Best Shooters article.

[Edgar]

Greatest shooters everPER Diem: March 9, 2010Email  By John Hollinger
ESPN.com


Any insider that can help me with this

[Fafnir]

Ben Wallace is number 6.

[Greenbean]

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


That's the top ten. CSR is his rating he came up with. Looks pretty good to me. I haven't read the article and his theory yet though.

[PLamb]

Aqui esta mi amigo

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.

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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:" 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 ninth 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

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[Kwhit10]

My favorite comment on that article:

"The best Shooter was in Happy Gilmore" 

[Edgar]

gracias a todos. tps all around

[guava_wrench]

I might have missed it when i read the article, but does he control for the change in the 3pt line?

[Greenbean]

I might have missed it when i read the article, but does he control for the change in the 3pt line?

Not from what I read. There were only two years where the distance was shortened though correct?

[Donoghus]

Interesting piece.

I'm not a big fan of Hollinger but that top 10 list is pretty solid. 

[Boris Badenov]

I might have missed it when i read the article, but does he control for the change in the 3pt line?

Not from what I read. There were only two years where the distance was shortened though correct?

I thought two, but hoopedia says three:

http://hoopedia.nba.com/index.php?title=Three-Point_History

If Hollinger did not adjust, this means that Bird and Stojakovic are under-ranked. I think that all of the others played during at least some of those years...

[BballTim]

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


That's the top ten. CSR is his rating he came up with. Looks pretty good to me. I haven't read the article and his theory yet though.

  An argument could be made for the fact that Bird played earlier than any of the other players, back at the advent of the three point line. The league average since the early 90s has been ~35% or so. When Bird played it was probably 28% or so. If you normalized the player's three point shooting to the leage average when they played Bird would likely come out ahead of Nash and everyone else.

[footey]

I might have missed it when i read the article, but does he control for the change in the 3pt line?

Great question. Also, why does he single out that the formula captures great guys from the 2 point range like Hornacek and Mullin but exclude from consideration players who did not have a 3 point line?

[Greenbean]

Interesting piece.

I'm not a big fan of Hollinger but that top 10 list is pretty solid. 

For once he didnt over complicate something and voila! An accurate list based on good numbers.

Although I wish he had advanced stats to filter out close up 2 pt shots which are included in 2pt %. Eith way though this list is good.

[Amonkey]

As much as I hated Reggie Miller as a player, he was one of the best shooters I had ever seen.  Him and Ray Allen are some of the best shooters I have seen during my college viewing days (meaning I am not counting the years where I missed LB playing).  Peja was also a great shooter too.  Too bad he declined.  Richard Hamilton was the best pure shooter, but I always liked the way he ran through picks to make a beautiful stroking shot.  Finally, one of the most underrated players and shooter, Michael Redd.  Granted his knees are shot, but considering that he has played in a horrible team for basically his entire career, he always had a man guarding him yet he could still come up with those 30+ points game from pure shooting.

[Big Ticket]

I can't argue with who he has at #1, or the top 10 in general, and even though it is a rather simple ranking formula, I don't have any issues with it.  It could be improved but it would get awfully complicated and subjective to really account for everything.