When the NBA Draft rolls around every year, there is an essential question that comes up for every prospect: Can they shoot?
Of all the skills that have become vital to success in the NBA, shooting has become the skill in demand around the league.
On a certain level, it makes sense. It is the point of the game after all to get the ball in the basket. Shooting is the essential skill for any player at any level to find success. Good shooters even in a pick-up game essentially keep one defender from providing help and are a constant threat for any defense to be aware of.
That has gone into overdrive throughout the NBA. The sort of gimmicky line introduced to the NBA for the 1980 season has become the biggest indicator of a team’s success. Shooting is the most important skill for any player and any team to develop.
The Orlando Magic played a big role in developing the three-point shot as a weapon throughout its history.
Shooting has never been more important in the NBA landscape. The Orlando Magic have been at the center of this 3-point revolution on several fronts. To conclude our shooting month, we name our top shooters in Magic history.
Dennis Scott entered the league as one of the first 3-point specialists in all of basketball, making the pull-up three in transition a real weapon while at Georgia Tech and then surrounding Shaquille O’Neal when he arrived in Orlando.
The 1995 Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets were two of the first pioneers in three-point shooting to show that teams in the NBA could win with the 3-pointer as a primary weapon.
They did it again in 2009 when they raced to the Finals behind a four-out offense that featured shooters surrounding another center in Dwight Howard. Players like Rashard Lewis revolutionized the league.
Now the league has built upon what the 2009 Magic did and made them look fairly quaint.
Shooting is only going to continue to evolve from there as the league continues to expand and evolve.
With the Orlando Magic entering a new phase and era in their development, we are ready to look back at the team’s history once again this summer. To celebrate the evolution of 3-point shooting and the Magic’s role in it, we are naming our top-20 shooters in Magic history.
To do this, we asked the staff at Orlando Magic Daily to submit their ranking of the top-10 (and sometimes more) shooters in team history. We combined that with a fan poll and vote we conducted in early August. We combined those lists to make a final ranking of our top shooters.