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 (NBA) and Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). 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.

50–40–90 is considered an elite performance by a shooter. It must be noted that to be considered part of the club, one must hit the statistical minimums in each category, meaning they must hit enough of each shot to be considered for the league-leading title.

Similar to baseball batting averages, official NBA shooting percentages are computed to the third decimal place (thousandths), but are 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.

Some of the players who have been able to join this elite fraternity are Steve Nash, Larry Bird, Elena Delle Donne etc.