espn NBA's john hollinger just posted an article about some shooters and who he thinks is the greatest shooter of all time? can someone who has Espn Insiders post it up thanks great appreciate it.
Without looking, I could have told you it's Steve Nash. Just check the percentages. Here's Hollinger's list with methodology: Code: Top All-Time Shooters By CSR Player 2-Pt% 3-Pt% FT% CSR Steve Nash .515 .431 .903 1.849 Steve Kerr .494 .454 .864 1.812 Reggie Miller .525 .395 .888 1.807 Mark Price .501 .402 .904 1.807 Jeff Hornacek .515 .403 .877 1.795 Chris Mullin .533 .384 .865 1.783 Peja Stoj. .485 .400 .895 1.779 Larry Bird .509 .376 .886 1.770 Ray Allen .482 .396 .893 1.770 Dana Barros .488 .411 .858 1.757 Min. 10,000 career minutes and 250 made 3-pointers Full Article under the spoiler: Spoiler You'll often hear casual basketball fans lament the lack of shooting in today's game, especially from the free throw line. But actually, we have the opposite problem: The current NBA is littered with great shooters. In fact, several of the best shooters of all time are currently on NBA rosters, and most of them are more or less in their prime. Without leaving the top half of the Western Conference standings, for instance, I can point out names like Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Peja Stojakovic, Kevin Martin and Chauncey Billups, all of whom have put together multiple seasons that rank among the best shooting performances in history. That's to say nothing of the other great shooters in the league -- Ray Allen, Jason Kapono, free throw-record holder Jose Calderon, Ben Gordon, Kyle Korver … the list goes on and on. But which one is the best of the best? Aye, there's the rub. We've never had a clear metric for ranking the game's best shooters … well, at least until today's ill-advised endeavor. That's right -- we're going to try ranking the best shooters in the game's history. First, a caveat: By "history," we're limiting ourselves to the 3-point era. There were plenty of great shooters who played prior to that point, but we have no way to verify their cases statistically. In particular, it appears Calvin Murphy and Rick Barry -- two players from the 1970s who were renowned for their shooting range and rank among the top six free throw shooters of all time -- are slighted by today's methodology. Bill Sharman, Mike Newlin and Fred Brown also get my apologies. OK, now for the method. My first step is to require players pass through a couple of fairly low "gates" in at least one season: shooting 85 percent from the line with at least a 45 percent mark on 3s, or shooting 87.5 percent from the line with at least 42.5 percent made on 3s, or shooting 90 percent from the stripe with at least 40 percent made on 3s. The point at this stage isn't to determine the best shooter of all time but to eliminate all the players we know darn well aren't the best shooter of all time. This does an efficient job, narrowing our list to 44 players. From there, I set about creating a formula to rank the best shooters. I thought I'd have to dream up something very complex to adjust for all the variables involved, but it turned out a simple formula worked far better than any of my more exotic concoctions. I simply added a player's 2-point, 3-point and free throw percentages. We'll call this "Combined Shooting Rating," or CSR for short. CSR works for a few reasons. First, the free throw is a pretty fair arbiter of shooting ability. It's the only true apples-to-apples measurement we have, because it's always 15 feet from the hoop and unguarded, regardless of what system the team runs or how the player is used. It's only one shot among many that need to be in a player's arsenal, but it's an important one. Second, the yin and yang of 2-point and 3-point ability balance each other out. Some players are more effective midrange shooters than long-range marksmen, while others are more comfortable bombing away. And using this method makes the system more fair to players from the 1980s and early '90s, when teams didn't utilize the 3 as often or as effectively. The one thing I left out was frequency. Obviously, players who pick their spots get higher-percentage looks than those who are the focal point of the offense on play after play. On the other hand, it's extremely difficult for players in the former group to shoot well enough from the line to crack the elite on this list, simply because of the lack of in-game repetition. Several snipers with great numbers from the floor (Brent Barry, for instance, or Hubert Davis) couldn't get into the top 10 because of free throw percentage, and even the second-ranked player on our list (one of the all-time snipers) has the worst free throw percentage of anybody in the top 10. Also, I did set two minimum standards: 10,000 career minutes and 250 made 3-pointers. I didn't want anybody getting onto the list with a lengthy career sparsely populated with 3-point attempts; that seemed counter to the point of the exercise. While arbitrary, 250 nicely separated the truly deadly long-range shooters from the guys who merely hit midrange J's and made their free throws. So now that our rather simple CSR method is clear, let's get to our list of the top 10 shooters, which also apparently doubles as a great predictor of post-career broadcasting, coaching and front-office opportunities. According to CSR, they are: Top All-Time Shooters By CSR Player 2-Pt% 3-Pt% FT% CSR Steve Nash .515 .431 .903 1.849 Steve Kerr .494 .454 .864 1.812 Reggie Miller .525 .395 .888 1.807 Mark Price .501 .402 .904 1.807 Jeff Hornacek .515 .403 .877 1.795 Chris Mullin .533 .384 .865 1.783 Peja Stojakovic .485 .400 .895 1.779 Larry Bird .509 .376 .886 1.770 Ray Allen .482 .396 .893 1.770 Dana Barros .488 .411 .858 1.757 Min. 10,000 career minutes That's right: Steve Nash. By a mile. I've always written that his shooting is his most underappreciated skill, but even so, this blows me away. It makes sense, though -- run through the numbers, and Nash crushes every possible competitor. And it becomes even more impressive when one considers nearly all his shots from the field have come off the dribble. Nash and the fourth-ranked player on this list, Mark Price, are the only two players in history to shoot better than 50 percent on 2s, 40 percent on 3s and 90 percent from the line for their careers. And as it happens, Nash's general manager in Phoenix, Steve Kerr, is second on the list. One strong point of this list is that it acknowledges a few of the game's great midrange shooters. Neither Chris Mullin nor Jeff Hornacek shot the 3 with great frequency, for instance, but both were deadly accurate when they did, and they were exceptional from 2-point range. Fans of "Larry Legend" undoubtedly will be disappointed to see him eighth on this list and to see one player of his own size -- Stojakovic -- rank just ahead of him. But Bird's greatest asset was his ability to make high-difficulty shots, which would need to be part of a different list entirely -- a list that would include different players. (Kobe Bryant, for one obvious example, is nowhere close on the above list but would have to rank high on any list of tough-shot makers.) If you're wondering about Nowitzki, he is 13th, and easily the best among players 6-foot-10 or taller. Players 11 to 20 on this list are Barry, Hersey Hawkins, Nowitzki, Davis, Korver, Mo Williams, Danny Ainge, Allan Houston, Scott Skiles and Glen Rice. Before I exit, some players who didn't make my list warrant mentioning. The first is Drazen Petrovic, who just missed my minutes cut-off because of his untimely death in 1993. Petro's rating of 1.799 would have put him fifth on the list, a fact that becomes even more impressive when one considers he was only 28 when he died -- most players improve their numbers on the above criteria well into their 30s. The second is Calderon, who needs only 779 more minutes to crack the list; his 1.805 career mark would place him fifth. Calderon also has only 238 made 3s on his career and needs to make 12 more of those. You might think his free throw percentage carries him into the top 10, but actually it's his amazing 2-point field goal percentage that does it. Calderon has shot 53.4 percent for his career on 2-point shots, the best mark of any of the 44 players in this study. Finally, two young players on the Golden State Warriors have established a great chance of finishing their careers near the top of this list. Rookie Stephen Curry is at 1.770 thus far in his brief career, and should that number hold up, he'll finish his career in the top 10. Since players' shooting often improves dramatically in their second through fifth seasons, he could finish as one of the top-ranked players of all time. Then again, he also might finish second among current Warriors. Curry's teammate, Anthony Morrow, has played two NBA seasons as a part-time starter, and posted career marks of 48.8 percent on 2s, 45.9 percent on 3s and 87.6 percent from the line. That's good for a CSR of 1.822, which is better than every other player in history except Nash. Obviously we're dealing with smaller sample sizes with those two, and it's possible they'll regress in future seasons. But when we discuss the great all-time shooters, those two are worth tracking in future seasons to see if they warrant a spot in the conversation.
The method is very simple, but I can't argue with the results there. Here are the top 20 in "CSR" this season, minimum 30 3s made, 1000 minutes played: Player Team PS GP Min FG% 3P% FT% CSR miller,mike was SG 32 1021 0.542 0.527 0.825 1.895 nash,steve pho PG 64 2149 0.506 0.415 0.940 1.861 morrow,anthony gsw SG 51 1594 0.475 0.452 0.882 1.810 wright,dorell mia SG 55 1093 0.470 0.398 0.929 1.796 ridnour,luke mil PG 62 1343 0.478 0.383 0.926 1.788 paul,chris nor PG 38 1474 0.504 0.420 0.862 1.786 billups,chauncey den PG 54 1830 0.436 0.423 0.902 1.762 pierce,paul bos SF 51 1775 0.460 0.439 0.854 1.754 curry,stephen gsw PG 63 2261 0.455 0.417 0.878 1.751 jack,jarrett tor PG 61 1748 0.497 0.415 0.834 1.746 durant,kevin okl SF 62 2460 0.477 0.377 0.885 1.738 williams,mo cle PG 54 1864 0.429 0.415 0.894 1.738 nowitzki,dirk dal PF 64 2426 0.479 0.352 0.906 1.737 udrih,beno sac PG 60 1762 0.494 0.400 0.837 1.731 lawson,ty den PG 55 1188 0.514 0.432 0.773 1.719 calderon,jose tor PG 47 1293 0.493 0.395 0.831 1.718 allen,ray bos SG 60 2175 0.468 0.352 0.897 1.718 frye,channing pho C 65 1793 0.450 0.434 0.800 1.684 redick,j.j. orl SG 64 1392 0.433 0.387 0.861 1.681 stojakovic,peja nor SF 62 1945 0.404 0.375 0.897 1.676
I'd say the best shooter is one of: nash, allen, miller. I don't think many people realize that nash is such a great shooter since his PG skills seem to overshadow that.
Stats is irrelevant from a historical perspective. Nowadays the defender can't even touch the shooter in the perimeter but it's definitely not the case in earlier years. Nevertheless, the abolition of illegal defense rule didn't affect outside shooting as much as dribble penetration. That being said, Reggie Miller is the best shooter of all time.
thanks m_cable for posting that Nash is a Great Shooter but certainly not the best. i give nash credit for making off balance 3s and shots but as a stand-still shooter he is not even top 10 to be honest. Nash couldnt even win the 3pt contest. He forgot to mention Dell Curry n jon paxson I strongly disagree that Steve Nash is the best pure shooter of all time
My pick is Allen. Statistically speaking there are those who are superior but his form is perfect, his stroke is divine, and in Seattle he lead in 3s several seasons. He also had and still sorta has that killer instinct shot that beats buzzers. I also think highly of Nash especially back in the dantoni days when he had Marion and a blooming stoudemire. Reggie miller gets props too the guys practically regarded as a legend for his shot. Heck before tmac's 13 in under 35 there was reggies 10 to win the game.
Nash is #3 all time in career FT%. And who gives a flip about the 3-point contest, or anything that happens during all-star weekend.
I think best shooter is too broad. There's a big difference between being a good shooter and being a good shooter who's also clutch. All things considered it's gotta be Reggie Miller no doubt. I wasn't a fan of his but I can't stop praising the guy. Not only was he clutch in dire situations he was also money under normal circumstances. Plus he had that really awkward looking release and still got it done. I wonder how many coach's throughout his childhood told him his release was jacked up and that he would need to fix it. More power to him.
i don't see how 3p contest matters. this is like saying that nate robinson is the best dunker of all time. as for stand-still shooting, check out his ft%. nash is up there with the best. although, i'd prefer allen/miller who shoot 3s in high volume, i don't think nash is worse than anyone else.
