Ranking the 10 best sharpshooters in Chicago Bulls history
Now that the modern NBA prioritizes shooting first and foremost, we’ve seen a slow but steady change to the fabric of the game of basketball itself. Floor spacing is vital, strategies and schemes employed by teams have changed drastically, and each year’s draft seems to be filled with prospects that have higher shooting percentages than the win percentage of the perennially lottery-bound Chicago Bulls.
Self-deprecating jokes aside, the Bulls have had a fair few of excellent shooters on their rosters throughout the decades as well. This got me thinking, what would a top 10 list of the greatest sharpshooters in Chicago Bull history even look like?
For once, this would be a list that won’t be topped by the likes of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Derrick Rose, which was more than enough to pique my interest. The primary criteria I used to put this list together was the raw amount of threes made per game, shooting percentages from deep, and the overall impact a shooter had whenever they were on the court.
If this one particular skill is enough to make you millions in the NBA, let’s look through which Bulls players did it better than anyone else in franchise history.
The 10 best sharpshooters in Chicago Bulls history starts off with overseas talents Andres Nocioni and Nikola Mirotic.
10. Andres Nocioni
Andres Nocioni was an important piece of the Bulls during the late 2000s, and would just miss out on joining the young core that led Chicago back to prominence in the early 2010s. His shooting was invaluable for that team, averaging 1.1 threes made per game at a 36.7% clip across four and a half seasons with the Bulls.
What’s most impressive, however, is those numbers leap up 1.4 threes per game at 37.7% if you factor out a shaky rookie season from the undrafted Argentinian. Nocioni may not have gotten to experience the most competitive eras of Chicago basketball, but he did do more than enough to land on this list of the greatest shooters in Bulls history.
9. Nikola Mirotic
Most Bulls fans might remember Nikola Mirotic’s time in Chicago for all the wrong reasons, but it can’t be forgotten just how effective he was when he was on his game here. Mirotic averaged 1.8 threes per game in three and a half seasons with the Bulls, good for the fifth-highest average in franchise history. He also knocked them down at a very respectable 36.1% rate, keeping the Bulls in a place where they were too good to tank, but not quite good enough to make a run for the postseason.