The Best Shooters in Basketball History
Shooting is basketball's most democratic skill — no genetic lottery required, just ten thousand hours and nerve. It's also the skill that reshaped the modern NBA. Here are the marksmen who define the craft.
The one who changed the map
Stephen Curry isn't just first on this list; he's the reason the list needs rewriting. The all-time three-point record, the only unanimous MVP, multiple 5-threes-per-game seasons, and a range that moved defensive pickup points ten feet outward league-wide. Pre-Curry, a 30-footer was a bad shot. Post-Curry, it's an offense.
The pure strokes
Ray Allen held the career three-point record before Curry and owns the most famous three ever made — the corner dagger that saved the 2013 Finals. His mechanics remain the textbook. Klay Thompson, Curry's splash brother, produced the most violent shooting flurries the league has seen: 37 points in a quarter, 60 on eleven dribbles. Reggie Miller terrorised the nineties with movement shooting and the most theatrical eight points in nine seconds in playoff history.
The big-man marksmen
Dirk Nowitzki's one-legged fade made seven-foot shooting respectable; Larry Bird — three straight Three-Point Contest titles, famously asking the field who was playing for second — fused shooting with trash talk as art. Kevin Durant belongs here as much as on any scorer list: at his height, with his release point, his jumper is the least guardable shot in the sport's history.
The specialists
Every era has its snipers: Steve Kerr (the career percentage benchmark for decades), Kyle Korver (a one-skill Hall of Very Good career built on relocation shooting), JJ Redick (movement-shooting professor), and the free-throw aristocrats Mark Price and Steve Nash, two of the few members of the 50-40-90 club — the shooting season's gold standard.
How shooting is measured now
Raw three-point percentage undersells the revolutionaries. The modern lens: volume × efficiency × difficulty. Curry shooting 42% on twelve deep, contested, off-the-dribble attempts is a different sport from a specialist hitting 44% on four wide-open corner threes. That's why the 50-40-90 season (50% field goals, 40% threes, 90% free throws) remains the connoisseur's stat — fewer than a dozen players have ever done it.
The basketbadle angle
Shooters cluster in Guess the Player's guard rows and skew toward certain eras and numbers. When the tiles say "guard, light, famous franchise" — start your guessing from this article's roster.