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Around the NBA / Re: Where Does Steph Curry Rank Among Guards?
« Last post by Who on Today at 01:44:08 AM »I was looking at Steph's stats last night when I saw he had just turned 36 years old. Another key indicator of that physical decline was apparent in his stat line.
Steph once led the league in steals. He had multiple seasons among the league leaders (3 yrs top 5 in steals) and was regularly in the top 20 (7 years) for his first 9 seasons. Since then his steals, have yo-yoed between 1.0 to 1.3spg. It went down to 0.9spg last year and down to 0.7spg this year.
He is not making the hustle plays he used to make.
His rebounding is the lowest in about 6-7 years despite GSW playing terrible rebounding lineups where Steph is asked to contribute more.
He is largely a non-entity on defense. What I mean is he is sound positionally and in the right place but not able to make those extra effort plays anymore. He can only guard smaller spaces. He is older. Doesn't move as well. And as a 6-2 guard, those deflections and steals helped him be more useful on defense and make up for his lack of size. Now he doesn't have that anymore.
People focus on his improved strength and one-on-ones but I think his active team defense was more valuable to the Warriors in the past than this.
It has made Steph even more of an offense-only player. I always thought he didn't get enough credit for his defense & rebounding. Not that he was a high end one but he was a lot scrappier than he got credit for. He is not that anymore. He is more reliant than ever on his scoring.
He is used less as a ball-handler and passer than ever which makes his offense even more reliant on scoring. More one dimensional than ever before. And he has always been a streaky offensive player because so much of his offense is generated from long distance shooting which is the most variable type of offense.
