Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson have been credited with evolving the NBA where players can shoot from anywhere they want on the floor as often as they want.

Curry has made 44 percent and Thompson 42 percent of their career 3-point tries, which has justified Steve Kerr giving them the green light.

“I look at Curry, [teammate Klay] Thompson and Kerr as having normalized the distance you can attempt shots from now – and not be criticized,” Isiah Thomas said. “From a coaching standpoint, no coach that I can remember or can think of would have ever given these two guys the latitude and the freedom to shoot from that distance without being yelled at or taken out of games.”

Thomas also said how the Warriors have "completely twisted the boundaries in terms of what an acceptable shot is in our sport.”

“We evolved as a league,” said Jeff Van Gundy. He recalled how longtime Utah Jazz assistant coach Gordie Chiesa would react “when a guy would take an awful shot. ‘That shot right there, that’s a shooting turnover,’ he would say. And he was right.

“But shot selection has been redefined as more teams fell in love with the 3 and the transition game. You can’t look through the prism of 1980 shot selection to evaluate 2016 shot selection.”

Van Gundy said the freedom coaches give their players now works both ways. “As a coach, you don’t micromanage each and every shot. And players are also taking responsibility for taking their best shots. It still comes down to rosters, though. The guys who put the best ones together are the teams that win. Period.”

Thomas has praised the Warriors but he is concerned about the NBA becoming a homogenized perimeter game.

“I just go back to Michael Jordan and Dr. J … they’re comin’ down the lane and all of a sudden they jump up and do a 360. Bam! We played for that. Now when science comes into our game – and there’s balance when science blends with creativity and art – the ones who haven’t participated in the sport find it difficult to describe the artistry or understand the DaVinci moment, the originality we shoot for.

“Consequently, our game today is not about artistry and origination. It’s about shoot it 20 times from here. It’s been broken down into really a cold science, which takes emotions, feeling, love, passion – all of those things – out of the sport. And when you take those things out of the sport, do you really have a sport?”