A Rebuttal to the 15 greatest shooters in Indiana Pacers history

The Indiana Pacers identity was forged on the strength of the jump shot, a professional embodiment of the Hoosier mythos. Just replace a rickety rim affixed to a barn, with the playoff lights on a national stage. It’s a proud history. One that deserves comparable commemoration.

On Monday, an article was written for 8points,9seconds discussing the 15 best shooters in the history of the Indiana Pacers franchise. Any great shooter (Indiana Pacers or otherwise) has their share of misses, and any great list can be debated.

Monday’s story, written here, lays out some effective points for the ordering of the players. But the story published Monday deserves reevaluation.

1. Reggie Miller, 2. Chris Mullin, 3. Danny Granger, 4. Paul George, 5. Darren Collison, 6. Troy Murphy, 7. George Hill, 8. C.J. Miles, 9. Mike Dunleavy Jr., 10. Austin Croshere, 11. Chuck Person 12. Billy Keller, 13. Bojan Bogdanovic, 14. Peja Stojakovic, 15. Victor Oladipo. That’s the list.

I would personally argue there are more than a couple errors among that ensemble. Namely, Troy Murphy’s presence anywhere on the list is too high; and Billy Keller’s and Chuck Person’s placement is insultingly low in my opinion (more on that in a few paragraphs). I think it is a little difficult to be a top 15 player at anything if you only did it for one year (Oladipo) or half of a year (Stojakovic) unless you deliver one of the more clutch playoff performances in Indiana Pacers franchise history like Bojan Bogdanovic did.

The trick with any such list is how to evaluate the players, particularly ones from different eras. How games are played shifts with the times. I would argue that just because a player is a 37% three point shooter today doesn’t necessarily mean he’s as good as a 37% three point shooter from 20 years ago, even though the numbers are the same. NBA players didn’t make as many threes and definitely didn’t hit them at as high a rate then as they do now.

For example, Babe Ruth hit his 714th and final home run in 1935. At that moment second place on the all-time home run list belonged to Lou Gehrig, 366 homers behind him. Now Ruth has been passed twice on the home run list, but neither Hank Aaron (+95 over the next best of his era, Willie Mays) nor Barry Bonds (+153 over Sammy Sosa) displayed the level of dominance over their respective eras like Ruth did his.

The same can be said for three-point shooting. Jerry West is (or should be) widely regarded as one of the games greatest shooters. He never took a three-point shot in his professional career. Larry Bird, another legendary sharpshooter, never averaged more than one made three a game. In the entirety of Reggie Miller’s career, the most threes he ever attempted in a season was 536. Stephen Curry has shot 600 or more on five occasions.

All four of those players were the most dangerous shooters of their respective times. Their final numbers are drastically different from each other but become more comparable when they are put in context.

Insert Billy Keller and Chuck Person. If the average three-point shooter made 28-29% of his threes in the ABA, then that meant that Billy Keller shot nearly 19% better than the league average. The Current NBA average is around 36% making Keller the ABA equivalent of a 43% shooter in today’s NBA. Similar for Person, he shot 15% better than his contemporaries, like Kevin Love or Kevin Durant did this past season.

Another factor that should be considered on a “greatest” list is the circumstances behind the made threes. Reggie Miller isn’t just the Indiana Pacers greatest three-point shooter of all time because he made the most, but also because of when and how he made them. Like this…

or this…

Legendary moments should carry more weight than a regular second-quarter three in some game in February. They are the moments that linger and forge an identity. Darren Collison hit a ton of threes last year and had the best percentage of anyone in the league, but he didn’t hit the daggers that Bogdanovic or Oladipo did. Chris Mullin is the franchise leader in three-point percentage, but he didn’t force overtime against Miami while launching from the Playoff logo:

So, there are three main factors we need to consider when making a list of the greatest Indiana Pacers to ever shoot a basketball. First is production, second is production in the context of his own time and third is the significance of his shooting. Add all of those up and a more accurate (in my personal opinion) “Greatest Indiana Pacers shooters” list would look something like this:

1. Reggie Miller, 1987-2005. Duh.

2. Billy Keller, 1969-1976. Keller never played in the NBA but was the feared marksmen that provided the extra space for Mel Daniels and George McGinnis to dominate everywhere inside the three-point arc. His 506 made threes were the second most of anyone in the ABA, only fellow Hoosier Louie Dampier made more. Three times he led the league in made threes. No NBA player would match the 123 he made in 1976 until Danny Ainge hit 148 12 seasons later.

3. Danny Granger, 2005-2014. Granger had the type of jump shot that you teach children; consistent and smooth. Five times he shot north of 38% from deep, all before his body began to betray him. His Indiana Pacers career was nearly a perfect bell curve stat-wise (7.5 ppg in ’06, 13.9 in ’07, 19.6 in ’08, 25.8 in his all-star ’09, 24.1 in ’10, 20.5 in ’11, 18.7 in ’12 and so on and so forth). Granger’s misfortune was timing, he rarely got to demonstrate his excellence on competitive teams before injuries befell him.

4. Paul George, 2010-2017. The toughest part with grading George is balancing his early career heroics with his later career clunkers. What can’t be disputed was his ability. George’s 897 made threes are third-most in franchise history. He made those in just six years (effectively, remember he was injured for almost the entirety of 2014-15). Twice in Indiana Pacer history has a Pacer made more than 200 threes in a season. Reggie did it once (1997), George was the other (2016).

5. Chuck Person, 1986-1992. Person averaged 19 points-per-game during his time with the Indiana Pacers while shooting an above average 35% from three, earning himself his “Rifleman” nickname. He was fourth in the league in made threes in 1992, pairing with Miller to make 261, 19 better than the next best duo (Terry Porter and Clyde Drexler of Portland).

6. George Hill, 2011-2016. Hill was the floor-spacer on the back-to-back Eastern Conference Finalist Indiana Pacers teams in 2013 and 2014. Hill made 476 threes during his five seasons with the Pacers. He shot 41% from deep when he took on a heavier scoring load during his last Pacers season in 2016. Hill was both steady an consistent.

7. Chris Mullin, 1997-2000. While his time in Indiana was short, and his role diminishing, Mullin is the franchise leader in three-point percentage because he made his few looks count. He shot 44% in 1998, 47% in 1999, and 41% in 2000. Mullin could miss but rarely did. His consistency unleashed Miller during the 1998 and 1999 Eastern Conference title runs. Jalen Rose’s emergence relegated the Hall of Famer to the bench in 2000, and he retired in 2001, but his unbelievable shooting run won’t be forgotten.

8. Roger Brown, 1967-1974. The Raja’s tale is a tragic one. Banned from the NBA to begin his career, partially because of his alleged association with gamblers and partially because NBA teams had an unwritten quota on how many black players each roster could carry, Brown caught fire with the Indiana Pacers who cared about neither disqualifying factor. His career was brief (all his time playing on concrete ate away at his knees) but he made the most of it. He averaged 19 ppg and shot 48% from the field between 1968-1973. Five times he shot over 30% from three, all well above average for the time. His 36% in 1974 was about 25% higher than the league average.

9. Darren Collison, 2010-2012, 2017-present. He authored the most accurate three-point shooting season in franchise history last year, just a smidge better than Mullin’s shortened 1999 season. The key difference is that Collison shot 48 more threes than Mullin did while shouldering a bigger play-making load. If Collison wants to supplant Mullin at the top of the career percentage mark for the Pacers, he’s got a lot of work to do, Mullin has an 8.5% lead on him.

10. Bojan Bogdanovic, 2017-present. This is a tough choice. Sam Perkins was a stout weapon off the bench. Freddie Lewis was a tremendous shooter. C.J. Miles was prolific yet inconsistent. Byron Scott hit one of the biggest threes in franchise history. But none of them combined the big moment (game three), with the high percentage (40%), on a high volume (155 made) in as short a span as Bogdanovic did last season. He’s earned this spot.

Honorable Mention, in alphabetical order: Austin Croshere, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Freddie Lewis, C.J. Miles, Rick Mount, Sam Perkins, Byron Scott.