Stephen Curry Is Playing As A True MVP

Most people understand that Stephen Curry is really good at basketball.

This year’s NBA season has been amazing for the Golden State Warriors, they have an amazing undefeated record and Curry is so important for the team.

Curry is perhaps the figurehead in the NBA’s 3-Point Revolution. It’s easy to get swept up by the 3-point shooting that has been long-undervalued, smart sharpshooters are finally taking over the NBA. Teams that shot the most and the best from beyond dominated like never before. In the playoffs the top 3-point shooting teams made up the entirety of the conference finals.

Through November, Curry is scoring nearly 32 points per game this season (despite having the luxury of sitting out several fourth quarters as the Warriors roll). As ESPN’s Director of Analytics Ben Alamar wrote, Curry “seems to have figured out that he truly cannot take too many 3-point shots.”

The deeper you dive into the data, the more you realize that Curry isn’t just a deadly efficient shooter, but he’s also virtually immune to burden. As he has been asked to produce more and more, he hasn’t gotten any less efficient.

This year, Curry is making his 2014-15 MVP season seem practically pedestrian. Curry is playing better in a number of ways among other things, he is on pace to set career highs in stealing and rebounding, and he has his best defensive rating to date. He is also hitting a career high in shot attempts per 100 possessions (29.0 this year vs. 25.1 last year) and 3-point attempts per 100 possessions (15.5 this year vs. 12.1 last year). Most importantly, even though he’s taking all these extra shots, his shooting efficiency has gone up!

Every article about every great young athlete ever seems to end with “And he’s just getting better and better” even though this often isn’t true. So let me end this one with, “No, seriously, he really is getting better and better.”