Who is the greatest 3-point shooter in NBA history?

The greatest 3-point shooter in NBA history put on a show in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. I’m talking, of course, about Steve Kerr.

Let me tell you a little stat. The kids out here don’t think I know how to do stats, just because I’m over 30 and once referred to my computer as “that type-y add-y machine.” In NBA history, according to Basketball-Reference, there have been a total of five seasons in which players have attempted over 164 3-pointers a game (82 X 2 is what I went with) and hit over 50 percent. Two of those, and the top season percentage-wise, belongs to Steve Douglas Kerr. If we lower the bar to 140 3-pointers a game, there are six such seasons and three belong to Kerr.

In 1994-95, Steve Kerr, then 29 years old and a Chicago Bull, played in 82 games, over 22 minutes a game, and hit 52.4 percent of his3s. The next highest number belongs to Tim Legler, also known as “Legs” for his nice gams, who played 23 minutes a game for the Washington Bullets in 1995-96 and made 52.2 percent of his 3s. But for Legs, this was more or less a fluke. He’d hit 52 percent the year before, although in only 24 games, but only has one other season of even 40 percent shooting from deep.

Kerr, by contrast, played for fifteen years in the NBA and retired with a 45.4 percent shooting percentage from deep. His career averages were brought dramatically down in his last three years by 42.9, 39.4, and 39.5 percent seasons, which would qualify as Wes Matthews’ best, third-, and fourth- best seasons all-time, for example. It was in 1995-96 that Kerr shot 51.5 percent from 3, again with the Bulls, on 237 total attempts (nearly three per game), and 1989-90, as a 24-year old with the Cleveland Cavaliers, that he shot 50.7 percent.

The other entrants into this statistical category (greater than 50 percent 3-point shooting,164 or more attempts) are Jason Kapono in 2006-07 (51.4 percent) and Detlef Schrempf in 1994-95 (51.4 percent). And, incidentally, if we lower the bar to 48 percent shooting, 164 attempts +, and so on, we get another guy playing in this series, Kyle Korver, who shot 49.2 percent from 3 in 2014-15, as an Atlanta Hawk, his only season as an All-Star.

Korver shot a ridiculous 53.6 percent from 3 in 2009-10 with Utah, but he only played in 52 games, at just over 18 minutes a game, which means he shot just over 100 3-pointers that season (110). Most weirdly of all, if we lower the stat to people who shot over a hundred threes in a season, the greatest three-point shooting season of all-time belongs to Pau Gasol, who somehow hot 53.8 percent in 2016-17, his second season ever over 46 percent, and just his third over 36 percent.

Of course, people know that Kerr was a great shooter, and likely even remember him hitting the final shot in the 1997 NBA Finals, in Game 6, a foul-line jumper to put the Bulls up four with less than six seconds to go. During the Houston series, this year, the cameras caught Kerr telling KD to stop doing so much iso ball through reference to the famous John Paxson shot in similar circumstances, but he could just as easily have talked about himself. It was another situation, contra the Jordan mythos, where Jordan, finding himself double-teamed by Stockton and Russell near the 3-point arc on the left side, passed to the open jump shooter.

Fewer people, outside of Dallas, remember Steve in a playoff series in the last season of his career, when he was with the San Antonio Spurs. In fact, the game I’m talking about  was the fifth-to-last game Kerr ever played. In that game, the Mavs, who had the exact same record as the Spurs during the regular season (60-22), had taken the first game from them in the Western Conference Finals, then lost the second, then, in the third, lost Dirk Nowitzki to injury. They nevertheless started the fourth quarter of Game 6 up 69-56, and the rumor was that Dirk would return for Game 7, on the strength of what would ultimately be 19 points from Nick van Exel, 13, from Michael Finley, 17 from Walt Williams, and 6 points but 11 assists from Steve Nash.

I, a Dallas fan, will personally never forget the feeling I had seeing Steve Kerr of all people standing on the sidelines waiting to go in. Kerr had played a total of 12 minutes so far in the first two rounds of the playoffs, and, at 37 years old, had been a fairly small part of the Spurs’ roster all season. Still, I felt a chill. It seemed like such a strange thing for Pop to do, in such an important game, after failing to push that button throughout the whole rest of the playoffs. It happened in the waning minutes of the third quarter, when the game (63-48) looked like it might turn into a blowout. Steve hit a 3 with 1:40 left in that quarter to make it 65-56 and I felt another chill.

Ultimately, it was actually Ginobili, Duncan, and Stephen Jackson who erased the Dallas lead, although it doesn’t seem that way in my memory. Kerr didn’t hit his second shot of the game until there were 7 minutes and 12 seconds to go, a 3-pointer that tied it at 71-71. But he hit his second three less than a minute later, to make it 74-71, and his third, just about a minute after that, to make it 79-71. In 13 minutes of play, Steve had gone 4-of-4 from deep, and from the floor as a whole, checked the rout, and sent it back the other way. The Mavs went on to lose 90-78, the Spurs won the title, Kerr retired.

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And returned to the league as the coach of what is by far the greatest 3-point shooting team in the history of the league. Steph Curry was already shooting about eight 3s a game under Marc Jackson when Kerr got there, but in Kerr’s second year, that went to 11.2 a game, and the last two years it’s been about 10. Klay shot 6.6 in the last Jackson season, then 7.1, then 8.1, then 8.3 under Kerr.

In the 2015-16 season, Steph and Klay combined for 1,536 3-point attempts, and made 678, as Steph became the first person in NBA history to make 400 in a season. Kerr shot 1,599 – and made 726 – in his career. Yet it’s hard to believe that what we’re watching would be at all possible with a coach who didn’t understand what a 3-ball could do, and it’s hard to believe there’s anybody in NBA history better positioned to do that than the Warriors’ current coach, that long-time NBA vet. The guy with the 45 career 3-point percentage now has an .808 career winning percentage as an NBA coach. It’s hard to believe those two numbers aren’t related.