The NBA has been around for 75 years (by its official accounting), and shooting has always been one of the most important skills in basketball. 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.
As we celebrate this anniversary, we map out the best outside shooters -- apologies to at-the-rim dominators like Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo -- starting with the face of the NBA's shooting revolution, the baby-faced assassin from the Bay Area.
1. Stephen Curry
The No. 7 overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft changed basketball forever in the 2010s. His spectacular 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 (think role players like Robert Horry, Steve Kerr and Kenny Smith). 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), 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 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 402 3-pointers in the Warriors' 73-win season of 2015-16. Over the past decade, Curry has become the Babe Ruth of 3-point shooting, and he's poised to surpass Ray Allen for most 3s in league history at some point this season.
It's not hard to find stats that support the claim that Curry is the best shooter ever. Here are a few that make the case pretty well:
Only one player has ever made over 300 3s in a season while also shooting greater than 40% from the field. That would be Curry, who has done it in four separate seasons.
Out of the 94 players who have made at least 5,000 shots since 1996-97, Curry has the longest average make distance; his average bucket comes 16.2 feet away from the rim.
Curry has the most career games with:
4 3-pointers
5 3-pointers
6 3-pointers
7 3-pointers
8 3-pointers
9 3-pointers
10 3-pointers
11 3-pointers
12 3-pointers
Out of the 12 NBA players who attempted at least 100 step-back 3s last season, only one of them made more than 40% of them. Curry made a ridiculous 47.6% of his 166 step-back 3s in 2020-21.
But it's not just about standard 3-pointers. Curry has stretched the range of what's considered a good shot. Take this example from earlier this season. Down by two points to the LA Clippers with less than two minutes remaining, Curry and the Warriors needed a bucket to tie or take the lead. What does Curry do? He drifts out near the midcourt logo, where Marcus Morris Sr. gives him a few feet of space -- more than enough for Curry to sink the go-ahead triple from 34.4 feet away.
Stephen Curry has made 40.5% of his 215 attempts from 30+ feet since 2015-16
— Kirk Goldsberry (@kirkgoldsberry) October 24, 2021
Highest 3P% on 30-Footers Since 2015-16
1. Curry ...... 40.5%
2. Lillard ..... 33.6%
3. Trae ....... 32.8%
4. LeBron ... 29.4%
5. Doncic ... 21.5%
6. Harden ...20.6%
*min. 100 3PA, heaves excluded pic.twitter.com/PyzL4zttlK
If you showed this highlight to someone 25 years ago, they would've called Curry a madman.
Curry's prime will always be associated with the NBA's 3-point revolution, and Curry will always be the face of that revolution.
2. Ray Allen
Allen will always be associated with one of the great 3-point shots in league history, but Jesus Shuttlesworth was no one-hit wonder. He still holds the career 3-point field goal record, 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 impeccable mechanics, a great feel for the game, and an uncanny knack of putting it all together in big moments, like 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.
Allen's greatness as a shooter bridged the gap between Reggie Miller and Curry. He was by far the greatest 3-point shooter of the 2000s, a more physical, more interior-oriented era than today's game. Still, his elite shooting helped two teams win titles before the Splash Brothers came along and took the torch out to the Bay Area.
3. Dirk Nowitzki
Great 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.
Nowitzki made 5,683 midrange shots during his career, making him the only player since 1996-97 to make at least 5,000; Kevin Garnett (who played one season before the tracking era) finished his career with 4,816, and Bryant is third on the list with 4,350 -- more than a thousand fewer than Nowitzki.
Nowitzki's signature weapon was his devastatingly gorgeous one-legged fadeaway. He used his blend of size, strength, balance and mechanics to develop one of the most unstoppable moves of this century. All told, he sank 1,119 career fadeaways, the most since the shot was first tracked in 2001-02. Bryant, who was also a pretty good shooter, has the next most since 2001-02 with 772.
Now the very shots that made Nowitzki unstoppable are less popular than ever, and it's hard to imagine a young player ever reaching that level of effectiveness. The iconic fadeaways that made Nowitzki a legend -- and are literally burnished onto the court in Dallas -- are themselves fading into obscurity.
But Nowitzki's range didn't stop inside the arc. By the end of his career, he had made 1,982 career 3-pointers, the most by a 7-footer all time. Oh, and one more incredible stat. If you add up the total distance of every shot made by every player since 1996-97 when that data became available, no player has a bigger cumulative shot distance than Dirk, whose field goals combined for 152,664 feet. That's 28.91 miles of buckets, folks (46.53 kilometers for the Germans out there).
4. Kevin Durant
Durant won't 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 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.
The scary part: He's still in his prime.
5. Klay Thompson
On Oct. 29, 2018 vs. the Chicago Bulls, Klay Thompson converted 14 3-pointers, breaking the single-game NBA record. I don't know if the most absurd part is that he did that in just 27 minutes or that it 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 incredible shooting numbers that jump off the page. 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
Like Curry, "Logo Lillard" has redefined what is considered a "bad shot" (just ask Paul George). Last season he became the 10th player ever to make at least 2,000 career 3-pointers.
Korver, who came into the league by being traded for a copy machine, lasted for 17 seasons, making nearly 2,500 3-pointers at nearly a 43% clip. His 53.6% mark from 3-point range in 2009-10 still stands as the league's single-season record.
The two-time MVP was known for his passing, but was a great shooter as well, nearly posting a 50-40-90 line for his career. When he went into the Hall of Fame a few years ago, he said, "I probably should have shot the ball 20 times a game. It probably would have made a lot more sense."
Like Nash, Paul has been a pass-first point guard who can also shoot the rock as well as anyone on the court. He's made nearly 1,500 3s and even at age 36, he remains one of the most effective midrange shooters in the game.
ESPN's newest NBA analyst finished his 15-year career with 1,950 3-pointers. He was a key component of Stan Van Gundy's Magic teams who helped usher in the 3-point revolution in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and he went on to lift the Clippers to new heights alongside Paul.