Ranking the NBA's 5 Best and 5 Worst Shooters This Season
Shooting is the most important skill in basketball.
And this NBA season, a number of players from all over the league have been shooting the lights out. A few others are laying bricks.
With just over a month left in this regular season, it's time to take a look at the five best and five worst shooters from 2023-24.
But first, a little primer on how we came to this order.
Method
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In an effort to reward both jump shooting volume and efficiency, we'll use "points added" from Basketball Reference's adjusted shooting tables.
To find that number from a given range, you take a player's points per attempt, subtract the league average for points per attempt from the same range and then multiply that answer by the number of attempts from that range.
If you do that for all attempts from eight feet and out (so, some twos and a ton of threes), you get this top five:
- Grayson Allen (+122.4)
- Stephen Curry (+109.1)
- Malik Beasley (+105.9)
- Donte DiVincenzo (+101.5)
- Norman Powell (+81.4)
And this bottom five:
- Anthony Davis (-76.4)
- Jalen Green (-77.0)
- Kyle Kuzma (-79.1)
- Victor Wembanyama (-88.0)
- Jordan Poole (-92.6)
But going that route overwhelmingly rewards three-point shooters who do little in the mid-range. And since finding the "best shooter" is mostly a subjective pursuit, we want to give a little more credit to players who are lighting it up from both three and the mid-range.
So, instead of lumping all shots from eight feet and out together, we'll find points added on twos from eight feet and out, as well as points added from three, and then add those numbers together to get the following top and bottom five.
5th Worst: Ausar Thompson
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -7.70 (404th)
Points Added from Three: -59.10 (473rd)
Total: -66.80
Ausar Thompson has plenty of potential as a playmaker and multipositional defender. Honestly, he's probably ahead of schedule in both those areas.
But reaching his ultimate ceiling as an NBA player largely depends on whether he'll ever become a reliable (or even average) shooter.
Right now, he's struggling from all over the field, but this spot is obviously generated mostly by three-point shooting. He doesn't have a ton of volume from the mid-range, but his 18.9 three-point percentage on 1.8 attempts per game drove him into the bottom five.
5th Best: Jalen Williams
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Points Added From Mid-Range: +45.38 (7th)
Points Added from Three: +48.71 (16th)
Total: +94.09
The Oklahoma City Thunder have been one of this season's best and most prolific jump shooting teams, particularly from the mid-range.
While Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the MVP candidate who's understandably getting most of the buzz, a lot of those team shooting numbers have been boosted by Jalen Williams.
On the season, Williams is shooting 45.1 percent from deep, but his 3.4 attempts per game are nowhere near the top of the league. What really pushes him up the board is the fact that he's 120-of-226 on the two-point attempts in question.
Most of those are of the pull-up variety. Despite being in just his second NBA season, Williams has an old-school, veteran-like game. He knows how to get his spots, and once he's there, he's able to rise up and connect from the mid-range against just about anyone.
4th Worst: Kyle Kuzma
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -31.68 (474th)
Points Added from Three: -35.38 (463rd)
Total: -67.06
Kyle Kuzma is getting jump shots up from all over the floor, and he's comfortably below average from both the ranges sampled for this exercise.
Of course, there's some relevant context here. Kuzma is on, quite possibly, the worst team in the NBA. Spending time alongside teammates who don't command a ton of attention makes scoring more difficult.
But the numbers don't give him any relief for that, and his 33.8 three-point percentage and 37.3 two-point percentage on shots from eight feet and out doomed him to the bottom five.
4th Best: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
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Points Added From Mid-Range: +90.31 (1st)
Points Added from Three: +4.91 (140th)
Total: +95.22
You may not think of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as one of the league's best shooters. Depending on how much emphasis should be on three-pointers, maybe he isn't.
But again, there's some subjectivity in what went into the sausage for this exercise. With a little more credit given to mid-range shooters, SGA worked his way into the top five by dominating from that range. The gap between him and second place in points added on twos from eight feet and out is over eight points.
Like Williams, it's not like Gilgeous-Alexander is somehow working his way into wide-open catch-and-shoot looks from there (no one really gets those in volume these days). Instead, SGA is slashing inside the three-point line, stopping on a dime and hitting pull-ups in defenders' faces.
3rd Worst: Victor Wembanyama
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -47.18 (477th)
Points Added from Three: -27.09 (452nd)
Total: -74.27
That Victor Wembanyama has played like a top-20 player despite being one of this season's worst jump shooters is a credit to everything else he does so well.
He needs to work on taking care of the ball, but he's already a solid playmaker for a center. He's one of the best and most dynamic defenders in the league, and he's been an incredible finisher around the rim.
If the jump shooting comes around (and a 38.1 three-point percentage over his past 30 games suggests it will), Wembanyama is going to be an MVP candidate.
3rd Best: Kawhi Leonard
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Points Added From Mid-Range: +43.54 (10th)
Points Added from Three: +52.21 (13th)
Total: +95.75
Kawhi Leonard is typically known more for his defense and forays into the paint, but he's undoubtedly been one of this season's best jump shooters.
As you can see, he didn't climb near the top of this list with one range or the other. Kawhi has been more than reliable on both three-point attempts (where he's shooting 42.7 percent) and two-point attempts from eight feet and out (48.5 percent).
If he keeps hitting jumpers like this through the playoffs, the Los Angeles Clippers will very much be in the mix for a title.
2nd Worst: Jalen Green
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -18.09 (458th)
Points Added from Three: -66.08 (477th)
Total: -84.17
Jalen Green is not shy about getting shots up.
This season, he's 16th in the league in total three-point attempts and 25th in three-point attempts per game.
When you put up that many threes while making just 31.6 percent of them (against a league average of 36.7), you take a lot of points off the board. In fact, Green is dead last among the players sampled for this exercise in that category...and he hasn't been much better from the mid-range.
2nd Best: Grayson Allen
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -4.67 (363rd)
Points Added from Three: +105.61 (1st)
Total: +100.94
Grayson Allen has only attempted 24 two-pointers from eight feet and out. His points added there are negligible in comparison to his absurd combination of volume and efficiency from deep.
Allen isn't just leading the league in that category. He's completely dominating it.
His 105.61 points added from three are nearly 20 clear of second-place Stephen Curry's 86.83. But even that doesn't quite put this shooting campaign in proper perspective.
Allen is attempting 5.7 threes per game and hitting 47.5 percent of them. Kyle Korver (who did it in 2014-15) is the only player in NBA history to match or exceed both marks for an entire season.
Worst: Jordan Poole
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Points Added From Mid-Range: -27.95 (473rd)
Points Added from Three: -64.88 (476th)
Total: -92.83
Jordan Poole edged out Green at the bottom of the list thanks to his confidence from the mid-range. He's 64th in minutes played this season, but he's 40th in total two-point attempts from eight feet and out.
He's shooting just 36.1 percent on those shots. Add that to a 31.5 three-point percentage on 6.9 attempts per game, and you get the worst shooter in the NBA this season.
On the bright side, things seem to be moving in the right direction for the former Sixth Man of the Year candidate. Over his past 10 games (a stretch that coincided almost perfectly with his move to the bench), Poole is averaging 22.4 points and shooting 37.5 percent from deep.
Best: Kevin Durant
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Points Added From Mid-Range: +77.81 (2nd)
Points Added from Three: +45.91 (19th)
Total: +123.72
Kevin Durant being this good a shooter at 6'11", 35 years old and post-Achilles tear is genuinely absurd.
But he remains one of the most dangerous (and according to this exercise, the best) shooters in the NBA.
Like some of the other mid-range marksman on this list, plenty of Durant's jumpers are coming with hands in his face, off the dribble or both.
Durant has long been worthy of his "Easy Money Sniper" nickname, and that's especially true this season.
Leftovers
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For those curious, let's take a quick look at the top and bottom of the two individual categories factored into the list above.
First, the top 10 in points added from three-point attempts.
- Grayson Allen (105.61)
- Stephen Curry (86.83)
- Malik Beasley (84.92)
- Norman Powell (75.61)
- D'Angelo Russell (69.72)
- Jrue Holiday (59.81)
- Aaron Nesmith (58.81)
- Donte DiVincenzo (55.52)
- Luke Kennard (53.91)
- Mike Conley (53.71)
And now, the bottom 10 from threes.
- Spencer Dinwiddie (-43.19)
- P.J. Washington (-44.79)
- Saddiq Bey (-54.99)
- Franz Wagner (-55.69)
- Franz Wagner (-55.69)
- Ausar Thompson (-59.10)
- Jordan Clarkson (-61.89)
- Nikola Vučević (-62.49)
- Jordan Poole (-64.88)
- Jalen Green (-66.08)
Next, the top 10 in points added from two-point attempts from eight feet and out.
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (90.31)
- Kevin Durant (77.81)
- Brandon Ingram (54.70)
- Devin Booker (53.98)
- Dejounte Murray (53.54)
- Khris Middleton (52.07)
- Jalen Williams (45.38)
- Nikola Jokić (44.38)
- Joel Embiid (43.73)
- Kawhi Leonard (43.54)
And the bottom 10 from those two-point attempts.
- Cody Martin (-22.50)
- Aaron Gordon (-23.36)
- Tyrese Maxey (-24.26)
- Deni Avdija (-24.28)
- Giannis Antetokounmpo (-27.06)
- Jordan Poole (-27.95)
- Kyle Kuzma (-31.68)
- Jeremy Sochan (-33.31)
- Anthony Edwards (-39.35)
- Victor Wembanyama (-47.18)
Stats courtesy of Stathead.com and current through games played on March 8, 2024.
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