RealGM

Since the 3pt line was introduced in 1980, how many players have been better at offense than Steph Curry? By which I mean if you transported every player since then to the league today, how many would be better on offense than Curry?

Wouldn't be top 5 for me.

Some of my top contenders would include:

Jordan
Bird
Nash
Durant
Curry
Harden
Lebron
Magic
Jokic

I'm not sure where I would put Curry in this list, but he is in the top 10 and possibly much higher.

Apologies to the great bigs of the past 40 years, but in the current era, bigs just aren't as effective offensively. To be an all time great offensive player under current rules, you need the 3-ball and you need to create off the dribble. And you need strong playmaking skills as well.

Career True Shooting Added is a good place to start, since it's adjusted for league/era context. Some notables, since 1980:

Miller 3449
Barkley 2972
Malone 2913
Shaq 2759
Lebron 2692
Stockton 2465
Curry 2391
Dirk 2350
Magic 2098
Jordan 1943
Paul 1332
Bryant 1122

Put another way, he's 92nd in total minutes played since 1980, yet 26th in Offensive Win Shares. So, on a per game basis, he might actually be top 5 since 1980, based on peak/prime offensive production.

Remember, he's only played essentially half the career minutes of players like Dirk, Garnett, Lebron, Malone, Kidd, Stockton, Byrant.

Offensive Box Plus Minus Since 1980, Minimum 25000 MP:

Jordan: 7.2
Lebron: 7.1
Curry: 6.2
Durant: 6.0
Harden: 6.0
Magic: 5.9
Barkley: 5.3
Paul: 5.2
Bird 5.1
Stockton: 4.9

I'll go #1. Lowest I could see would be 5th (Magic/MJ/Nash/LeBron).

Let's use only players who peaked after 1980. The best offensive players:

Moses Malone
Larry Bird
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Charles Barkley
Shaquille O'Neal
Steve Nash
Kobe Bryant
Dwyane Wade
Dirk Nowitzki
LeBron James
Chris Paul
Kevin Durant
James Harden
Giannis Antetokumpo
Nikola Jokic

That's 16 players (I don't think I missed anyone). Among those, I see no case for Moses, Barkley and Giannis over Curry. I see a weak case for Kobe, Wade, Dirk, Durant, Paul and Harden, but I wouldn't put them over Curry.

That leaves us with Bird, Magic, Jordan, Shaq, Nash, LeBron and Jokic - 7 players in total. I think that Shaq's case isn't the strongest and I'd also have Jokic lower (but can change this year, so far he's amazing). Nash is questionable as well, so is Bird actually.

With all that in mind, I have Curry inside top 8 with strong case for top 5, but without a clear spot. I can't wait to see him in the playoffs this year, it could give us bigger sample of prime Curry without KD as the clear first option.

behind magic, lebron, shaq and jordan for me

on par with bird, nash and jokic (i downgrade bird a bit for scoring struggles in playoffs, nash cause i feel he benefitted from being a player and in a team so much ahead of their time although maybe that would be true of curry and warriors too, jokic cause i want to see more of him in the playoffs but he has been great so far) and mayyybeeee chris Paul

above wade, kobe, cp3 (who i most likely put here) etc

Well, since I think Curry will go down as the most impactful offensive player of all-time, I'll go with him.

Peregrine01 wrote:Well, since I think Curry will go down as the most impactful offensive player of all-time, I'll go with him.

How can you compare his offensive impact to pre-1997 players? Are you sure that he's more impactful than someone like Magic or Oscar?

70sFan wrote:

Peregrine01 wrote:Well, since I think Curry will go down as the most impactful offensive player of all-time, I'll go with him.

How can you compare his offensive impact to pre-1997 players? Are you sure that he's more impactful than someone like Magic or Oscar?

Since the title of the topic includes "since 1980", Oscar wouldn't qualify. In any case, I have trouble comparing players from the 60s to those of today because it seemed like an entirely different sport then.

Wrt Magic: Atm, I think it's probably between him and Curry for #1. I have Curry rated higher because he's not only the GOAT off-ball player but an all-time great on-ball player as well whereas Magic was primarily an on-ball threat. Magic's advantage so far is longevity but I think when Curry's career is over, he'd have the edge there. For reference, Curry is doing this at 33, a year older than Magic was when he retired in 1992, and has shown no signs of slowing down.

Most certainly not

MJ
Lebron


In the discussion with

Shaq
Magic
Bird

So Curry would have to be a LOCK top 6. And as high as top 3. I'd say Shaq is 3rd though because he proved to be the most unstoppable offense force in the playoffs since 2000 where as Currys production has slipped just a bit. I'd go Bird next for his clutch shooting and playmaking and then 5A & 5B with Magic and Curry you don't get as close in production as those two in totally different ways.

If Curry can put on a clinic in the playoff it can bump him up to 3 or 4 though.

is interesting that so many people have him first, not that is impossible but i see it as a hard argument

the case for curry is based on higher ceilings and portability but i put some question marks here

yet the durant/curry warriors with arguably the most talent ever only had that goat level offense one of three years
the curry mvp years "only" had 1 all time offense that faltered in the playoffs

and the portability while a valid argument i consider it a bit overstated, curry/kerr-ball requires a team with multiple great passers to be fully optimized (as we saw in 2021 how the curry ball didnt work and they had to make curry mpre of an helio)

jordan best bulls teams reached comparable regular season heights without the moderate but significative slowing down curry had in the playoffs

he didnt reach the playoffs heights of lebron with comparable talent (we actually saw lebron in 2016 or 17 reach better heights than curry in 15 or 16 with comparable talent, comparable offense with less talent in 2017) and lebron being a stronger floor raiser of meh offensive casts into really good offenses

someone like nash reached higher heights in both, regular season and playoffs, and he didnt have a better team either, somethingh similar can be said about magic too

i would have magic, lebron, jordan above, closely followed by shaq and nash
witj curry tying for 6th/7th with bird, players like jokic, dirk wade and kobe afterwards

i see his best case as 4th~ and worst around 7th~

rand wrote:Since the 3pt line was introduced in 1980, how many players have been better at offense than Steph Curry? By which I mean if you transported every player since then to the league today, how many would be better on offense than Curry?

So the thing with Curry with me remains in the same limbo:

He's the best regular season offensive player in history.

To this point, he's not had a post-season run that lives up to that high-end performance in the regular season, which makes it hard to put him at #1.

I'll shout it to the rafter that people drastically overstate the degree of his fall off in the playoffs, but that doesn't mean there isn't a kernel of truth in what they say.

I'll also say that I think people need to better understand what I call the Hustler principle, after the movie The Hustler (1961). In a nutshell:

There's a common trend of athletes (and other performers) reaching the peak of their physical prowess before they have had the proverbial kitchen sink thrown at them, which allows a window of time where older, savvier competitors can still find a vulnerability and beat them. Once they go through that gauntlet though, the can reach a "bulletproof" status where they know what to do against every possible counter, and this is when they are actually toughest to defeat.

One example of this is LeBron James who hit his impact peak in 2009, hit his all around 2-way physical capacity around 2013, but who didn't really get bulletproof offensively until around 2016.

I think that because after 2016 Durant came to GS, we missed seeing Curry coming back more bulletproof in the same role, and people have essentially from there on out assumed that the vulnerability he showed in 2016 represents something fundamental about his limitations, when I'd say the much more likely scenario is that he was just going through the normal trials and tribulations of a nascent megastar.

In terms of what my main candidates would be to the prompt:

Magic
MJ
Nash
LeBron
Curry
Jokic

I'm honestly not sure who I'd pick from this bunch.

I don't think he has much of a case over Jordan, LeBron, and Magic. If you wanna make a case for him being #1 you basically have to turn a complete blind eye to the playoffs and rely heavily on theory.

I'm a bit reluctant to say Nash is better because the Suns went all in on offense with their personnel and were ahead of the curve strategically but all the evidence points in his favor as well.

He’s likely top 5, but i find it pretty crazy that 44% of voters think he’s better than Jordan.

letskissbro wrote:I don't think he has much of a case over Jordan, LeBron, and Magic. If you wanna make a case for him being #1 you basically have to turn a complete blind eye to the playoffs and rely heavily on theory.

I'm a bit reluctant to say Nash is better because the Suns went all in on offense with their personnel and were ahead of the curve strategically but all the evidence points in his favor as well.

nash teams were incredibly ahead of their time but the fact that 2005-2007 suns had comparable/better offense than 2017-2019 which had a sizable talent advamtage warriors makes it hard not to lean nash

He's obviously near the top though I think someone like CP3 might be getting underrated here. Just look at what he did last year with Phoenix at the age of 35 or 36. Phx went from 12th to 5th in ORtg. LAC went from 22nd to 4th the year he joined them. Of course I could list a bunch of other stats as well to support him but I'll leave it at that.

Cavsfansince84 wrote:He's obviously near the top though I think someone like CP3 might be getting underrated here. Just look at what he did last year with Phoenix at the age of 35 or 36. Phx went from 12th to 5th in ORtg. LAC went from 22nd to 4th the year he joined them. Of course I could list a bunch of other stats as well to support him but I'll leave it at that.

sometimes i honestly feel like chris Paul is underated because he doesnt have enough turnovers

people seem to hold his methodical game and low tov% against him since is the opposite of nash and magic (running a lot, agressive/improvisational with high turnovers)

falcolombardi wrote:

Cavsfansince84 wrote:He's obviously near the top though I think someone like CP3 might be getting underrated here. Just look at what he did last year with Phoenix at the age of 35 or 36. Phx went from 12th to 5th in ORtg. LAC went from 22nd to 4th the year he joined them. Of course I could list a bunch of other stats as well to support him but I'll leave it at that.

sometimes i honestly feel like chris Paul is underated because he doesnt have enough turnovers

people seem to hold his methodical game and low tov% against him since is the opposite of nash and magic (running a lot, agressive/improvisational with high turnovers)

I think the idea is that because CP3 is more conservative, he misses opportunities for high-value passes that can lead to all-time offense.

He is still an all-time offensive player, whose box-score suggests he might be better than a Nash or Magic offensively; however that snail pace he plays at holds him from being the highest echelon there is seems to be the common sentiment.

At the same time, Paul not committing many turnovers possibly helps his team's defense and should be accounted for in his defensive impact.

Final thing is. If you look at his multi-year PS playoff offenses, he arguably has been better at leading offenses in the PS than say a Steph, so how is he really holding back his team offenses from their full ceiling is a relevant point.