50–40–90 club


The "50–40–90 club" is an informal statistic used to rate players as excellent shooters in the National Basketball Association and Women's National Basketball Association. It requires a player to achieve the criteria of 50% field goal percentage, 40% three-point field goal percentage and 90% free throw percentage over the course of a regular season. In NBA and WNBA history, only nine players have recorded a 50–40–90 season. The most recent player, the WNBA's first, was Elena Delle Donne in 2019.
50–40–90 is considered an elite performance by a shooter. Only Steve Nash and Larry Bird have had more than one 50–40–90 season. Nash's lifetime 49–43–90 regular season average is the closest anyone has come to achieving a career 50–40–90 mark, and his 47–40–90 playoff average is the closest anyone has come to achieving a career 50–40–90 mark in the playoffs.

Members

Since the NBA introduced the three-point field goal in the 1979–80 season, the 50–40–90 shooting threshold has been reached by eight players:
WNBA:
Nash and Bird are the only players who have repeated 50–40–90 seasons; Bird was the first to join this club in 1987 and recorded back-to-back seasons, while Nash recorded four such seasons between 2005 and 2010. Nash narrowly missed a fifth consecutive 50–40–90 season by shooting at 89.9% from the free throw line during the 2006–07 season, one made free throw short of the 90% mark. Delle Donne became the first woman to achieve the feat during the 2019 WNBA season.

Terminology and calculations

NBA

Similar to baseball batting averages, official NBA shooting percentages are computed to the third decimal place, but is referred to in a "percentage". A player who shot.8995 on free throws would be officially computed as shooting.900 and referred to as a 90% shooter, but a player who shot.8994 would be officially computed as shooting.899 and referred to as an 89.9% shooter. While the NBA officially uses a three-digit number, it reports shooting statistics in a shortened and rounded form as a percentage, so that.899 to the third decimal place is simplified as a two digit "90%" in most of its reporting. Thus, a true 50–40–90 season requires a player to achieve or exceed 50.0 percent field goal efficiency, 40.0 percent three-point field goal efficiency and 90.0 percent free-throw shooting efficiency.
PlayerSeasonRef.
747861,49753% 9022540% 41445591% 2,07628.05
768811,67253% 9823741% 41545392% 2,27529.93
755291,00653% 9321144% 26329290% 1,41418.85
795241,04250% 12329242% 40344491% 1,57419.92
795411,05651% 15034244% 25727992% 1,48918.85
786731,34150% 7217342% 49855190% 1,91624.56
8148596250% 17938147% 22224591% 1,37116.93
7442885150% 10824644% 19621093% 1,16015.68
8149998551% 12429143% 21122594% 1,33316.46
817311,43351% 13933442% 67975091% 2,28028.15
798051,59850% 40288645% 36340091% 2,37530.06
6437874851% 10424443% 14115293% 1,00115.64

WNBA

PlayerSeasonRef.
3122042752% 5212143% 11411797% 60619.54