The 2021–22 NBA 50–40–90 Asterisk Club
Looking at the players who were close to making the 50–40–90 club in the 2021–22 season, and trying to determine who is most worthy of the “almost” title.
The 50–40–90 club is an unofficial season leader statistic that shows a player’s shooting versatility. While individual shooting splits can be impressive, they are linear. The 50–40–90 split shows that a player can score on multiple levels. With it requiring a high 3-point and free throw percentage, it is usually used to highlight quality shooters. Unlike the Effective Field Goal (eFG) or True Shooting (TS) stats, 50–40–90 is comprised of vanilla stats that cannot be affected by a lopsided split — those stats are often led by bigs, who do no-to-little shooting and are poor free throw shooters, but spend the majority of their time getting high percentage looks within the paint.
Unfortunately, nobody made the 50–40–90 club this season. Since the introduction of the 3-point line, this specific shooting split has only been achieved 13 times by 11 players. It’s not too surprising when no players join this exclusive club.
However, through a combination of boredom and an addiction to looking at stats, I attempted to find the 50–40–90 Asterisk Club members of the 2021–22 season. I thought it was a fun stat that shows scoring flexibility that the aforementioned stats do not. Even if someone didn’t get to the goal exactly, it doesn’t mean there aren’t multi-faceted shooters that I think deserve to be highlighted.
Determining who qualifies for the 50–40–90 Asterisk Club meant setting some rules. To ensure that outliers didn’t slip in and that I don’t use personal bias, I set the following rules:
- At least 1 of the 3 minimums met (50 FG%, 40 3P%, or 90 FT%)
- Must be above league average in all 3 splits (46.1 FG%, 35.4 3P%, and 77.5 FT%)
- Season leader rule of playing at least 70% of possible games is applied (58 for the 82-game season)
- Must make all 3 of the season leader minimum attempts per category (150 FGs, 41 3Ps, 63 FTs)
- Since this stat requires 3 individual stats simultaneously the requirement is halved
Then I created simple formulas to calculate the difference between a player’s shooting splits and league average, as well as the difference between shooting splits and the goal of 50–40–90. In order of differential from the 50–40–90 goal, with the secondary condition of differential from league averages, I ended up whittling down the 500-something players in the NBA to this list:
- Desmond Bane (46.1/43.6/90.3) — 100.51% goal differential
- Tyrese Maxey (48.5/42.7/86.6) — 99.9% goal differential
- Seth Curry (48.7/42.2/87.2) — 99.93% goal differential
- Karl-Anthony Towns (52.9/41/82.2) — 99.88% goal differential
- Grant Williams (47.5/41.1/90.5) — 99.44% goal differential
- Mikal Bridges (53.4/36.9/83.4) — 97.24% goal differential
- Tyrese Haliburton (47.3/41.4/84.2) — 97.22% goal differential
- Jonas Valančiūnas (54.4/36.1/82) — 96.72% goal differential
50–40–90 Asterisk Club Winner
While Bane, Maxey, Curry, Towns, and Williams have negligible differences, Desmond Bane is the only one that met all requirements and had an average of over 100% of the goal averages, making him my 2021–22 season 50–40–90 Asterisk Club member. Like Ja Morant giving Desmond Bane the Most Improved Player of the Year award, it won’t mean anything in the history books, but it will in our hearts.
The 50–40–90 Tripple Asterisk Club Members
AKA players who weren’t close enough to consider as finalists for an almost award:
- Luke Kennard (44.9/44.9/89.6) — actually had the best shooting split differential at 100.54%, but funnily enough, he shot 1.2% below league FG% average while having the exact same FG% and 3P%
- Kevin Durant (51.8/38.3/91) — was 3 games away from meeting the minimum games played for season leader stats. He would have been the only other player above 100% of the shooting split differential
- Cameron Johnson (46/42.5/86) — was 0.1% below the league FG% average
- Grayson Allen (44.8/40.9/86.5) — shot 1.3% below league FG% average
- Norman Powell (46.1/41.9/81.1) — was 13 games short of consideration
- Jrue Holiday (50.1/41.1/76.1) — besides KAT, he was the only other player that met most of the requirements and had 50+ FG% and 40+ 3P%. He was excluded for being 1.4% lower than league average in FT%
- DeMar DeRozan (50.4/35.2/87.7) — missed the list by 0.2% league average 3-point shooting
- Eric Gordon (47.5/41.2/77.8) — was 1 game played away from being on the list
Conclusions
Like any stat, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Bane did lead the category, but it’s players like Towns, Durant, and DeRozan that come off as the most impressive — because of their ability to provide such strong splits while being the #1 scoring option for their respective teams. The developing players like Bane, Maxey, Haliburton, and Bridges are ones to keep an eye out for — their ability to exponentially increase their FGAs while maintaining consistency is something many players struggle with when asked to do more. Seth Curry is a standout role player, having some of the most impressive splits while being undersized, for only $8 million per year he is probably the best shooter you can get for at that price tag. Powell is another notable player — partly because he’s a Raptors alum — he spent the majority of the season playing out of his preferred position, had more expectations being the 3rd piece for the Blazers, and was able to have his best 3-point shooting season.
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Terminology:
eFG — Effective Field Goal, a statistic that adjusts the value of 2-pointers and 3-pointers when looking at field goal percentage
TS — True Shooting, a statistic that calculates scoring efficiency through a formula using points scored, field goal attempts (FGA), and Free Throw Attempts (FTA)
Big — A player whose primary position is at the Center or Power Forward (while being physically tall), focuses play in the post, and usually does not handle the ball
FG — Field Goal
3P — 3-Pointer
FT — Free Throw
A (suffix) — Attempts
PG (suffix) — Per Game
