Mychal Thompson is among those in NBA history to have only one career 3-pointer.
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The house where Klay Thompson grew up in suburban Portland, Ore., is a sprawling, red-brick estate with an oak front door and a long walkway that stretched past tall, tightly trimmed trees and plush grass, through a stone-cased stairway onto Riverwood Road.
Built in 1925 and renovated countless times over the century, the house has hardwood floors, a fireplace in the master suite, an open-air back porch with a wood ceiling and a wine cellar in the basement. The backyard looks like something out of “Downton Abbey,” with immaculate, manicured shrubbery that surrounds a water fountain.
Encasing the entire property, from the street, past the 5,600 square-foot mansion and around those nice bushes, is a paved driveway that spills into a private cul-de-sac next to the garage. At the edge of that cul-de-sac, hanging over the drive, was the family basketball hoop. That’s where patriarch Mychal Thompson, the former Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Lakers center, remembered watching his then-8-year-old son, Klay, hoisting shot after shot from the center of his chest, splashing each one through the net.
The elder Thompson’s 12-year NBA career was over, and he could tell the boy swishing those shots was going to succeed him in the league one day.
“You know how little kids shoot the ball, but his would always go in,” Mychal told The Athletic. “I told his mother, the way this kid can shoot the ball, he could be a Hall of Famer with that shot.”
Mychal was a 6-10, 225-pound center who played near the rim, his back facing the basket. But he was teammates with Byron Scott on the Lakers and Terry Porter and Clyde Drexler on the Blazers. He knew what great outside shooting looked like.
Mychal’s fatherly intuition, influenced by all those years in NBA arenas and practice gyms, proved correct. Klay sprouted to 6-5, gradually raised his release point from chest to forehead, and became one of the greatest shooters in history.
Since Christmas Day 2011, when Klay debuted for the Golden State Warriors, he’s made 2,836 3-pointers, fourth-most in NBA history behind only Stephen Curry, James Harden and Ray Allen. A five-time All-Star and four-time champion, Klay was a co-author of the NBA’s 3-point revolution along with Curry, which earned them the shared nickname “Splash Brothers.”
In a brief interview, Klay told The Athletic it was his dad who taught him how to shoot. Whether he was young and too small to shoot from over his head, or as he matured into a teenager and young adult, Klay was taught to start his workouts under the basket and gradually step back, keeping his elbows in with each shot.
Mychal, meanwhile, insists his son learned all on his own. Klay came to be such a great shooter, and he is unarguably in the rarest of company when it comes to knocking down 3s.
But Klay’s dad is also in exclusive company among NBA players.
Representing one of the greatest ironies in league history, Mychal Thompson, father of one of the greatest 3-point shooters ever, is one of a handful of players to have played at least one full NBA season and made only one 3 since the league instituted the 3-point line in October 1979.
“It’s pretty cool how opposite our games are,” Klay said.
Shaquille O’Neal was arguably the most dominant force the NBA has ever seen. The oddest item on his resume? A single 3-pointer, which he made on Feb. 16, 1996.
Overall, it’s an impressive list. Kareem Adbul-Jabbar is on it. Shaquille O’Neal. Jo Jo White. Artis Gilmore. Dave Cowens. Spencer Haywood. All in the Naismith Hall of Fame.
There are dozens of other retired players, like Thompson and Jim Brewer, Carlos Boozer, David Lee and Anderson Varejão.
As of today, 119 NBA players made exactly one 3-pointer with at least 82 games under their belts out of approximately 4,500 who’ve been in the league since the 3-point line was installed.
Heading into the NBA All-Star break this weekend, during which the annual 3-point contest will take place Saturday night — a celebration of 3s, if you will — there are five active players who have appeared in at least 82 games and made exactly one 3-pointer: Steven Adams, Ivica Zubac, Mark Williams, Nick Richards and Trayce Jackson-Davis.
There are a couple of weird asides with the current list of “one 3-pointers.” For starters, three of them were traded last week: Zubac from the LA Clippers to the Indiana Pacers; Richards from the Phoenix Suns to the Chicago Bulls; and Jackson-Davis from the Warriors to the Toronto Raptors.
Jackson-Davis joined this exclusive club by connecting on his first 3-pointer in 161 career games on Jan. 19 in a Warriors blowout win over the Miami Heat. With 0.7 seconds left and the Warriors up 20, Jackson-Davis unleashed a 48-footer and banked it in.
Curry watched it go in from the bench, his warmups on and a towel over his head, in stunned silence. Buddy Hield had his hands on the back of his skull, standing on the court with the obvious expression of, “Bro, you just don’t do that sort of thing.”
But if you are on the list, chances are, your story is similar. Perhaps your single long shot wasn’t an NBA faux pas, like Jackson-Davis’ was (up 20 with a second left, don’t shoot), but to last in the league for 82 or more games and make only one 3 is to survive through a different skill set, as a shot blocker or rebounder or rim runner. A 3 may have come on a buzzer-beater at the end of a quarter. Or, a player was wide open earlier in a blowout.
“It wasn’t because I couldn’t shoot them; it’s that we weren’t allowed back then,” said Mychal, a rookie in 1978 who made his lone 3-pointer on Dec. 29, 1986. “I could have made them if they allowed me to shoot them back then, but no centers or big guys were shooting 3s. Big guys were told to stay in the paint, and there was no such thing as stretch fours or fives back when I played.”
Thompson, now a TV analyst for the Lakers, remembers the shot he made as a buzzer-beater to end a period, from just inside of half court. He was playing for the San Antonio Spurs, and the answered prayer he heaved was in Sacramento.
But Thompson, and most of the players on this list, played in a different era when 3s were a specialty overall — and for big men, an afterthought. It wasn’t until Thompson’s son, as well as Curry and Harden and Allen, changed the whole sport by launching 3s at a historic rate, leading coaches and front-office executives to rethink in-game strategies, roster building and, ultimately, who should be shooting 3s.
The Curry-Thompson Warriors of 2015-16 set an NBA record for 3s made (which has since been broken). Thompson once scored 37 points on a league-record nine 3s in that quarter — which means he once multiplied his dad’s career 3-pointers by nine in the span of 12 game minutes.
Today, 28 of 30 teams in the league average more 3-point attempts per game than those Warriors shot (31.6). In the modern game, most players who are open, regardless of position, should take the 3. Unless, basically, they’re on this list.
Then, the 3s are basically limited to the end-of-court/three-quarter-court bombs, like the one Steven Adams made for the Oklahoma City Thunder on Feb. 13, 2020. He heaved it, one-handed, from half court at the end of the first half against the New Orleans Pelicans. And when the shot fell, Adams, that hulking, tattooed New Zealander, shimmied like Curry.
“It was like a baseball pass, and then I saw it and thought, ‘Man, that’s really straight,’” Adams remembered. “It went, and I was absolutely shocked. So obviously, you definitely need to celebrate on your first 3 you’ve made in the NBA, mate.”
Adams, now the Houston Rockets’ center, said he’s never felt the urge to shoot more 3s, while his counterparts on other teams have taught themselves to shoot from long range as centers. Adams, who is 6-11, is 1-for-17 from 3-point range in 12 seasons. He said he could probably connect on two or three a game out of 10 attempts, but those are 10 shots he’d be taking away from teammates with a better chance to make them.
Steven Adams celebrates after hitting the lone made 3-pointer of his career on Feb. 13, 2020.
“A lot of my stuff is in the trenches, man,” Adams said. “You’re better off going where you make (expletive) impact. I carved out a bit of a niche, and then the NBA works in trends, so right now it’s like, the analytics have backed up what I do. It’s put more value for the nerds and (expletive). It’s worked out well, but honestly, my whole philosophy has always been the same.”
Zubac’s lone 3 was also a novelty shot, but not a half-court heave. It was the penultimate game of the 2020-21 season, and the then-Clippers’ center was trying to play in all 72 contests (the campaign was shortened by 10 games because of COVID-19). Coach Tyronn Lue decided to play him for a few minutes and then pull him, and he wanted to run a play so that Zubac, 0-for-9 in his career to that point, could get a look at breaking his glass ceiling.
Sure enough, Zubac set a screen and popped back toward the top of the key. The Rockets didn’t bother to chase him out there — why would they? — and Zubac canned a wide-open 3-ball.
“I could always shoot. It’s just, in the NBA, I’m more focused on other stuff like rebounding, defending and scoring in the post,” Zubac said. “It’s definitely something I feel like I can do. It’s just, like, I gotta really work on it hard for a little bit, for maybe a whole summer or whatever, and figure out where I can get those shots, how can I get them? And just be confident when I shoot them.”
Zubac was speaking to The Athletic inside the Clippers’ locker room on the road, about two months before he was traded to Indiana. He pointed toward teammate Brook Lopez, who was seated on a stool across the room. Lopez is perhaps the patron saint of 3-point shooting centers, because he made no 3s in his first six seasons and just three of them through the first eight, only to go on to make 1,136 through Feb. 1 — second-most of all time by a center.
“I definitely like the way the league is going. Pretty much everyone’s shooting now,” Zubac said. “I feel like that’s one of the ways that I can stay in the league for a long period of time.”
Mark Williams of the Suns wasn’t on this list when The Athletic began reporting for this story (neither was Jackson-Davis, for that matter). Williams’ first career 3-pointer came on Dec. 8 in a three-point win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. As of Feb. 1, it was Williams’ only 3-point try this season and the fifth of his four-year career.
“I just shot it. It wasn’t late in the clock or anything. I was just in rhythm. Caught it in the corner, just let it flow,” said Williams, who, when told he was on this specific list, quipped in front of teammates: “Hopefully, I get out of that criteria soon.”
Which is precisely what Charlotte’s Moussa Diabaté did this season. He was on the list when The Athletic began work on this story in October and was hoping to stay in the league by playing his way into Charlotte’s rotation. Not only did he do that, but he’s become the starting center for a surging, surprising Hornets team. In a December interview, Diabaté said it wasn’t “my role” to shoot 3s for now, but rather to make the hustle plays and defend off the Hornets’ bench.
But in a 112-97 win at Memphis on Jan. 28, a game in which Diabaté was 8-for-9 from the field and finished with a season-high 18 points, he took and drained his only 3 of the season.
“As time goes on, everybody will see I can shoot them,” Diabaté predicted.
Mychal Thompson never got that chance. But his son, after all that practice in the driveway, took the chance he had and started an NBA revolution.
— The Athletic’s Doug Haller and Christian Clark contributed to this story.
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Joe Vardon is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic, based in Cleveland. Follow Joe on Twitter @joevardon
