Stephen Curry only scored 22 points and only made six three-pointers on Wednesday night instead of going ballistic and breaking Ray Allen's three-point record with a record-setting 16-trey performance. How dare he!
Now, he's just nine threes away from tying Allen and 10 away from breaking the record — good math, right? — meaning he'll probably be able to achieve the historic accomplishment within the next handful of Warriors games, if not the next one alone. And though it's not that much of a hot take to call the NBA's all-time leader in threes "the greatest shooter of all time," it's not an opinion that's shared by everyone.
Take Allen himself, for instance, who feels that the best "shooter" ever — and that's a specific distinction to make — is actually Miller (via Macklin Stern of CBS Sports):
I think it comes with categories when you talk about shooters. Steph is in a category of his own, the way he plays the game. When I think about shooters, someone like Klay Thompson comes to mind. He's more in the realm of how I shot, how Reggie [Miller] shot -- coming off screens, moving without the ball.
Steph is more on the ball, the point guard shooter. So it's a different approach to the game. He's an extremely incredible ball-handler, so it's a different mentality when you're handling the ball and not coming off screens. But I look at Reggie Miller and what he did -- run off screens and just the fluidity of the game when he played it. For me, he was somebody I always looked up to and thought was amazing at how he performed his tasks.
Yes, Reggie [is the greatest shooter] because of the way he set the game up, the way he played the game. Obviously, I incorporated a lot of who he is into how I played. He was the standard-bearer. Without him, we don't have a formula for moving forward. So that's how I view it because it allowed me to do the things that I was capable of doing.
Fine. So Allen thinks Miller is the greatest shooter, though he does place Curry in a "category of his own." And what does Miller think? That the Warriors star is indeed in his own category... but that doesn't mean he's not also the greatest shooter ever.
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After The Athletic unveiled that Reggie Miller was No. 47 on their all-time NBA 75 countdown, the legendary sharpshooter joined writer Bob Kravitz for an interview and gave his own take on the greatest long-range shooter that the game has ever seen:
"I would never say myself, no," Miller said. "I think Steph has changed the game; right now, he sits alone. Before Steph, the best I'd seen to that point was Drazen Petrovic. But Steph has revolutionized and changed the perception of shooters. Drazen and I would run off screens, catch and shoot, but Steph can do everything.
"To me, he sits alone on the mountaintop of shooters."
That's pretty humble of Miller to give up that title to Curry, though it's not as if he doesn't acknowledge just how deadly he was from the outside in his heyday. In fact, an interview from earlier in 2021 with FanSided revealed that Miller thinks he could go toe-to-toe with anyone — and win — in a three-point contest, specifically mentioning Curry himself. Curry's the best, but prime Reggie Miller thinks he could defeat him in the truest test of pure shooting skill, and we're not going to doubt him on that.
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