Oscar Schmidt is a legend, known for holding more international scoring record than one can imagine. Nevertheless, many basketball fans don’t know enough about him because he never played in the NBA. You may have heard that he scored close to 50k points in his career, that his professional career lasted from 1974 to 2003 — in other words, he started when Jerry West retired and retired when LeBron was drafted — that he’s the All-Time Leading Scorer at the Olympics and FIBA World Cup and maybe you know that he averaged 42.2 PPG on 73.3% TS and 35–63 (55.6%) from three at the 1988 Olympics, but have you ever seen a full game of him? I hadn’t, but I wanted to find out what the man, who is frequently referred to as one of the best players to never play in the NBA, was all about. If you want to do the same, here are the links to the games I found and watched:
Brazil vs. Greece, 1986 World Cup Group Stage
Brazil vs. USA, 1987 Pan American Games Final
Brazil vs. Soviet Union, 1988 Olympics Quarterfinal, First Half
Brazil vs. Soviet Union, 1988 Olympics Quaterfinal, Second Half
Snaidero Caserta vs. Real Madrid, Cup Winners’ Cup 1988
Phonola Caserta vs. Paini Napoli, Italian League 1989
Phonola Caserta vs. Paini Napoli, Italian League 1990
Brazil vs. Yugoslavia, 1990 World Cup Group Stage
Brazil vs. Greece, 1990 World Cup 5th Place Game
Corinthians/Pony vs. Corinthians/Amway, Brazilian League 1996
Schmidt was first and foremost a shooter. I’ve never ranked the best shooters of all time, but if I had to now, Schmidt would be in consideration for the spots directly behind Steph Curry. He was unbelievably good. Whether it was spot-ups, one-dribble pull-ups, transition pull-ups or spot-up jumpers off pindowns, baseline pins or flare screens, he could do it all, with otherworldly efficiency. In the NBA, spotting or pulling up for three in transition was long considered a dubious act. With the recent surge in popularity of this shot, it is important to note that Oscar Schmidt was doing this in the late ’80s — doing it often and successfully. If you want to know just how good of a shooter he was, take a look at these numbers, especially the three-point shooting and free throw numbers.
It needs to be mentioned that Schmidt played with a 20.5ft three-point line, which was used by FIBA between 1984 and 2010. While this inflates his 3P% a bit, his FT% and a comparison to the NBA’s best shooters proves that he belongs in the upper echelon of all-time shooters.. In the 2018/19 NBA season, Buddy Hield shot 44.8% from 20–24ft, roughly the range Schmidt took most of his three-pointers from, Steph Curry shot 50.4%, J.J. Redick 44.1%, Klay Thompson 44.2% and Paul George made 42.1% of his shots from that range. In the 19/20 NBA season, Hield shot 39.1%, Duncan Robinson 50.8%, C.J. McCollum 43.7% and J.J. Redick 48.1%. Schmidt belongs in the conversation about the greatest shooters ever, not only because of his percentages, but also because of his volume — he hoisted 10+ threes per game for multiple seasons — and the difficulty of his shots.
Usually, it’s quite hard to pick out players from the grainy ’80s footage, unless they’re the size of Arvydas Sabonis. Schmidt was not the size of Sabas, he was listed at 6ft and 8.75in (2,05m) and 236lbs (107kg). Still, he was easy to spot because of the defensive attention he received. His defenders never left his side and looked just as panicked when he moved off the ball as modern defenders do when they lose track of Steph Curry. In other words, Schmidt had a lot of gravity and that opened up the floor for his teams, one of the reasons his teams seemed to scored 110+ points — an unusually high offensive output for a 40-minute game — in every game I watched. He was aware of his influence, too, almost constantly moving, looking to get open, keeping the defense on its toes. It was quite obvious too that defenses had no idea how to deal with him. In the 10 games listed above, he drew more than 15 three-point fouls, most of his free throws, of which he shot a lot, coming from fouls on his jump shot.
Schmidt’s scoring game lost a bit of its effectiveness the further he went to the basket. From midrange, he was still tremendous. If defended well, he used pump fakes to get open, throwing his arms up quickly before dipping his shoulder under the defender, who felt obliged to jump on the fake due to Schmidt’s ability to make difficult shots, and pulling up from a more favorable position. When it comes to getting to rim, however, he lacked the first step and explosiveness to consistently get past defenders, which became blatantly obvious in the game against the Dream Team, admittedly an outlier collection of talent, where he couldn’t compete athletically — to be fair, he was already 34 at the time and still made 5/10 three-pointers. Against “normal” teams, on the other hand, he was a dominant scorer. Besides Curry and possibly Durant, I’ve never seen anyone score 30+ consistently with such ease.
If Schmidt belongs in the conversation for the (second) greatest shooter ever, you might be wondering if he also deserves to be in the discussion for the greatest scorer ever as well. To be considered one of the greatest scorers ever in my book, you need to check at least three boxes: volume, efficiency and helping your team/scoring in way that drives winning. There have been players throughout NBA history — most notably young Wilt Chamberlain and Adrian Dantley — who scored at an elite level in terms of volume and efficiency, but didn’t maximize their offensive potential due to a lack of creation. High-usage players need to find a balance between scoring and creation. Otherwise, the offense will get predictable and produce diminishing returns, no matter how talented the ballhandler may be. Oscar Schmidt, despite averaging 30+ points and only around 1 assist per game for most of his career, does not fall under that category, because he was mostly an off-ball scorer. He wasn’t a self-creator or an isolationist, he was a play-finisher, more similar to Klay Thompson or Reggie Miller than to Adrian Dantley or Carmelo Anthony in terms of offensive style. While others create with their passing ability, he created for his teammates through his gravity, the defensive attention he drew. Instead of slicing through defenses with a quick first step or advanced dribble moves, he created havoc by moving off the ball, trying to make himself available. When he did have the ball, he either shot it after one dribble maximum or kept it moving quickly and intelligently. Legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach instructed his players to never take a purposeless dribble; Schmidt embodied that philosophy. While the NBA’s top scorers like James Harden (496 dribbles per game in 19/20 according to NBA.com), Trae Young (524) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (179) take hundreds of dribbles per game, Schmidt scored 34 points against Yugoslavia and Toni Kukoc at the 1990 World Cup despite only taking 27 dribbles in the opposing half. In the game against Real Madrid, he scored 36 points on only 41 dribbles. Nevertheless, the suboptimal inside game discourages me from considering him one of the absolute greatest scorers in basketball history, but he’s still a name that needs to be mentioned for all his accomplishments.
Despite the lack of assists, he generally made sound decisions on the ball, especially in terms of passing out double-teams. He often left his feet before passing, but usually found his target. There’s no reason to believe that he added any value as a passer, but he didn’t suffer from extreme tunnel vision either. Where he definitely hurt his teams was on the other end of the court. Rarely — which is better than never — did he engage on defense. He often didn’t put up any resistance against drives or post-ups, occasionally he was already on his way towards the other basket before the opposition took their shot even though he was the shooter’s primary defender. Judging a 1000+ game career on a 10-game sample size usually isn’t a good idea, but if he didn’t try very much defensively in a World Cup Quarterfinal, why would he have tried in less meaningful games? So while he deserves massive credit for elevating his teams to really good offensive levels, he also deserves some blame for their defensive shortcomings. It’s important to not overstate that negative defensive impact, however. Schmidt wasn’t involved in that many defensive possessions, so it wasn’t as big of a problem as the last few sentences might have led you to believe.
The obvious question to ask then is how Schmidt would’ve translated to the NBA if he had signed there after getting drafted by the New Jersey Nets in the 6th round of the legendary 1984-draft. The easy (but true), cop-out answer is “I don’t know”. His skill set certainly doesn’t transition to a higher-level league as easily as Sabonis’. As a shooter, he would’ve still been awesome, especially if you paired him with an elite playmaker. If his coach allowed him to play his style, Schmidt would’ve introduced the NBA to a lot of things that other people get credit for, even though they did it 10–30 years later — for example, hoisting 10+ threes a game, pulling up for three in transition, drawing tons of three-point fouls and terrorizing defenses with off-ball movement. The physical limitations, however, would have been a huge issue on defense as well as on drives offensively. In the end, you’re looking at a guy who scores a lot of points efficiently, mostly from the outside, provides value in the form of gravity and spacing, but doesn’t add much anywhere else. Then again, the NBA has a history of celebrating players who score a lot of points inefficiently and don’t do much else, so I’m sure he would’ve been just fine.
