The 50/40/90 club is an exclusive list of some of the most efficient hoopers the NBA has seen.
The rules are simple. A player has to shoot 50% from the field, 40% from three and 90% from the free-throw line across a full regular season — and make enough of each to qualify for the league leaderboards, which means 300 field goals, 82 threes and 125 free throws.
And the feats don’t necessarily go together. Players who shoot 50% overall tend to be big men living near the rim, and they rarely take enough threes to qualify. Guards who hit 40% from deep almost never get to 50% from the field, because so much of their work comes from range.
But there are those select few who are efficient from everywhere on the floor, mostly legends of the game. Since the three-pointer arrived in 1979-80, only nine players have managed it.
The 9 players in the NBA’s 50-40-90 club
Larry Bird — 1986-87, 1987-88
Bird did it twice in a row, and the second was the better year: 52.7/41.4/91.6 after 52.5/40.0/91.0. He averaged 28.1 and then 29.9 points, with more than 9 rebounds a night in both. The telling number is his three-point total — just 90 makes in 1986-87, back before the shot hit the mainstream.
Mark Price — 1988-89
At 24, Price became the youngest player ever to do it, and 37 years later nobody has beaten that. He shot 52.6/44.1/90.1 for the Cleveland Cavaliers with 18.9 points and 8.4 assists in 75 games. One of the league’s original pure-scoring guards who has inspired so many modern NBA players.
Reggie Miller — 1993-94
Nobody has cut it closer than the Pacers legend. Miller finished the season at 50.3%, the slimmest margin any member of the club has cleared, and added 42.1% from three and 90.8% at the line on 19.9 points a game for the Indiana Pacers.
Steve Nash — 2005-06, 2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10
Four of the 14 seasons belong to one man, all of them in Phoenix. What separates Nash is that he was running the entire offense while shooting like that, averaging at least 9.7 assists in each of the 4 and 11.1 in 2007-08.
Dirk Nowitzki — 2006-07
Dirk’s MVP season gave him 50.2/41.6/90.4 with 24.6 points and 8.9 rebounds a game. Dallas won 67 games, then lost in the first round to a Golden State Warriors team that finished 25 games worse. Still, the greatness of that regular season shouldn’t suffer.
Kevin Durant — 2012-13, 2022-23
Ten years separate Durant’s two entries, and they could hardly look less alike. The first was a full 81-game season in Oklahoma City built on 731 made field goals and 679 free throws. The second took 47 games split between Brooklyn and Phoenix, produced the highest field goal percentage in 50/40/90 history at 56.0%, and cleared the three-point minimum by 11 makes.
Stephen Curry — 2015-16
Curry is the only member to average 30 points while making the cut, and the only one to lead the league in scoring at the same time. His 402 threes are more than double anyone else’s total in a qualifying season. He was voted MVP unanimously that year as the Warriors won 73 games.
Malcolm Brogdon — 2018-19
Every other name here was a star. Brogdon averaged 15.6 points, the lowest figure in the club, and got there in 64 games for the Milwaukee Bucks — clearing the free-throw minimum by 16 makes.
Kyrie Irving — 2020-21
The last man in shot 50.6/40.2/92.2 across 54 games for the Brooklyn Nets, averaging 26.9 points. That 40.2% from deep is the narrowest anyone has squeezed past the three-point mark.
The near-misses that never counted
Nash should have five. In 2006-07 he finished at 89.9% from the line, one made free throw short of the round number.
José Calderón cleared all three percentages for the Toronto Raptors in 2007-08 but ended the season 16 free throws below the minimum, which is why he turns up on some lists and not others. Steve Kerr’s 1995-96 season with the Chicago Bulls was ruled out the same way.
Nobody has recorded a 50-40-90 season in the three seasons since Durant’s second.
READ MORE:
Four quadruple-doubles in NBA history — and one that got taken away
Jonathan Kuminga signing lifts Timberwolves into NBA’s Top 5 starting lineups
Stephen Curry’s $29.1 million house sale doesn’t signal a Golden State exit, but it should
Discussion about this post