NBA's Most Reliable Sharpshooters So Far This Season

In basketball, there are scorers and there are shooters.  And while shooters will always score, scorers don’t always shoot. So we decided to score up the best sharpshooters in the NBA.

First, let’s make the distinction between the two.

Michael Jordan was the greatest scorer of all time. He averaged 30.1 points over his career. But he made just 32.7 percent of his three-point attempts. Most of his shots came from inside.

Reggie Miller was one of the greatest shooters ever, and until Ray Allen broke his record, he was the all-time leader in three-point makes.

Jordan was a scorer; Miller was a shooter.

Our emphasis here is on the latter. So there will be no Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, who are great scorers, but merely good shooters.

The ones on this list are the guys who could knock a gnat off a fly from a hundred paces. They are the great shooters of this time who are off to amazing starts.

A combination of how they are doing this year, along with expected regression/progression to the mean was used in the rankings. That’s because relatively small sample sizes can swing wildly.

So, while I’ll give Courtney Lee, who is shooting the lights out so far, an acknowledgment here, he did not make the list. Also, players who have either barely played or not played were not considered, so Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant were not included.

A combination of statistical analysis and personal observations were factored in. These are the five guys you would love to have on your team to help stretch the court.

Stats for this article were obtained from Basketball-Reference.com or NBA.com/Stats unless otherwise noted. They are current through Nov. 21. 

5. Klay Thompson

The Golden State Warriors have made one thing clear: They believe in Klay Thompson. When Kevin Love became available, they chose to stick to their gunner rather than deal him for the superstar power forward of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

He was then granted an extension, which he celebrated by knocking down a career-high 41 points. Per ESPN.com, afterward he said,

"

I knew there was going to be a lot of money on the table, but I play this game because I really do love it. It's a blessing to have the deal I got, and I'm going to do everything I can to go out there and prove I'm worth it.

"

According to that same article, Thompson also has the record for most three-point makes during his first three seasons in the NBA. And per Basketball-Reference.com, he needs just 71 more to break fellow Warrior, Stephen Curry’s record of 644 in four seasons.

Thompson says that he wants to prove himself. The proof is in the “putting” the ball in the net. And the way Thompson has started the season, he’s going to be doing a lot of that.

4. Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Nowitzki represents my biggest shot crush. There are few things in the history of earth as pretty as a Dirk Nowitzki fadeaway. It is perfect. If I could paint, it would be my muse. Watch the video above to see why.

There are also some amazing stats regarding Nowitzki’s shot. The “long two” is considered to be the most inefficient shot in basketball. It has no specific definition, but overall, there’s not much difference between a shot from nine feet and one with your foot on the three point line.

Since 2000-01, Nowitzki has attempted 58.6 percent of his shots from that range, and made 47.4 percent of them.

According to Andre Khatchaturian of Forum Blue and Gold, about .79 points per shot is expected from that range. Nowitzki is averaging .95—slightly over 20 percent more—on his mid-range shots.

That’s a phenomenal number to put up for a career. As if that weren’t enough, Nowitzki is currently enjoying career highs in field-goal percentage (53.1), three-point percentage (46.9), effective field-goal percentage (60.2) and true shooting percentage (63.8).

You can argue that Nowitzki is the greatest mid-range shooter in history. I’m not sure you can argue anyone else is.

3. Damian Lillard

Damian Lillard already owns the record for most threes made by a rookie and by a player through his first two seasons. Now he’s chasing Thompson’s aforementioned record for most in three years.

Lillard is off to a blazing start this year,= and is going to shatter that record if he keeps up his current pace. He is averaging 3.3 three-point makes (how’s that for symmetry?). He’s also draining them at a 44.9 percent rate.

In addition to Lillard’s impressive volume is what he’s done in the clutch. In just his first two seasons, he’s hit 10 shots to tie or take the lead with 24 seconds or less left in the game. And one of them clinched a playoff series.

Lillard is an impressive young gunner, and he only gets better in the clutch.

2. Kyle Korver

Kyle Korver is moving up the ladder of history among the greatest three-point shooters ever. The only player with 2,500 attempts and a higher three-point percentage than Korver (42.7) is Steve Nash (42.8).

Among his exploits is the incredible record of 127 consecutive games with at least one three, shattering the old record of 90. 

Korver’s shooting ability is so great that it forces teams to account for him even when he doesn’t have the ball. Zach Lowe of Grantland explained in July:

"

The fear is real. The gurus at Stats LLC, the company behind the SportVU cameras, have developed two previously unreleased metrics designed to measure the amount of attention an offensive player gets from defenders when he doesn’t have the ball.

The first, dubbed “gravity score,” measures how often defenders are really guarding a particular player away from the ball. Korver had the fourth-highest score, behind only Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and Paul George. The second — “distraction score” — is a related attempt to measure how often a player’s defender strays away from him to patrol the on-ball action. Korver had the lowest such score in the league.

"

In other words, you can argue that Korver’s shooting ability is such that the only player in the league who has to be accounted for more without the ball is Carmelo Anthony.

And now Korver is off to his best start in his career, making a career high 3.2 threes a game at an outright unholy 56.1 percentage. That’s just not fair.

1. Stephen Curry

Stephen Curry, unlike the rest of the players on this list, is not off to a blazing start. He’s “only” hitting about 40 percent of his threes. But there are numerous reasons he’s on top.

First, let’s not get carried away with a small sample size. His career three-point percentage is 43.8.

And he’s made so…very…many. He’s hit 564 threes in the last three seasons. To put that in perspective, Jordan made 555 in his entire career with the Bulls!

And the thing about Curry’s threes is that his are generally harder. He’s making 1.7 three-point shots per game on pull-up shots, which are much more difficult than catch-and-shoot shots. The only player with more than one pull-up three per game with a higher effective field-goal percentage on pull-up shots is Kyle Lowry.

Curry is also the easy leader in most pull-up points per game at 9.1.

He’s scoring at a greater rate, and with nearly the same efficiency. That’s, in part, why his teammate Thompson is able to get so many catch-and-shoot threes per game (third at 2.4).

It’s not that Curry can’t do that catch-and-shoot thing too. He is averaging 1.4 at 62.2 percent rate. But his ability to be lethal from everywhere, whether he’s creating those opportunities with or without the ball, is what places him No. 1 on our list.