Mid-range rangers

[SUPERVILLAIN]

Create a line-up (PG-SG-SF-PF-C) consisting of the best mid-range scorers in the game. Make two versions of it.

Version 1: active players only
Version 2: all time

[Statlanta]

Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Karl-Anthony Towns

Chris Paul, Michael Jordan, Alex English, Dirk Nowitzki, Bob McAdoo

[70sFan]

Active:

PG: Chris Paul
SG: DeMar DeRozan
SF: Kawhi Leonard
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Joel Embiid

All-time:

PG: Jerry West
SG: Michael Jordan
SF: Kevin Durant
PF: Dirk Nowitzki
C: Bob McAdoo

[penbeast0]

Active:

PG: Chris Paul
SG: DeMar DeRozan
SF: Kawhi Leonard
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Joel Embiid

All-time:

PG: Jerry West
SG: Michael Jordan
SF: Kevin Durant
PF: Dirk Nowitzki
C: Bob McAdoo

I would say Oscar instead of Jerry for midrange; West was both a longer range shooter and more of a slasher than Oscar; Oscar got more of his work done in the midrange.

[70sFan]

Active:

PG: Chris Paul
SG: DeMar DeRozan
SF: Kawhi Leonard
PF: Kevin Durant
C: Joel Embiid

All-time:

PG: Jerry West
SG: Michael Jordan
SF: Kevin Durant
PF: Dirk Nowitzki
C: Bob McAdoo

I would say Oscar instead of Jerry for midrange; West was both a longer range shooter and more of a slasher than Oscar; Oscar got more of his work done in the midrange.

I had a hard time between Oscar and West, but I think Jerry was maybe a little bit better at creating his own shot from midrange. Very narrow gap between them though.

[SUPERVILLAIN]

Active
PG Chris Paul
SG DeMar DeRozan
SF Kawhi Leonard
PF Kevin Durant
C Joel Embiid

All-time
PG Chris Paul
SG Michael Jordan
SF Kevin Durant
PF Dirk Nowitzki
C LaMarcus Aldridge

[Colbinii]

Current Season/Active Players:

Chris Paul
Seth Curry
DeMar DeRozan
Kevin Durant
Joel Embiid

[LukaTheGOAT]

For current guys:

Chris Paul
Demar Derozan
Kawhi Leonard
Kevin Durant
Nikola Jokic

[Texas Chuck]

All-time:

Paul
Mike
Durant
Kawhi
Dirk

[70sFan]

For all-time teams I think people put too many modern players. Oldschool players used midrange game far more than they do now. I mean, someone like Jerry West or Oscar Robertson probably took 10+ midrange shots on average.

[falcolombardi]

For all-time teams I think people put too many modern players. Oldschool players used midrange game far more than they do now. I mean, someone like Jerry West or Oscar Robertson probably took 10+ midrange shots on average.

Chris Paul has a career average of nearly 50% in midrange despite high volume and self creating most of his looks, is hard for me to imagine his percentages taking a dive with increased volume when his shots are already so hard to make

not having shooting data of west or Oscar is hard for me to go against paul who i have evidence of his insane efficiency

somethingh similar with Kevin durant whose midranges are for the most part barely affected by defense and he can shot them above 50% in his best seasons

i know this is unfair for old players but without having numbers i feel like i am guessing how good they actually were off reputation

[70sFan]

For all-time teams I think people put too many modern players. Oldschool players used midrange game far more than they do now. I mean, someone like Jerry West or Oscar Robertson probably took 10+ midrange shots on average.

Chris Paul has a career average of nearly 50% in midrange despite high volume and self creating most of his looks, is hard for me to imagine his percentages taking a dive with increased volume when his shots are already so hard to make

not having shooting data of west or Oscar is hard for me to go against paul who i have evidence of his insane efficiency

somethingh similar with Kevin durant whose midranges are for the most part barely affected by defense and he can shot them above 50% in his best seasons

i know this is unfair for old players but without having numbers i feel like i am guessing how good they actually were off reputation

Actually, I don't mind using Paul at PG. Durant is tricky, because he has insane efficiency on very solid volume, but I'm sure there were plenty of forwards who were almost as efficient as him while shooting considerably more. Kawhi is similar case, except that he shots even less from midrange and I don't think he's good enough to put him there.

[SHAQ32]

Mike Bibby
Rip Hamilton
Grant Hill
Carlos Boozer
Rik Smits

[homecourtloss]

For all-time teams I think people put too many modern players. Oldschool players used midrange game far more than they do now. I mean, someone like Jerry West or Oscar Robertson probably took 10+ midrange shots on average.

Chris Paul has a career average of nearly 50% in midrange despite high volume and self creating most of his looks, is hard for me to imagine his percentages taking a dive with increased volume when his shots are already so hard to make

not having shooting data of west or Oscar is hard for me to go against paul who i have evidence of his insane efficiency

somethingh similar with Kevin durant whose midranges are for the most part barely affected by defense and he can shot them above 50% in his best seasons

i know this is unfair for old players but without having numbers i feel like i am guessing how good they actually were off reputation

Actually, I don't mind using Paul at PG. Durant is tricky, because he has insane efficiency on very solid volume, but I'm sure there were plenty of forwards who were almost as efficient as him while shooting considerably more. Kawhi is similar case, except that he shots even less from midrange and I don't think he's good enough to put him there.

I see what ‘70sFan is saying though with CP3, there’s just too much data on his side. Interesting fact: CP3 this year is shooting the same from 10-16 ft (57.7%) as Westbrook did at the rim in 2017 (57.6%), and better than KLove did at the rim in any playoff run sans 2015’s incomplete run (35.7%, 48.9%, 57.1% in 2016, 2017, 2018, respectively) which is absurd.

2015-2022: 51.8% from 10-16 ft, 49.7% from 16-23ft with six individual seasons above 50% from 10-16ft, five seasons above 50% from 16-23ft and these include seasons above 54%-55%, which is ludicrously good.

One name from the past not mentioned enough here is Walt Frazier with that beautiful lean in shot when going left. Walt put up some gaudy TS Added numbers shooting a lot of those shots.

[70sFan]

Chris Paul has a career average of nearly 50% in midrange despite high volume and self creating most of his looks, is hard for me to imagine his percentages taking a dive with increased volume when his shots are already so hard to make

not having shooting data of west or Oscar is hard for me to go against paul who i have evidence of his insane efficiency

somethingh similar with Kevin durant whose midranges are for the most part barely affected by defense and he can shot them above 50% in his best seasons

i know this is unfair for old players but without having numbers i feel like i am guessing how good they actually were off reputation

Actually, I don't mind using Paul at PG. Durant is tricky, because he has insane efficiency on very solid volume, but I'm sure there were plenty of forwards who were almost as efficient as him while shooting considerably more. Kawhi is similar case, except that he shots even less from midrange and I don't think he's good enough to put him there.

I see what ‘70sFan is saying though with CP3, there’s just too much data on his side. Interesting fact: CP3 this year is shooting the same from 10-16 ft (57.7%) as Westbrook did at the rim in 2017 (57.6%), and better than KLove did at the rim in any playoff run sans 2015’s incomplete run (35.7%, 48.9%, 57.1% in 2016, 2017, 2018, respectively) which is absurd.

2015-2022: 51.8% from 10-16 ft, 49.7% from 16-23ft with six individual seasons above 50% from 10-16ft, five seasons above 50% from 16-23ft and these include seasons above 54%-55%, which is ludicrously good.

One name from the past not mentioned enough here is Walt Frazier with that beautiful lean in shot when going left. Walt put up some gaudy TS Added numbers shooting a lot of those shots.

Frazier is fantastic mention, he was such a good midrange shooter and most of his attempts were unassisted, contested turnarounds or pull-ups.

[homecourtloss]

Mike Bibby
Rip Hamilton
Grant Hill
Carlos Boozer
Rik Smits

Bibby wasn’t a standout midrange shooter compared to names mentioned already.

Rip had good numbers from 10-16 feet, but not 16-23 ft

Boozer had some good seasons but again, not seasons as good as the names posted already had

Hill could of course get that shot off at will and got hot sometimes, but the overall numbers don’t look that good

Smits is a good choice here though not as good as current Embiid or Jokic

[homecourtloss]

Actually, I don't mind using Paul at PG. Durant is tricky, because he has insane efficiency on very solid volume, but I'm sure there were plenty of forwards who were almost as efficient as him while shooting considerably more. Kawhi is similar case, except that he shots even less from midrange and I don't think he's good enough to put him there.

I see what ‘70sFan is saying though with CP3, there’s just too much data on his side. Interesting fact: CP3 this year is shooting the same from 10-16 ft (57.7%) as Westbrook did at the rim in 2017 (57.6%), and better than KLove did at the rim in any playoff run sans 2015’s incomplete run (35.7%, 48.9%, 57.1% in 2016, 2017, 2018, respectively) which is absurd.

2015-2022: 51.8% from 10-16 ft, 49.7% from 16-23ft with six individual seasons above 50% from 10-16ft, five seasons above 50% from 16-23ft and these include seasons above 54%-55%, which is ludicrously good.

One name from the past not mentioned enough here is Walt Frazier with that beautiful lean in shot when going left. Walt put up some gaudy TS Added numbers shooting a lot of those shots.

Frazier is fantastic mention, he was such a good midrange shooter and most of his attempts were unassisted, contested turnarounds or pull-ups.

I was able to use your Clyde videos to convince some people about his ahead of his time game. Those were some really high difficulty shots with a lot of hand jostling pre shot. That was a beautiful jumper.

[Owly]

At just shooters rather than scorers...

Some "by the numbers" names looking at combined 10-16 and 16-3pt. No accounting for sample, no accounting for volume (just each percentage separately, by st dev in a table of some good shooters). Modern pro numbers not recently updated and for earliest tracked players some combine tiny samples and a good chunk of them ('97) being where 16 to 3pt was shorter and at a glance that one year had some outlier highs so if that makes up a large part of that sample ...

Bogues - probably only ever taking them uncontested, no 3pt range, FT% a comparatively (within this company) pedestrian 0.827
Kerr
Bonner
Stockton
Nash
T Mills
Nowitzki
Seth Curry (heavy tilt to long mid-range)
Paul
Dumars
McCollum
Houston
Hornacek (heavy tilt to short mid-range)
Cassell
Curry
M Price (small samples)
Terry
Bass
Irving
Abdul-Rauf (small samples)
Ricky Pierce (small samples)