A debate on X emerged on Thursday evening regarding whether Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard was the second-best shooter of all time behind Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry.<\/p>\n
The conversation got Lillard’s attention, who chimed in.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to argue against Curry being the top shooter in the game’s history. He’s made the most three-pointers all time (4,248) and per game (4.0) while shooting 42.2 percent from beyond the arc. He’s showcased limitless range while leading the Warriors to four NBA titles.<\/p>\n
Plenty of players can make a case as the second-best shooter ever, including (but not limited to) Ray Allen, Larry Bird, Curry’s old Warriors teammate Klay Thompson, Curry’s head coach Steve Kerr (the all-time leader in three-point percentage), Kevin Durant, Steve Nash, Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan (even if Jordan wasn’t known for his three-point shooting, he was a menace from two and made nearly 50 percent of his lifetime field goals en route to 30.1 PPG).<\/p>\n
Lillard believes he has a case to be No. 2. His greatest argument is limitless range and incredible shot-making in the clutch (check these stats<\/a> from NBA.com in Jan. 2024 and this list from Martim Andrade<\/a> of GiveMeSport for evidence). <\/p>\n Those two ideas combined together for one of the greatest shots in NBA playoff history when Lillard clinched the Blazers’ first-round series win over the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2019 with a 37-footer.<\/p>\n The case against Lillard is that his efficiency from beyond the arc doesn’t measure as well as his peers. He’s shot 37.1 percent from three-point range, with a high of 40.1 percent in 2019-20. That career rank is just 242nd all time.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it’s easy to consider Lillard one of the most clutch shooters ever, and that has to figure highly in shooter debates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A debate on X emerged on Thursday evening regarding whether Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":701466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-701465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}