by Doug Ammon

In the NBA, it’s all about understanding and embracing your role. For swingman Hollis Thompson, that’s been the same since college.

Thompson was a three-year standout at Georgetown, a perpetual source of NBA talent. And in his time under head coach John Thompson III, he proved to be one of the nation’s most consistent perimeter shooters.

When he finally hung up his Hoya gray and blues, Thompson was the school’s all-time leader in three-point percentage, converting at a 44.0% clip on 291 career attempts.

His production from range has translated well to his first two years in the NBA, where he has established himself as reliable shooter from behind the arc.

At 6’8”, Thompson can play multiple positions on the floor, and whether he’s coming off the bench or in the starting five he plays with one thing on his mind, shooting.

The 24-year-old is unafraid to let it rip from deep, and after shooting 40.1% from three-point range last season, he’s on pace to convert at a 40.4% clip in his sophomore campaign. For his career, he’s shooting 40.3% from deep.

Among Sixers players who attempted more than 400 combined threes in their rookie and sophomore seasons with the team, Thompson ranks first in three-point field-goal percentage, just above Kyle Korver from 2004-06 (40.1 3P%). Korver, now 34, is regarded as one of the best three-point shooters in the NBA and is currently sitting just shy of a storied 50/50/90 shooting season.

Projecting Thompson’s progression as a shooter is a difficult task, and including Kyle Korver in any discussion of his ability to stretch the floor is unfair, but the numbers from his first two seasons are hard to ignore.

In his second year with the Sixers, he’s become more of a three-point specialist for the team. His average shot distance has increased from 14.9 to 17.2 feet, and he now shoots 53.1% of his shots from deep compared to 44.9% last year.

Thompson is coming on strong at the finish line, and he’s having the best month of his career from deep in April. He’s shooting 55.2% on 29 attempts, which ranks second in the NBA this month amongst players who’ve attempted at least 25 shots from deep. And since the All-Star break, he’s converting at a 47.6% clip from distance.

After through a debilitating upper respiratory infection that knocked him out for three weeks earlier in the season and made him shed 20 pounds, Hollis has bounced back in a big way. With a steady performance in the team’s last two games, he has a legitimate chance to shoot his way into the Sixers record book.