Steph Curry: Sultan of Swish
Steph Curry’s having one of the all-time great seasons in NBA history, if not the greatest season in NBA history. Besides the fact that he’s the MVP front-runner and the leader of team with a chance at the best record in NBA history, an r/NBA contributor pointed out that his 2015–16 campaign was #1 all-time (as of 1/26) in three different metrics that attempt to measure individual contribution. While he’s no longer #1 in all three, he’s currently in the top 3 for each one:
- PER: 31.2 (1st all time)
- Win Shares/48: 0.338 (2nd all time)
- BPM: 12.5 (3rd all time)
And it’s not like Moneyball, where the analytics guys like Curry while the fans and insiders feel differently. Quite the opposite. Between kids taking time practicing step back 3’s, college players doing more dribbling drills, and fans showing up to games two hours early to watch Curry warm up, Steph Curry’s in the conversation for most beloved and emulated athlete since Jordan!
And yet … despite both the math and eyeball test, something’s always felt off to me. I mean, how can he be that good? Are we really watching one of the greatest players of all time? But the answer to this disconnect- how can this season look so good but not feel that good- is pretty simple (and one several others have stated): we’ve never seen a player dominate with 3 pointers. Wilt and Kareem dominated with size, and Michael and Lebron had godlike-athleticism, yet Curry’s putting together a historic season at 6'3" and 190 pounds. It’s not only that we haven’t seen anything like it, but until Curry, I don’t think anybody thought a 3 point shooter could dominate the NBA.
So what makes Curry’s 3 point shooting so special? Two things differentiate him: volume and depth.
VOLUME
As 538 pointed out in “Steph Curry is the Revolution” (and Kirk Goldsberry’s been saying for years), Curry’s blending both high efficiency and volume. But his efficiency, while still very elite, isn’t “revolutionary”; other players have had higher 3 point percentages in a single season, and even this season, he’s currently 4th (although unlike other players on this list, Curry’s making his shots more often unassisted or with defenders in his face). But his volume’s another story. At his current pace, Curry’s on track to make 388 3 pointers this season.
If that doesn’t sound crazy to you, I made a visual. For each season since the NBA introduced the 3-point line, I’ve plotted the 3 point totals for that season’s 3-point champion (Champion) and the player who made the 2nd most (Runner-Up). I’ve labeled the seasons where Curry was the champion — 2013 to 2016 (projected)- in blue.
In an average season, the Runner-Up makes roughly 20 less 3’s than the Champion, but 2016 is not an average season for 3 point shooters. If Curry and Klay (the player with the 2nd most threes this season) continue at this pace, Klay will finish with 259 three pointers, which if Steph Curry didn’t exist, would be the 3rd most 3’s ever made in a season. Curry’s projected to finish with 388, which is 129 more than Klay’s projected total and 119 more than any other player ever.
Still not impressed? Check out the below visual (which is updated here … thank you Thomas Valtin Erwin) which graphs the game number on the x-axis and total 3’s made on the y-axis. When it comes to 3’s, Curry’s simply in another league.
Curry already has three of the five most prolific 3-point shooting seasons in NBA history, and if he finishes with 388 (or at least 261), he’ll have four of the top six. Needless to say, the dude makes a lot of 3's.
DEPTH
It’s really hard to guard Curry from 22 feet out, as Kawhi Leonard, the reigning DPOY (and arguably best wing defender since Scottie Pippen) learned the hard way.
But as another 538 article on Curry observed, he’s lethal from 28 feet out (aka “deep”), which is simply unheard of. The NBA makes about 35% of their 3’s on average, but when they try from deep, that rate drops to 26.8% at 28 feet (and 21.6% for all 28+ foot shot attempts). Of the 43 3’s Curry’s shot from 28+ feet, he’s made 29 of them, which is a rate of 67.4%! That’s not too far behind DeAndre Jordan’s field goal percentage (71.9%), and over half of DeAndre’s shots are dunks! Curry’s better than the league average from all distances, but when he gets into bomb range, the difference is literally unbelievable.
And when I say “unbelievable”, I mean it literally, as in how is this possible? Is the data I scraped from Pro Basketball Reference incorrect? Did I forget to carry a 1 somewhere? Or is Curry simply defying a simple law of shooting, i.e. when you’re farther from the basket, you’re less accurate? Maybe he makes so many because it’s the only time he can take a shot with a clean look and no pressure? Whatever it is, it’s clearly unique.
So from a purely tactical perspective, this is a nightmare for defenders, as they have to wear themselves out defending four to six more feet of the court (which Curry often exploits by cutting to the rim for an easy layup or kicking it out to an open man). But there’s another important element to Curry’s deep shooting that’s more qualitative. Consider that:
- 3-pointers already elicit more excitement than regular jump shots
- Curry’s 3’s take longer because he shoots from farther away and his shots have an abnormal amount of arc
- He’s making 2/3 of them from deep
- Whenever he touches the ball, the crowd (especially Oracle) is buzzing with anticipation
When you put it together, the result is the most exciting 1.5 seconds in basketball! How can you not get stoked when you see this?
“Damn, how did I get so far back? Fuck it, I’ll just shoot so I can go play defense.” — Steph Curry
THE NEW DUNK OR THE NEW HOME RUN?
Some commentators have stated that Curry’s given a step-back 3 the same level of swag as posterizing dunks, and while that may be somewhat true, a 3 and a dunk are still fundamentally different. Great dunks happen with such speed and intensity that they often take you by surprise. There’s a seam in the defense,
or a man that’s not boxed out,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVCtkzIXYzQ
and we get something totally fucking awesome.
But 3’s are different. Instead of the suddeness and ferocity of a dunk, we get anticipation and grace. The entire process from catch -> shoot -> swish takes a couple seconds, and the arc the ball makes as it approaches the hoop is sexy in its own way. I’m guessing it has more to do with the “splash” in the net, but that may not be the only reason why a great shot is sometimes called “wet.”
So while anticipation and grace aren’t necessarily true for dunks, they are true for another sports event: home runs. Similar to the short wait as a ball approaches the hoop, a similar tension exists as a deep fly ball starts heading out of the yard. And while homers are more intense (because they’re less frequent and more important), I think fans have a similar process of energy buildup and release as they wait for a 3 to go in.
If you buy that analogy, then you have to agree that Steph Curry is the Babe Ruth of 3-pointers. Remember the above chart which showed the Champions and Runner-Ups for 3 pointers? In Babe Ruth’s first three full MLB seasons (1919–1921), he blew away the competition, as you can see below (in fact, there were multiple season where he had more home runs than other teams, which is something even Curry hasn’t done … yet).
A similar gap developed between Babe Ruth and the rest of baseball like Curry’s gap with the rest of the NBA. And like Curry’s dominance at the top of single season 3-pointers, when Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, he’d had 5 of the top 6 home run seasons in MLB history up to that point (and 6 of the top 10).
CONCLUSION
Anyway, there’s something extraordinary about the fact that in order to find an adequate comparison for Steph Curry, I have to go outside basketball. When I think about other athletes who have rewritten record books singlehandedly (ex: Wayne Gretzky, Jerry Rice, Usain Bolt), they’re considered the greatest of their field (or at least in the conversation). Still, if I had to compare Steph to any one player, it’d be Babe Ruth aka “The Sultan of Swat”, which makes Curry “The Sultan of Swish.”And hell, like the Great Bambino, every now and then he calls his own shots.
APPENDIX #1: Other Curry to Ruth Comparisons
I’m not the first person to compare Curry to Babe Ruth, so I’ve listed a couple links I found where people also made this point (although I swear I looked for these after drawing the connection). However, based on my Google searches, nobody else has referred to him as the Sultan of Swish.
APPENDIX #2: Will Anyone Catch Curry?
There’s an open debate about whether or not anybody will ever touch Curry’s records for 3’s. I think we’re still in the “holy shit, we didn’t even know this was a thing!” phase, so it’s a little early to tell, but Babe Ruth’s example may prove illuminating. I wasn’t around in the early 1920s (which is a good thing, because booze was illegal!), but I can imagine that the fans reactions to Ruth’s homers were similar to Curry’s 3’s; Curry clearing 350 3’s in a season (that is … his projected clearing, knock on wood) would probably similar to Ruth clearing 50 HRs. When Ruth cleared 50 home runs, it was so outside the scope of what had previously been done, people probably hadn’t even considered if it was possible, let alone debated whether or not it could be done. That’s how we feel about Curry now.
But with that said, baseball caught up. If you extend out the above graph that shows Champs vs Runners-Up for home runs, we can see that the league starts to catch up to Ruth.
He’s still far and away the most prolific power hitter of the pre-World War II era and has seasons where he scorches the competition, but in general, as he got older, the league closed the gap. Granted, the gap closed partly because of his aging curve, but it seems that baseball got better at hitting home runs as well (although it’s been 89 years since Ruth slugged 60, and the only other players to hit 60 or more runs either a) took more than 154 games (Maris) or b) took a lot of steroids (Bonds, Sosa, McGwire)). My guess is that the same will happen with 3’s in the NBA, but I could be wrong, and it’s too early to tell. Either way, I’m excited to find out!
