Quentin Richardson was the other 2 guard and wasn't a decidedly worse shooter, he led the entire league in three pointers with Phoenix a few years later. Maggette also was a good enough shooter to keep the defense at least somewhat honest. It's somewhat true that my interest at the time was more in entertainment value and not so much wins or losses, but I still maintain that Piatkowski killed them on the defensive end and should barely have played given their other personnel (I watched most of their games that year, FWIW).
And no, most of them couldn't shoot especially well or at least consistently, just the collective youth and athleticism made it seem like they had no ceiling for a short window. Actually looking back at the stats now (the 2000-2001 team especially), it wasn't just Piatkowski but even more Jeff McInnis, who somehow got 35 MPG ahead of Dooling, that pissed me off. That team felt like it had a chance of being the Air Coryell of hoops if the coach would just play all the super freaky athletes and let them try to figure things out together, but the actual Air Coryell of hoops showed up a few years later with the D'Antoni/Nash Suns, the 2004-2005 team especially, before they lost Joe Johnson.
Anyway, they weren't going anywhere or winning games with McInnis and Piatkowski, so it was easy to wish they would give the kids more of a chance and frustrating that Gentry seemingly wouldn't, I'm sure ElUno20 would agree.