The Stephen Curry Thread (2015-16 Pt. 2)

[Reservoirdawgs]

Yes he did have an awful Series and an awful Postseason. If he wants to have the epitome of a superstar when he goes nuts shooting 3's, he has to be judged as such when he underperforms aswell. He was literally zero in 95% of these playoffs and his 3pt inflated TS% don't tell the whole story. Karl Malone looks a Playoff God in comparison to Curry and it must hurt for people who Jordanified Curry all season long to see him fail this hard in the Playoffs but let's be real here. He failed, he disappointed, he underperformed, he brutally dropped-off, and he was often a "minus" when his team needed him to be a "plus". He was like the 5th best player in these Finals, and that says much of an MVP.

Okay, this is absurd. In 614 playoff minutes, he had the following:

PPG: 25.1
AST: 5.2
REB: 5.5
TS%: 60.2
eFG%: 55.7
USG%: 32.2
AST%: 27.9
TOV%: 17.8
ORtg: 108.2
GmSc: 17.3

His shooting was still elite...numbers that most superstar guards would kill to have. His biggest problems came down to his playmaking, with lazy passes that led to an increase in his TOV% and a decrease to his assists. Some of that was due to him being careless with the ball and others was due to the other team (highlighted most in the first half of the Finals) where the entire game plan of the Cavs defense was to swarm Curry and allow wide open looks to his teammates. All of this hate is coming because the Warriors lost a series that they easily could have won if things had gone differently (Green doesn't get suspended, Irving doesn't make a well defended shot, Barnes actually learns to play basketball, etc).

[Reservoirdawgs]

You're looking way too much at ts% if you think Curry played at a peak Kobe level in the finals.

Well no. People are now trying to say that Curry had an awful Finals and an awful postseason in total, and it's all because the Warriors lost Game 7 which they easily could have won if the ball had bounced differently in the final minute of the game. I'm saying that's an over-reaction from people who are now clinging to a narrative that doesn't reflect reality. Curry wasn't perfect in the Finals, but his shooting and scoring was the equivalent of Kobe at his peak. Now, Curry's playmaking and passing was really poor in the Finals, there's no doubt about that. A lot of it was him simply making lazy passes or fancy passes that, even if they worked, really didn't improve his team in any way. If people want to criticize his playmaking then I'm fine with that, but my fear was that people were going to overreact to Curry and his season simply because of the disappointing way the series ended and that is proving to be true. People are looking to kick the guy when he is down and they are now making up how bad his postseason is when reality doesn't support that.

[Doormatt]

This is the second Finals where he has shown that he's no where near the impact guy that people make him out to be. I could excuse his scoring if he was finding open players but he was throwing passes where no one was even close. All his stats dropped, he didn't make up for his scoring dropoff with anything..

In last year's Finals, Curry had a .591 TS% with a 55 eFG%. This year, he had a .580 TS% and a 54 eFG%. Those are peak Kobe numbers. Yet, these are being used as an indictment on Curry as being "exposed"? I don't buy it. Sure, they're not as high as his regular season stats but almost every player sees a dip in their playoffs numbers since they are going against better teams that can properly gameplan for them, and because the sample size gets substantially lower.

I'm not going to defend Curry for his poor Game 7 performance, but he did not have an awful series as people are trying to say. The first half of the series saw the Cavs allow wide open looks to other players because they never wanted Curry to have an open look. We saw a lot of this in Game 7 as well, which is what led to Barnes and Green having so many wide open 3's. We have thousands of minutes of data that shows that Curry is as impactful as he is made out to be...over-reacting on one bad game does not favors for anyone. This narrative goes no where if Green doesn't get himself suspended or if Klay and Barnes hit some open shots instead of clanking them one by one.

You're looking way too much at ts% if you think Curry played at a peak Kobe level in the finals.

as someone who watched every finals Kobe performance, I would say that Curry played at about the average level of every kobe finals performance ive seen. the biggest difference is that kobe kept shooting when he was shooting poorly, whereas curry tends to lower his volume drastically. i prefer that in my star quite honestly, but unfortunately for the dubs the rest of their shooters didn't really show up for a lot of the series. I'm still not quite sure what to think about this series because I'm honestly still in shock, but i thought a lot of it came down to variance, curry was just missing shots he normally makes. what can you do about that?

the biggest disappointment for me, which is really the thing i dislike most about curry in general, is he made a lot of dumb passes/bad turnovers that lost his team a lot of momentum. I think you can live with the poor shooting performance, but you can't live with that AND the turnovers.

its gonna be really hard for me to read and watch anything about basketball for the foreseeable future because all i can think about is the massive overreactions we are gonna get based on 3-4 games from Curry and the warriors. Whose to say that the warriors aren't a GOAT level team that just got straight up unlucky, not just going cold at a bad time, but also facing historic level performances from both lebron and kyrie.

[Reservoirdawgs]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/JayBilas/status/744899294906449920[/tweet]

[Reservoirdawgs]

as someone who watched every finals Kobe performance, I would say that Curry played at about the average level of every kobe finals performance ive seen.

Okay, my comment in mentioning Kobe was NOT to get into a Kobe debate but rather to give perspective when people were talking about what a horrendous shooter Curry was being when his Finals TS% was the equivalent of Kobe's career high in the regular season. If this is distracting people in a way that is unintended then forget about that comment I made .

[Doormatt]

as someone who watched every finals Kobe performance, I would say that Curry played at about the average level of every kobe finals performance ive seen.

Okay, my comment in mentioning Kobe was NOT to get into a Kobe debate but rather to give perspective when people were talking about what a horrendous shooter Curry was being when his Finals TS% was the equivalent of Kobe's career high in the regular season. If this is distracting people in a way that is unintended then forget about that comment I made .

I understand, as I'm sure most people do. I was just trying to give perspective as well, regarding Curry's overall performance.

[NO-KG-AI]

Golden State is obviously a better team when Stephen Curry plays at a god like level. They won 73, which is one of the hardest feats to pull off in NBA history, they are obviously great all around, but with a "regular level" superstar, they aren't near that win total. Steph being super nova is a big part of that.

Also, cleveland is clearly a team that is better than those 58 wins, because they were not trying to do anything in the regular season aside from procuring the #1 seed. Could LeBron be the player he was in the finals for an entire season? Maybe not, but we already knew from last year that he can do it over the course of a finals, and that's what matters, and when he's playing that strong, they are far more potent than a 58 win team.

Steph struggled last finals and was very inconsistent and often very bad in the playoffs. It's not that shocking that Cleveland pulled it off with him playing like that.

The playoff blueprint for Golden State is set. Ugly the game up.


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[cpower]

Going from a regular season
34.2 MPG 30.1p/5.4r/6.7a/2.1s .504 FG% .669 TS%
to a Finals
35.1 MPG 22.6p/4.9r/3.7a/.9s .403 FG% .580 TS%

Just a dramatic drop off in every category. I mean we've seen superstars struggle with scoring and they pick it up with passing or rebounding but he fell off a cliff in a huge way. I really can't remember such a decline. (I'm sure there was something similar but I looked up Karl's 1997 Finals and it wasn't as bad and he was playing with an injury that we know of, not one we speculate on).

Basically we've heard all season how he wouldn't be stopped by older rules that allowed more grabbing and contact and how iso ball was as extinct as the dinosaurs, the three point shot was king and basketball has changed forever. And then we see a team beat Curry's regular season juggernaut with exactly those methods.

As bad as he played, Curry was never allowed to play in the finals.

after a bad start, he was in foul trouble, foul trouble, good game, no bogut/green, foul trouble, foul trouble...

[AceofSpades69]

Yes he did have an awful Series and an awful Postseason. If he wants to have the epitome of a superstar when he goes nuts shooting 3's, he has to be judged as such when he underperforms aswell. He was literally zero in 95% of these playoffs and his 3pt inflated TS% don't tell the whole story. Karl Malone looks a Playoff God in comparison to Curry and it must hurt for people who Jordanified Curry all season long to see him fail this hard in the Playoffs but let's be real here. He failed, he disappointed, he underperformed, he brutally dropped-off, and he was often a "minus" when his team needed him to be a "plus". He was like the 5th best player in these Finals, and that says much of an MVP.

Okay, this is absurd. In 614 playoff minutes, he had the following:

PPG: 25.1
AST: 5.2
REB: 5.5
TS%: 60.2
eFG%: 55.7
USG%: 32.2
AST%: 27.9
TOV%: 17.8
ORtg: 108.2
GmSc: 17.3

His shooting was still elite...numbers that most superstar guards would kill to have. His biggest problems came down to his playmaking, with lazy passes that led to an increase in his TOV% and a decrease to his assists. Some of that was due to him being careless with the ball and others was due to the other team (highlighted most in the first half of the Finals) where the entire game plan of the Cavs defense was to swarm Curry and allow wide open looks to his teammates. All of this hate is coming because the Warriors lost a series that they easily could have won if things had gone differently (Green doesn't get suspended, Irving doesn't make a well defended shot, Barnes actually learns to play basketball, etc).

Numbers that any superstar guard would kill to have? 25/5/5, 22.3 PER, .152 WS/48, 108 ORTG on horrid defense? His TS% is that high because of his 3pt shooting, that's really the only flaw of TS%, it benefits high efficiency long range shooters a lot.
Westbrook - 26/11/7, 26.9 PER, .208 WS/48, 112 ORTG

Irving - 25/5/3, 24.4 PER, .210 WS/48, 117 ORTG

These two had a better postseason than Curry. Now, talking about a guy that many had as the GOAT offensive peak (among other things), do you think his numbers were good? His numbers were average superstar numbers, very sub-par if we are talking ATG guards. People were mentioning him in the same breed as Magic Johnson who posted 22/12/8 on 61%TS, 26.4 PER, .265 WS/48, 129 ORTG at his peak for God sake, get real...

[Dr Positivity]

For a player who had a Jordan/Lebron regular season Curry was definitely quite a bit off his form.

[Frosty]

Going from a regular season
34.2 MPG 30.1p/5.4r/6.7a/2.1s .504 FG% .669 TS%
to a Finals
35.1 MPG 22.6p/4.9r/3.7a/.9s .403 FG% .580 TS%

Just a dramatic drop off in every category. I mean we've seen superstars struggle with scoring and they pick it up with passing or rebounding but he fell off a cliff in a huge way. I really can't remember such a decline. (I'm sure there was something similar but I looked up Karl's 1997 Finals and it wasn't as bad and he was playing with an injury that we know of, not one we speculate on).

Basically we've heard all season how he wouldn't be stopped by older rules that allowed more grabbing and contact and how iso ball was as extinct as the dinosaurs, the three point shot was king and basketball has changed forever. And then we see a team beat Curry's regular season juggernaut with exactly those methods.

As bad as he played, Curry was never allowed to play in the finals.

after a bad start, he was in foul trouble, foul trouble, good game, no bogut/green, foul trouble, foul trouble...

How was he forced into foul trouble? That's on him.

[MisterHibachi]

Klay ties Curry's record for threes made in a playoff run at 98. Curry himself had 80 this post season. JR Smith with 65. So those are the top 4 now, I believe.

[bigboi]

as someone who watched every finals Kobe performance, I would say that Curry played at about the average level of every kobe finals performance ive seen.

Okay, my comment in mentioning Kobe was NOT to get into a Kobe debate but rather to give perspective when people were talking about what a horrendous shooter Curry was being when his Finals TS% was the equivalent of Kobe's career high in the regular season. If this is distracting people in a way that is unintended then forget about that comment I made .

08-09 Kobe absolutely craps on Curry in terms of playoffs and Finals play. TS doesn't mean crap when out of context. Curry took like 14 3s while taking 5 2pt shots. You think that's good? Also his FT% inflates his TS like crazy

[cyclix]

I would still put Currys peak season (2016) behind Wade

[cpower]

Going from a regular season
34.2 MPG 30.1p/5.4r/6.7a/2.1s .504 FG% .669 TS%
to a Finals
35.1 MPG 22.6p/4.9r/3.7a/.9s .403 FG% .580 TS%

Just a dramatic drop off in every category. I mean we've seen superstars struggle with scoring and they pick it up with passing or rebounding but he fell off a cliff in a huge way. I really can't remember such a decline. (I'm sure there was something similar but I looked up Karl's 1997 Finals and it wasn't as bad and he was playing with an injury that we know of, not one we speculate on).

Basically we've heard all season how he wouldn't be stopped by older rules that allowed more grabbing and contact and how iso ball was as extinct as the dinosaurs, the three point shot was king and basketball has changed forever. And then we see a team beat Curry's regular season juggernaut with exactly those methods.

As bad as he played, Curry was never allowed to play in the finals.

after a bad start, he was in foul trouble, foul trouble, good game, no bogut/green, foul trouble, foul trouble...

How was he forced into foul trouble? That's on him.

he did the same thing in OKC series, why has he not in foul troubles there?

[RSCD3_]

I would still put Currys peak season (2016) behind Wade

I think if he never got injured and lost his physical progress some amount. It would have been a different story. Only way he can really know is what might happen next year. Counting what happened id probably put im slightly under kobe/wade in peak

[BasketballFan7]

This is the second Finals where he has shown that he's no where near the impact guy that people make him out to be. I could excuse his scoring if he was finding open players but he was throwing passes where no one was even close. All his stats dropped, he didn't make up for his scoring dropoff with anything..

In last year's Finals, Curry had a .591 TS% with a 55 eFG%. This year, he had a .580 TS% and a 54 eFG%. Those are peak Kobe numbers. Yet, these are being used as an indictment on Curry as being "exposed"? I don't buy it. Sure, they're not as high as his regular season stats but almost every player sees a dip in their playoffs numbers since they are going against better teams that can properly gameplan for them, and because the sample size gets substantially lower.

I'm not going to defend Curry for his poor Game 7 performance, but he did not have an awful series as people are trying to say. The first half of the series saw the Cavs allow wide open looks to other players because they never wanted Curry to have an open look. We saw a lot of this in Game 7 as well, which is what led to Barnes and Green having so many wide open 3's. We have thousands of minutes of data that shows that Curry is as impactful as he is made out to be...over-reacting on one bad game does not favors for anyone. This narrative goes no where if Green doesn't get himself suspended or if Klay and Barnes hit some open shots instead of clanking them one by one.

You can't just use TS%. He went from GOAT TS% on elite superstar volume to above average TS% on all-star volume. His playmaking was bad. His versatility was bad. He was continuously picked on defensively. He made stupid fouls and lacked composure.

Curry is damn amazing. It's dumb how good he is. But this defending of his finals / PS is wrong.

[RightToCensor]

He was totally exposed as a defender and playmaker. His scoring ability didn't make much of a difference when it mattered the most.

I think he's deserving to be called an All-Star player in this league, but the debate of him being the best player in the world (or even best offensive player) are out the window.

[Reservoirdawgs]

You can't just use TS%. He went from GOAT TS% on elite superstar volume to above average TS% on all-star volume. His playmaking was bad. His versatility was bad. He was continuously picked on defensively. He made stupid fouls and lacked composure.

Curry is damn amazing. It's dumb how good he is. But this defending of his finals / PS is wrong.

When did a 58 TS% become only "above average"? His TS% for such a "terrible" series was higher than almost all other superstars out there! His shooting wasn't his issue in the Finals...his playmaking and lackadaisical passing was the issue. The Cavs got him out of his comfort zone and he never really figured out what to do with their defensive switching the way he had been doing all season. Averaging over 4 TOVs a game along with under 4 assists was his biggest undoing, which he can absolutely be criticized for. What I take exception to is people coming out and saying how he choked or how he was exposed when the Warriors easily could have won that game and the entire series and that narrative would have been moot.

[MisterHibachi]

You can't just use TS%. He went from GOAT TS% on elite superstar volume to above average TS% on all-star volume. His playmaking was bad. His versatility was bad. He was continuously picked on defensively. He made stupid fouls and lacked composure.

Curry is damn amazing. It's dumb how good he is. But this defending of his finals / PS is wrong.

When did a 58 TS% become only "above average"? His TS% for such a "terrible" series was higher than almost all other superstars out there! His shooting wasn't his issue in the Finals...his playmaking and lackadaisical passing was the issue. The Cavs got him out of his comfort zone and he never really figured out what to do with their defensive switching the way he had been doing all season. Averaging over 4 TOVs a game along with under 4 assists was his biggest undoing, which he can absolutely be criticized for. What I take exception to is people coming out and saying how he choked or how he was exposed when the Warriors easily could have won that game and the entire series and that narrative would have been moot.

Win or lose, there are some serious flaws in his game that certainly were exposed. Maybe you don't wanna use that word, but he has clear flaws that we kept brushing over in the RS because the Warriors were doing what they did in the RS. His defense was certainly 'exposed', the burden to make plays and make decisions with the ball fell on him after LeBron took Draymond out of the picture and he made bad decisions, decisions which he had been making all year, but on a smaller, less important scale. His decision making needs improvement, and no one was really talking about this before the finals. So the finals did 'expose' that. It was a 7 game series, but we did learn a lot about Curry, regardless of what his TS% was.