The Whiteboard: Steph Curry will break Ray Allen’s record, but he won’t be alone

The Whiteboard is The Step Back’s daily basketball newsletter, covering the NBA, WNBA and more. Subscribe here to get it delivered to you via email each morning.

There is a good chance that Wednesday night, at Madison Square Garden, Steph Curry will make the two 3-pointers he needs to pass Ray Allen and become the NBA’s all-time 3-point leader. It will be a dramatic moment but a bit anticlimactic, considering Curry has been on this trajectory for years. And, at 33, he has certainly has a few more seasons to pad his record.

When Allen played his last game for the Miami Heat at the end of the 2013-14 season, he had made 413 more 3-pointers than Reggie Miller, who was No. 2 on the list. Miller, who was at that point the only other player in NBA history with more 2,000 career 3-pointers, had made 572 more 3s than Jason Kidd, who was No. 3 on the career list.

Less than eight seasons later we find Curry, as well as six other new names in the top-15 on the career list, along with nine new members of the 2,000 3PTM club.

What we’re seeing here is the dramatic evolution of the game, playing out in the all-time 3-point leaderboard in less than a decade. To be fair, many of these players started their careers much earlier, but in just the seven-and-a-half seasons since Ray Allen last played, Curry has made 2,067 3-pointers, enough to make his way onto the top-15 list without considering the first five seasons of his career. Over that same span, Damian Lillard has made 1,706 3-pointers, more than Steve Nash made in his entire career.

All of this is a long way of saying that while Steph Curry will be the first to break Ray Allen’s mark, he won’t be the last.

Who else will join Steph Curry in passing Ray Allen’s 3-point mark?

James Harden is on track to be the next player to pass Allen. With 2,509 career 3-pointers, he’ll likely pass Miller well before the All-Star break and could pass Allen in another two seasons or so at his current pace.

Damian Lillard needs 865 more 3s to pass Allen and, at 31, should have plenty of good seasons left. His shooting percentages have taken a dive this season but at the rate he was hitting 3s (4.1 per game) the previous two seasons he could get there by the end of the 2023-24 season. Even you split the difference between that torrid pace and his more depressed numbers this year he should have plenty of time to get there if he stays healthy.

And, as wild as it sounds, Buddy Hield has a good chance to pass Allen as well. He turns 29 later this week and although he needs nearly 1700 more career 3-pointers, at the pace he’s been making them the past three seasons he would only need about five-and-a-half more years to get there.

LeBron James probably won’t get there (he needs about 900 more 3s). Both Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant have an outside shot but their chances were severely hampered by missing full seasons with injuries.

And although we’re talking about the very distant future, there are a handful of young players who are on a trajectory that could eventually take them past Allen. At his current pace, Luka Doncic could pass Allen early in the 2032-33 season at the age of 32. Donovan Mitchell could get there late in the 2031-32 season at the age of 34. And Trae Young, at his current pace, would pass Allen during the 2033-34 season at the age of 34.

Ray Allen’s record was set with an enormous gap between him and the rest of the field. And even though it never had the veneer of invincibility of Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points it’s remarkable to see it get passed so quickly, with so many more shooters set to clear the same threshold soon.