3pt shooting - how many players above Klay?

[durantbird]

In terms of 3pt shooting ability alone in their prime, how many players are above Klay Thompson in your eyes? Steph, KD, Reggie, Allen, Dirk, Lillard?

[tsherkin]

Interesting question. And interesting to bring up Reggie.

Reggie topped out at 6.6 3PA/g in 1997, the last of the shortened-3 seasons, and was never otherwise above 5.7 3PA/g. He was a career 39.5% 3P shooter. Playoffs? 5.7 3PA/g at 39.0%, though he had some runs with higher volumes from 3, including 7.5 3PA/g for 17 games in 95 (again, shortened line).

Klay is a career 7.6 3PA/g guy at 41.3% 3P, and he's shot >= 7.1 in every season from 2015 forward. He matched Reggie's best at 6.6 in 2014 and was at 6.1 the year before. In the playoffs? 7.8 3PA/g at 40.5%.

Hard for me to really look at Reggie as a superior 3pt shooter.

[KembaWalker]

wonder when people will have to start judging 3pt stats by era same way general efficiency is looked at, or rebounding/shot blocking. I would take Ray over Klay even at 1% less accuracy and fewer attempts. Klay had better schemes for getting consistently good shots than Ray and of course he had much better teammates

[tsherkin]

wonder when people will have to start judging 3pt stats by era same way general efficiency is looked at, or rebounding/shot blocking. I would take Ray over Klay even at 1% less accuracy and fewer attempts. Klay had better schemes for getting consistently good shots than Ray and of course he had much better teammates

Ray... was a consumate off-ball player who used sets to clear for 3s all the time. I'm not sure I follow your line of thought. That was what Milwaukee and Seattle did for him. And then Boston and Miami as well.

That said, 02-09, Ray was rocking 7.1 3PA/g at 39.7% 3P. It's pretty clear that he could handle the volume and be in the neighborhood.

I think there's a pretty stiff pro-Klay argument in that regard, and that shouldn't be ultra surprising. Klay is legitimately one of the best 3pt shooters in league history.

[KembaWalker]

wonder when people will have to start judging 3pt stats by era same way general efficiency is looked at, or rebounding/shot blocking. I would take Ray over Klay even at 1% less accuracy and fewer attempts. Klay had better schemes for getting consistently good shots than Ray and of course he had much better teammates

Ray... was a consumate off-ball player who used sets to clear for 3s all the time. I'm not sure I follow your line of thought. That was what Milwaukee and Seattle did for him. And then Boston and Miami as well.

That said, 02-09, Ray was rocking 7.1 3PA/g at 39.7% 3P. It's pretty clear that he could handle the volume and be in the neighborhood.

I think there's a pretty stiff pro-Klay argument in that regard, and that shouldn't be ultra surprising. Klay is legitimately one of the best 3pt shooters in league history.

idk, seems like it takes a deliberate effort on your end to not understand how Ray Allen could have put up even better numbers in both volume and efficiency if he played him prime when taking open 3s in transition or against nonset defense wasn't heavily discouraged versus driving to the basket. yeah he got plenty of raw attempts but more of them were on those winding down screen/curl plays. itd be like saying shot blockers are "worse" now because they don't get 100 garbage layup attempts to block per game like they did back then. its kind of meaningless

[tsherkin]

idk, seems like it takes a deliberate effort on your end to not understand how Ray Allen could have put up even better numbers in both volume and efficiency if he played him prime when taking open 3s in transition or against nonset defense wasn't heavily discouraged versus driving to the basket.

I thought you might got here, but Klay takes like 14% of his 3s as pull-ups, so they don't actually represent a huge proportion of his attempts. Most of what he does, by screaming majority, is catch-and-shoot action. Often it's fairly elementary and didn't require zipper cuts and stuff, and using DHOs would certainly open things up more, but ultimately, you're still getting catch-and-shoots and Ray was amazing at those. Like I said, he's in the neighborhood and that stretch I posted was about him supporting volume and efficiency from 3. He wasn't going to get much cleaner/more open looks than he was getting during those periods compared to Klay, though.

[KembaWalker]

idk, seems like it takes a deliberate effort on your end to not understand how Ray Allen could have put up even better numbers in both volume and efficiency if he played him prime when taking open 3s in transition or against nonset defense wasn't heavily discouraged versus driving to the basket.

I thought you might got here, but Klay takes like 14% of his 3s as pull-ups, so they don't actually represent a huge proportion of his attempts. Most of what he does, by screaming majority, is catch-and-shoot action. Often it's fairly elementary and didn't require zipper cuts and stuff, and using DHOs would certainly open things up more, but ultimately, you're still getting catch-and-shoots and Ray was amazing at those. Like I said, he's in the neighborhood and that stretch I posted was about him supporting volume and efficiency from 3. He wasn't going to get much cleaner/more open looks than he was getting during those periods compared to Klay, though.

This is a pretty major whiff but doesn’t really matter at the end of the day I guess, we are about to be in the era of 12+ 3pa players all over the place and all these records are going to get completely wiped. If you don’t want to account for era differences than Klay and Ray will be JAGs in 10 years

[tsherkin]

This is a pretty major whiff but doesn’t really matter at the end of the day I guess, we are about to be in the era of 12+ 3pa players all over the place and all these records are going to get completely wiped. If you don’t want to account for era differences than Klay and Ray will be JAGs in 10 years

We can agree to disagree on the final ranking, that's fine. I agree with you that Ray would be excellent in this era, I just disagree with the specifics. I do agree that there isn't a huge difference between them in 3pt shooting, though.

It's possible 3pt volume will continue rising. I'm honestly expecting some stars will eventually figure out how poor a strategy volume 3pt shooting is come the playoffs when you aren't Steph, but we'll see. It may take some time. If Shai wins a title, or if Lebron/Giannis/Jokic win another, though, it may happen more quickly.

Regardless, as I said, I have a healthy appreciation of Ray Allen. He was one of my favorite players in the late 90s and the 2000s.

[TrueLAfan]

My initial response to this – Steph. Full stop.

I think you can make arguments for other players, including some of the ones mentioned in the original post. But a lot of their arguments, as noted, are the “he could/would have” involving volume and teammates. And they may be right. But that’s somewhat hypothetical—and the facts are what they are. Of players who have averaged 4 3PA a game and played at least 600 games, Klay ranks 4th in 3P%. The players above him are Kyle Korver, Steph Curry and JJ Redick. Redick and Korver aren’t volume guys and lean into the specialist group of players. You could rank them higher as shooters I guess—but Klay’s volume isn’t hypothetical. He’s a different type and impact level of player. He shoots the long ball more and gets more points.

The only players I really put at Klay’s level that are fairly similar in terms of scoring and impact as shooters are Reggie and Ray. I think Ray may have been a bit better, while Reggie was a shade lower. At that level though, we’re splitting hairs. Dirk may have been a better shooter relative to his position—same with Durant—but in terms of putting the ball up from distance and making it with people who had the three point line, as far as I'm concerned it’s Steph, Klay, Ray, and Reggie, with Steph on top and the other three grouped a little below. My .02. Neat question.

[Bad Bart]

Anthony Morrow and Dana Barros

[tsherkin]

My initial response to this – Steph. Full stop.

I think you can make arguments for other players, including some of the ones mentioned in the original post. But a lot of their arguments, as noted, are the “he could/would have” involving volume and teammates. And they may be right. But that’s somewhat hypothetical—and the facts are what they are. Of players who have averaged 4 3PA a game and played at least 600 games, Klay ranks 4th in 3P%. The players above him are Kyle Korver, Steph Curry and JJ Redick. Redick and Korver aren’t volume guys and lean into the specialist group of players. You could rank them higher as shooters I guess—but Klay’s volume isn’t hypothetical. He’s a different type and impact level of player. He shoots the long ball more and gets more points.

Dirk may have been a better shooter relative to his position—same with Durant

I don't know that either are better 3pt shooters, but definitely better mid-range and post guys.

—but in terms of putting the ball up from distance and making it with people who had the three point line, as far as I'm concerned it’s Steph, Klay, Ray, and Reggie, with Steph on top and the other three grouped a little below. My .02. Neat question.

Sounds about right. They are the elite.

[Cavsfansince84]

3pt shooting is one of the harder things to compare between eras imo. Having said that, I'll just throw out Price's name since he deserves to be mentioned in any listing of greatest 3 pt shooters. Kerr too though he was mostly just a spot up shooter but did it at an extreme %.

[parsnips33]

Klay was shooting over 40% on over 6 3s a game in Mark Jackson's offense, I really don't think it has much to do with scheme with him

[Ol Roy]

Do we have career numbers for Klay with Steph not on the floor?