The former Golden State Warriors coach, Mark Jackson, has made a claim a few weeks ago that many people are starting to agree with: “to a degree, [Stephen Curry has] hurt the game.”
Jackson said Curry’s shooting dominance has caused emerging basketball players to focus too much on the 3-point shot, leading to them ignoring the other aspects of the game. He believes that young students of the game are trying to emulate Curry and are focusing on the wrong parts of basketball.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
This season, the NBA average 3-point percentage is 35.2 percent, which is up from 28 percent when the 3-point line was introduced, in the 1979-80 season. This percentage is bound to increase even more as more players follow Curry’s steps and improve their shooting.
Is this really a bad thing? Why should players ignore the 3-point shot, when mathematically, one only needs to shoot 33.3 percent from behind the arc to score the same number of points as a 50 percent 2-point shooter would. If anything, Curry is improving the league by causing players to realize that the 3-point shot has been extremely underutilized and undervalued.
Additionally, if young players view Curry as a basketball idol and try to replicate his game, they will become well-rounded basketball players like Curry rather than the one-dimensional shooters. Curry’s overall shooting percentage, which includes two pointers, is 51.1 percent. With a 68.2 percent true shooting percentage — a shooting percentage that takes into account the different weights of free throws, two-pointers and three-pointers — Curry easily leads the league. Considering this, it would not be a bad thing at all if basketball players see Curry’s game as an ideal.
Whatever Curry has been doing is clearly working. The Warriors are ahead of any other team in the NBA, having achieved a record of 45-4 as of Feb. 4, on pace to shatter the best record of all time, 72-10, that was set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.
Curry leads the league in scoring at 29.8 points per game, despite sitting out many fourth quarters after blowing out his opponents in the first three quarters. Curry even records 6.4 assists per game and 2.2 steals per game, rounding out his complete and unstoppable playing style. Any doubters are not even close to justified in their opposition of Curry, as his play propelled his team to an NBA Championship last season and seems like it will do the same this season.
With a record high player efficiency rating of 32.20, ridiculous shooting percentages and a complete game that no team has been able to stop, basketball players should try to emulate Curry. After all, anyone who does so successfully would only be improving the NBA. Stephen Curry is not ruining the game of basketball; he is transforming it. It is time for other players to catch up.