Despite not having the touch from beyond the arc this season, Phoenix Suns All-Star Devin Booker will be back in the NBA 3-point contest.
Winner of the event in 2018, the numbers suggest Book is a huge underdog in this year’s competition. Booker enters the 2026 3-point contest with a career-worst 30.7% long-term mark. If he were to pull off the upset and win this year’s competition, he would have the lowest three-point percentage of a game-winner in history.
However, Suns fans know that Book is a better outside shooter than he showed in 2025-2026. So which of his Phoenix brethren should join him in an all-time all-Suns 3-point shootout?
Let’s break it down.
Booker joined Quentin Richardson as the only Suns to win the three-point shootout
Before Booker won the three-point contest in 2018, Quentin Richardson was the only Suns player to take home the trophy during a magical 2004-05 campaign.
In Q’s only season in a Suns uniform, Richardson made (226) and attempted (631) the most three-pointers per game in the league during 2004-05. He shot 35.8% from distance and set the individual Suns franchise record for three points in a season – a record that still stands more than twenty years later.
Book and Q are the undisputed locks for the Suns-only 3-point competition, but who else gets the nod?
Two-time MVP Steve Nash is another clear choice. While Nash has never won a three-point contest despite competing three different times (he was more of a Skills Challenge trader with wins in 2005 and 2010), he is among the best three-point snipers in franchise history.
In fact, with 43.5% from long range in a Suns uniform, Nash is the all-time leader in franchise history from a three-point efficiency standpoint. He is also second behind Booker in the all-time 3-point range for the Suns.
Beyond those three sharpshooters, a total of three additional three-point game winners played for the Suns — just not when they took home the hardware.
Jeff Hornacek (two-time 3-point shootout champion), James Jones (who was the Suns’ Executive of the Year in 2021 after spending two seasons as a player with them) and Eric Gordon have all won 3-point shootouts – but do their resumes as far as the Suns franchise get them included?
Hornacek will absolutely be included in the lineup for the Suns greatest 3-point game of all time. The former second-round pick won his three-point game trophies in 1998 and 2000 while playing for the Utah Jazz, which happened to be Horny’s last two seasons playing in the NBA. But before reaching Utah, the Iowa State product spent his first six NBA seasons in Phoenix with the Suns. He made his first and only All-Star team during his senior year in Phoenix before being packaged in the trade that netted future MVP Charles Barkley from the Suns.
Hornacek was a mediocre 3-point shooter during his first three seasons in the pros (topping out at 33.3% from deep in his third year), but he later became a career 40.3% shooter from long range.
Jones, meanwhile, had his best three-point shooting seasons outside of Phoenix. The NBA’s disastrous experiment in switching to a microfiber composite ball over leather also occurred during the 2006-07 season, when Jones was a Sun. The NBA scrapped the composite ball experiment after a series of complaints from players, so we can’t really hold that against Jones, who still shot 37.8% from deep that year.
Regardless, his previous 3-point shootout win and successful stint as manager with the Suns should earn Jones’ inclusion on this list. Let’s see him compete.
That leaves Eric Gordon, who only played a total of 68 games for the Suns in his career. Gordon clearly wasn’t the same player at age 35 as he previously was in the NBA for other teams, but Richardson also only played one season for the Suns, so we might as well include all the 3-point shootout champions here.
That leaves: Booker, Richardson, Nash, Hornacek, Jones, Gordon.
Are there any snipers missing?
We would be remiss if “Thunder Dan” Majerle did not secure a spot in the competition. His 800 three-pointers made in a Suns uniform rank No. 3 in franchise history, behind Booker and Nash. Majerle also led the league in both three-point games and attempts on two separate occasions for the Suns in 1992-93 and 1993-94. He also shot better than 38% from distance in each of those two years.
Getting more granular with the stats, a current Sun seems like a more than worthy choice to join the list of 3-point shootout competitors.
Grayson Allen, who made 205 total three-pointers in his first season in The Valley, ranks second in franchise history behind Q for three points in a season (tied with another Suns player we’ll get to in a moment).
Although Allen has battled injuries during his time in Phoenix, he also ranks second in franchise history in 3-pointers made per game at 2.71. Only Richardson’s lone season of 2.86 treys per game surpasses Allen’s mark he maintained over the course of three seasons in Phoenix. That’s a creditable CV with three points.
That includes former Suns lockdown defender and fan favorite Raja Bell. He is the player tied with Allen with 205 three-point makes in a single season, second behind Q. Bell also ranks third in Suns history in making 2.45 triples per game in a Suns uniform. Only Richardson and Allen are better in that regard.
So that leaves us with the following Suns 3-point contest lineup: Booker, Richardson, Nash, Hornacek, Jones, Gordon, Majerle, Allen and Bell.
Let the 3 balls fly.
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