Steph Curry is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He is among the five-best point guards to ever live, and since James Naismith cut the bottoms out of some peach baskets at a YMCA in western Massachusetts, no one has ever been better at the art of shooting a basketball than No. 30 for the Golden State Warriors. Exactly none of these takes are scorching hot, unlike Curry, who has been shooting fireballs out of his hands when he has taken the floor during the 2018-19 NBA season.
The bar for a great year by Curry is awfully high. This is because of a few factors — his production, his ability to impact the best team in the league, the fact that he is a back-to-back MVP and the only player to ever be named the unanimous MVP, etc. — but even by the myriad of standards set by Curry, this has been, quite possibly, the best individual season of his NBA career to date.
In terms of raw numbers, Curry has been unreal. His 30.1 points per game tie his career-best mark, his 5.2 rebounds per game are just off that pace, and while his 5.8 assists per game aren’t near his career-best, it’s nothing to scoff at, either. His shooting percentages are ludicrous as well, as he’s setting career-highs in field goal percentage (51.3 percent), three-point field goal percentage (50 percent), free throw percentage (93.8 percent), effective field goal percentage (64.9 percent), and true shooting percentage (68.9 percent). His mark from behind the arc (which we’ll dive into a little deeper in, oh, three paragraphs) and his true shooting percentage are the best in the league this year.
If not for a pesky groin injury that he suffered this season that has cost him 11 of the Warriors’ 28 games, it’s not a stretch to say that he’d be in the driver’s seat to win his third MVP award. Before he went down, you could have argued he was the favorite to win it despite how wonderful guys like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Anthony Davis have been this year. But still, despite the amount of time he has missed, Curry’s been nothing short of brilliant.
Golden State is 14-3 when Curry plays (one of those losses includes the game against Milwaukee in which he hurt his groin) and 5-6 when he has been sidelined due to injury. The Warriors have been a sub-.500 team with him off the floor and on a 68-win pace when he’s been able to suit up. This is reinforced by his on/off splits, which are hilarious. Look at how the Dubs’ net rating spikes when Curry plays and craters when he does not. That alone gives him an awfully strong case, as does the fact that he leads the league in metrics like win shares per 48 minutes and offensive box plus/minus.
Perhaps the most impressive thing is how Curry is finding ways to become even more dangerous from behind the arc than ever before. Coming into this year (based on data available on NBA.com), his best season in terms of catch-and-shoot threes was 2014-15, when he hit them at a 48.2 percent clip and he shot them 21 percent of the time. In terms of pull-up threes, his high water mark came a year later, hitting 43.8 percent of them and shooting those shots 32.5 percent of the time.
Both of those marks are insane. What is even more insane is that Curry is smashing both of them this year. He’s hitting on 52.5 percent (!!!) of his catch-and-shoot threes, which he is jacking up 30.1 percent of the time. On pull-ups, he’s connecting on 46.3 percent of his attempts, and he’s getting those shots up 23.9 percent of the time. His three-point percentage in general is the ninth-best in a single season in NBA history. Curry is finding ways to break the matrix that we didn’t even know existed. Here’s his shot chart:
Curry has taken 61 midrange shots this season, and while he’s struggling from a few of those areas, he’s making up for it by, uh, taking 61 total shots from them in 17 games (about 3.6 a night). Instead, he’s getting to the rim, where he’s reminding everyone that he’s as crafty of a guard as the sport has by connecting at a rate that is above league average, and he’s letting it fly from deep, where he’s punishing opponents on a nightly basis.
The best illustration of this is not his shot zones, but rather, his heat map, which shows that he is acting as the prototypical modern basketball player, largely eschewing mid-range shots and instead attacking the rim and shooting threes.
Perhaps some sort of regression is coming, although you can never bet on that with a player the caliber of Curry. Between how dangerous the Warriors are (just think of how this will increase once Draymond Green is back to 100 percent and DeMarcus Cousins is able to play) and how much of an offensive maestro Curry is, you can never be too sure.
Curry is a truly special basketball player, and it’s possible that this has never been more on display than it has been through the first two months of the 2018-19 campaign.
