Stephen Curry might be a Warrior for life, but he’s more of a wizard than anything. Throughout the 76 years of NBA action, there has never been a player that can enrapture an entire audience with their on-ball skills while simultaneously putting a defense in peril with off-ball motion.
The devastating crossovers, swift change of direction, and parking lot shooting range will always be his superpowers. With the nature of how basketball is viewed – for every 10 fans, eight are probably focused on the ball-handler – the recognition of Curry’s talent and greatness will always point to those tangible attributes. They are easily identifiable.
When the ball touches his hands, everyone in attendance expects to be left speechless.
Usually, they are. Or they erupt in jubilation as he drills a 35-footer, signaling to the opponent it’s time for bed. Over the last decade, his off-the-dribble mastery and scoring creativity have revolutionized the sport. Now, the three-point frequency (proportion of shots generated from beyond the arc) is approximately 39% league-wide. In 2013-14, before the Warriors jumpstarted their dynasty, it was below 26% with the most perimeter-happy teams reaching 33%.
Yet, Curry’s legacy and generational impact should go beyond that.
His movement away from the ball is just as mesmerizing as the pull-up shooting. It’s just as lethal and requires the same amount of craft. You don’t just wake up one morning in the middle of the season and decide to buy into the off-ball strategies. There is a sense of selflessness required just to become good at it. To make it part of your identity, there is a heavy dose of commitment and big-picture mindset a player must possess.
Curry has made it cool for guards to set screens for one another. He and Nikola Jokić are the two primary reasons we’re seeing more inverted pick-and-rolls – with big men realizing they can benefit from a guard creating confusion, or enticing a switch they know the defense doesn’t want to concede.
Before Curry’s rise to Bay Area legend status, when did it ever seem beneficial for a player to sprint away from the ball, knowing they weren’t going to touch it on that possession? Curry could teach two masterclasses once he retires: How to manipulate a defense while receiving a ball-screen, and how to be a perfect decoy for your teammates. The list of players to have both of those traits is non-existent – because a list implies there’s more than one.
Yet, for all his greatness, Curry is facing a laborious task. This year is testing the strength and durability of his shoulders, carrying so much of the weight offensively for a Warriors group that can’t put together a win streak.
Curry has started the season on fire from practically everywhere. His 50-point masterpiece against the Suns couldn’t even make it a close game down the stretch, thanks to the Warriors’ defense getting burned in the Valley.
The Warriors’ starters have played 165 minutes together, the fourth-most of any lineup in the league. They have outscored teams by 21 points per 100 possessions, the equivalent of any ‘Death Lineup’ from past iterations of the team. Yet, Golden State is 6-9 and can’t win a game on the road.
If it weren’t for Curry’s heroics, though, it would be much uglier.
In his first 14 games coming off a dazzling Finals performance, Curry is averaging 32.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 6.4 assists with a 70.1% true shooting mark, which still sounds inconceivable even by his standards.
Per Cleaning the Glass, the Warriors’ offense is 17.4 points per 100 possessions better when he’s on the floor versus when he sits — it would be the second-highest differential of his career, behind only the 2016-17 season (+18.4). If you remember back to that particular year, although Kevin Durant was helping lead bench units, there was still a month late in the schedule where Curry had to tap into his unanimous MVP magic to keep the Dubs winning once Durant hurt his knee.
For the sake of comparison, let’s look at how Curry started two of his most memorable campaigns. In 2020-21, he finished third in MVP voting behind Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic. It was the last time he got that close to winning the award since 2015-16, which is also pictured below. His 2016 production should honestly be carved on a plaque and sent to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. It should be remembered as the best regular season this sport has witnessed:
It’s eerie how similar Curry’s recent scoring stretch is to the October-November 2015 start. The efficiency is identical, albeit on less volume because 27-year-old Steph was at the peak of his powers. Scoring 1.58 points per shot this season, marginally above his 2015 mark, might be the most impressive part considering the free throw attempts aren’t as high.
Seven years ago when he was torturing bigs in drop coverage and setting a new trend, Curry nailed 71 threes in his first 14 games. That put him on pace for 401 triples if he appeared in 79 games (which he ultimately did, so we’ll use that number). He finished with 402. So, it’s safe to say the first month of his season was a solid preview of what to expect later.
Having already rested one game and factoring in his recent history (27 missed games of the last two years), let’s assume he plays roughly 68 games this season. Curry’s pace would be 350 threes, which would be his third-most for a single year. It would also give him seven appearances on the top 10 of that list. Seven!
They can be generated from guard-to-guard ball-screens, pick-and-rolls starting from the logo, or quick handoffs where he’s banking on the defense resting for just a second. The result will be the same:
For good reason, the first thing entering a viewer’s mind when Curry steps on the floor is the unequaled shooting touch. After all, he captivates the audience with a unique form of shot creation and proper efficiency to warrant the audacious attempts.
Aside from the shotmaking, what separates Curry from other guards his age is the finishing ability. It’s a facet of his game most of us figured would take a step back, simply due to the natural regression of speed and quickness. However, for every ounce of burst that he’s lost, he’s made up for it with strength and veteran IQ.
After 14 games, Curry is 42-of-55 at the rim, converting 76.4% of his attempts. Despite having quality spacing in some lineups, these are not all uncontested looks in the paint. Playing a large chunk of his minutes alongside Draymond Green and Kevon Looney, he rarely beats the first line of defense without having a bigger body waiting for him around the basket.
With him, it doesn’t matter who slides over to help. He finishes with such grace, right or left-handed, taking off with either foot:
If you hard hedge, he’s splitting the two defenders and getting into the paint. If you switch, he’s calmly taking the opposing big man off the dribble and compromising the defense.
Not matched up properly in transition? He’s exploiting it within seconds and not letting you reset. Bringing your big man up at the level of the screen? He’s still quicker than he looks, so you better have backline help in the paint.
The manner in which Curry dissects a defensive coverage, making a split-second decision to either attack or give his team a 4-on-3 advantage once he sees a trap, is rivaled only by Dončić. Every year, regardless if Golden State is coming off a championship run, he returns smarter and more seasoned in the halfcourt.
During the last two offseasons, Curry worked extensively on his strength training. He wanted to ensure he’s tougher to guard despite being bumped around by defenders that get away with grabbing and holding him. But he also knew improving his upper-body power would make him harder to move defensively (it worked, as Curry had the best defensive season of his career last year en route to a title).
Taking a look at his paint numbers this year, we could see the most efficient season he’s had as a driver and finisher:
NBA
Curry’s efficiency in the restricted area and floater rangeNBA.COM
Along with leading the NBA in points per shot, Curry is also number one in Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM), an advanced metric from Dunks & Threes that captures a player’s impact on both ends of the floor. His +9.1 EPM is slightly above Dončić (+8.2), and comfortably ahead of Kevin Durant (+6.8), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (+6.7), and Jayson Tatum (+6.2) to round out the top five.
In BPM, Basketball-Reference’s impact metric with a similar goal, Curry is second to Dončić.
Any way you slice it, those two guards have been the NBA’s best performers during this opening month. Coincidentally, they also face the same dilemma. Without them providing huge scoring outbursts or controlling the terms of each possession, their teams are in trouble.
We already know about the Mavericks’ roster issues and how unhealthy it is for a championship contender to be that isolation-heavy. While it doesn’t feel as if the Warriors are quite as reliant on Curry (thanks to their free-flowing motion offense), the results have often mirrored it. Golden State is 1-4 when Curry scores fewer than 30 points or doesn’t play. In their five other wins, he’s averaged 40.4 points with some late-game heroics to help overcome fourth quarter deficits to Cleveland and Sacramento.
If this were 2016, nobody would think twice about asking Curry to dig this deep every night and claw them to victory. But given the circumstances, this is gearing up to be an unprecedented season for the four-time champ.
Curry will turn 35 in less than four months. When Magic Johnson turned 35, he had already been retired for four years. At the same age, Isiah Thomas was in year three of retirement. Steve Nash was in the final year of his Suns tenure, and Jason Kidd had already transitioned into a role player for the Mavericks. John Stockton may have been competing in the NBA Finals during his 14th season, but the individual production took a hit in his mid-thirties.
None of those players carried a fraction of the scoring burden Curry has to endure at this stage.
The only two point guards to be considered elite at 35 are Curry and 2020 Chris Paul, and we know how vastly different their styles are on the court. Curry will be the only that has maintained a sky-high usage. In some ways, it’s the guard equivalent of what LeBron James had to do in 2020, also at 35, dominating throughout the playoffs and seemingly getting better with age.
Except, you know, there was a prime co-star next to him named Anthony Davis, who had the best stretch of his career to help the Lakers capture the title.
It doesn’t appear Steph is going to have that type of help during his age-35 season. Unless, of course, the Warriors package their young players and future draft picks to obtain more playoff-ready talent. It’s not going to come in the form of another All-Star – at least I don’t think. But much like last season, with Otto Porter Jr., Gary Payton II, and even Nemanja Bjelica, it would be by committee.
The Warriors’ defensive struggles and youth movement are largely to blame for their early season woes. Rarely will you find this team ranking in the bottom 10 of halfcourt defensive rating over the course of a month. But that becomes the reality when half of the bench rotation has changed and you’re relying on inexperienced players to be in the right spots defensively.
There has to be room for trial and error. Golden State having a target on its back this year — much like every defending champion — doesn’t help James Wiseman, Moses Moody, or Jonathan Kuminga. A few blown switches, late rotations, or miscommunications on defense were bound to happen. That’s part of the NBA growing pains. But in a loaded West, for a team looking to secure homecourt advantage in at least the first round, the Warriors don’t have time to mold young talent. If they prioritize those hand-holding moments, Curry’s title window will soon be closed.
In the same way their defensive cohesion falls apart when the starters rest, the offensive errors pile up when their leader gets a breather. With the reigning Finals MVP on the court, Golden State only commits a turnover on 13.4% of their possessions. For context, that would be among the five lowest turnover marks in the league. When Curry is off the floor, the Dubs cough it up on 20.3% of their possessions — a rate that would be dead last in the NBA by a country mile.
Needless to say, life falls apart for Golden State unless Curry and Green are dictating everything. It probably isn’t a recipe for success throughout a long 82-game season, considering the injury bug hasn’t affected them yet and they still aren’t above .500.
Yes, it’s true there isn’t much pressure on Curry or the Warriors this year. This should be a feel-good season after they reclaimed their trophy and laughed at every doubter. They don’t have to prove anything to anyone after what they accomplished.
However, it’s important to understand one thing. Mount Rushmore-level talents don’t come around all the time. Any franchise would be lucky to land someone of Stephen Curry’s caliber – much less have him committed and signed through 2026, a full 17 years after being drafted.
