The National Basketball Association (NBA) has been around for 75 years, and shooting has always been one of the most important skills in the game. But for the first 50 years of the league’s history, the only way to measure quality shooting was whether a shot went in or out. That changed in the 1996-97 season when the NBA began recording new kinds of shooting data collected by the NBA’s official scorekeepers.
This year the NBA is celebrating its 75th anniversary, but a lesser milestone is the 25th anniversary of the NBA’s play-by-play database, which has given us a far greater understanding of the shooting tendencies of the world’s best players. We now know where on the court they prefer to shoot from and how far they can consistently and successfully let it fly into the basket.
As we celebrate this anniversary, here at SportsLeo we look out for the best outside shooters — which will not cover prolific scorers who were mostly at-the-rim dominators like Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and Giannis Antetokounmpo — starting with the face of the NBA’s shooting revolution.
1. Stephen Curry
Stephen Curry is arguably the best shooter in the past three decades in the NBA. | PHOTO: Regions Four |
Curry joined as the No. 7 overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft and changed basketball forever in the 2010s. His remarkable jump shot reformed how all of us look at the power of perimeter scoring. Before Curry, 3-point shooters were the side dishes of championship menus. Curry showed that they could be the entrees and that long-range shooters could win MVPs, scoring titles, and NBA titles.
Before Curry, shot charts like this simply did not exist. Curry scored more than half of his points on 3-point shots last year.
Over the first 36 seasons of the 3-point era starting in 1979-80 season, no player had made more than 300 3-point shots in a single season. Dennis Scott made 267 in 1995-96, during the NBA’s brief experiment with a shorter line, Ray Allen – who also makes this list topped that by two in 2005-06, then Curry came along and broke the record twice, totaling 272 in 2012-13 and 286 in 2014-15. That set the stage for Curry to blow the lid off that record by sinking a previously unthinkable staggering 402 3-pointers in the Warriors’ 73-win season of 2015-16. Over the past decade, Curry has become the face of 3-point shooting, and he’s poised to surpass Ray Allen for most 3s in league history at some point this season.
2. Ray Allen
Ray Allen was one of the best shooters to ever grace the NBA. | PHOTO: The Spun |
Allen will always be associated with one of the great 3-point shots in league history. He still holds the career 3-point field goal record – although Curry is on his shoulder, and with good reason: He was the greatest threat beyond the arc of his era, one that ended just before the leaguewide 3-point explosion.
Allen possessed impressive mechanics, a great feel for the game, and an unnatural knack for putting it all together in big moments as he did in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals. The dude was clutch: He made 27 game-tying or go-ahead 3-pointers within the final 30 seconds of a game in his career (including playoffs), the most since 1996-97, ahead of Vince Carter (25), and Paul Pierce and Kobe Bryant (20 each).
As he demonstrated in that defining moment in Miami, Allen was particularly dangerous in the corners. Including the playoffs, he made 1,026 career corner 3-pointers, the most in the NBA since 1996-97. Joe Johnson has the next most with 878. But unlike Curry, Allen was largely a catch-and-shoot threat.
Before Stephen Curry, he was by far the best 3-point shooter in the 3-point era in the NBA.
3. Dirk Nowitzki
Prolific shooting happens inside the arc too, and no player in the last 25 years has dominated the midrange like Nowitzki, whose unforgettable jumpers propelled him to sixth place on the career points scored list and made him one of the most influential big men of the 21st century. The stats are incredible, but if you want to know just how dominant Nowitzki was in the midrange, just take a quick look at this graphic.
4. Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant is one of the best scorers in the NBA. | PHOTO: The Insider |
Durant may not have a chance to break Nowitzki’s record for 3-pointers by a 7-footer, not because he won’t make enough (he’s at 1,666, good for 27th all-time, with plenty of career time ahead of him), but because he is still listed at 6-foot-10, despite standing closer to 7 feet. Whatever his actual height, he’s arguably the most complete scorer in NBA history. He’s elite in the paint, in the midrange, and from beyond the arc. He put up 50-40-90 numbers while winning the scoring title.
As a shooter, Durant combines size, creativity, and efficiency as well as anyone ever. His mechanics are as fluid as they get, which is unfair for a player of his size, and his handles enable him to generate his own looks anywhere he wants. Since 2013-14, Durant has recorded an effective field goal percentage on off-the-dribble jump shots 11.7 percentage points better than the average NBA player, the best such margin in the NBA. In other words, he makes tough shots look like easy money.
Remarkably, Durant is still in his prime and there is still a lot to watch from him.
5. Klay Thompson
On Oct. 29, 2018, against the Chicago Bulls, Klay Thompson converted 14 3-pointers, breaking the single-game NBA record. Remarkably, he did that in just 27 minutes and that might not even be the best example of Thompson’s ridiculously hot shooting streaks. This guy also put up 37 points in a single quarter, going 13-for-13 from the field on Jan. 23, 2015, against the Sacramento Kings. Thompson also set the single-game postseason 3-point record when he made 11 in the Warriors’ season-saving Game 6 win over Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016 (Damian Lillard broke that record last season with 12 in a loss to the Nuggets).
Unlike the other great shooters on this list, Thompson doesn’t create his own shots very often; more than 93% of his 1,798 3-point shots have been assisted. But Thompson has thrived in Steve Kerr’s motion offense, and his catch-and-shoot triples have become a beautiful complement to Curry’s shooting. Including the playoffs, he has made 1,536 catch-and-shoot 3-pointers since 2013-14, by far the most in the NBA during that span (no other player has more than 1,300), despite missing the entirety of the past two seasons.
The fact that Golden State has had the Splash Bros. together for a decade is a huge reason they’ve been so successful. It’s also why the 2010s Warriors will go down in history as the defining team in the league’s 3-point revolution.
These five players not only have produced stunning shooting numbers. It’s no coincidence that as the NBA evolved into a jump-shooting league, these players all rode their shooting to NBA championships. While there have certainly been other tremendous shooters throughout the past 25 years, few if any can match the combination of creativity, volume, efficiency, and postseason brilliance of these five. That said, here are five who just missed the cut: Damian Lillard, Kyle Korver, Steve Nash, JJ Redick, and most definitely Chris Paul.
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