

The idea of the “Best Pure Scorer” is an interesting one.  It’s a title we fans imprudently toss around in arguments amongst friends to boast our favorite players without knowing what it really means. 

Its understanding is and always has been implied, but the phrase has gone unspecified for as long as I can remember, with no universally agreed-upon definition.  And it seemed strange that during all my years as a basketball fan, I have yet to hear an acceptable explanation of it.

The same goes for the label of “Best Pure Shooter.”  I’ve come across experts who say Ray Allen is as unadulterated a shooter there is, while Steve Nash, though statistically just as deadly from behind the arc, is merely a player with perfect mechanics; he does not qualify as being pure—for reasons that are beyond my understanding.

I thought to myself, aren’t purity and technique one in the same?  What truly separates the Ray Allens from the Steve Nashs?

This same confusion extends to the ambiguity of Pure Scorers.  Though they amass a similar number of points per game, what truly sets apart Kobe Bryant from LeBron James?  Or how about Brandon Roy from a Chris Paul?  Is there even a difference between them?  These are the questions I set out to answer.

As I contemplated the concept this past week, wasting a lot of productive work time at my day job in the process, I came up with five defining characteristics, without which a designated scorer cannot be considered pure:

Skill

Sounds simple and obvious enough, right?  But this is where mechanics—or, for a player with an unconventional release (e.g. Kevin Martin), a consistent, repetitive stroke—comes into play.  It’s the ability to adjust a shot under myriad situations: mid air, double clutching, fading away, or floating towards the hoop. 

A true scorer knows when, where, and most importantly how to tweak his release given the circumstances.  And this is why someone like Shaq cannot be considered a genuine scorer, despite having averaged nearly 30 points a game in his prime.  His m.o. is overwhelming power and physicality, rather than polished technique. 

That’s not to say