Top 30 athletes under 30
By Robert Judin
8. Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors – 27 years old
He wasn’t highly recruited out of high school. He wasn’t throwing down 360 dunks and jumping from the free throw line. He didn’t win a national championship at Davidson — in spite of a phenomenal run in the NCAA Tournament. He wasn’t even graded as a point guard going into the 2009 NBA Draft.
All of that being said, he’s been Steph Curry with the shot, boy. In all seriousness, Stephen Curry had the season of a lifetime in 2014-15, and it appears as though it wasn’t a fluke. Just kidding, it definitely was not a fluke.
Curry led the NBA in three pointers made for the third consecutive year. He finished with 286 triples flushed on 646 attempted. For the non-math majors out there, that’s 44 percent from behind the tree-point line.
And for those who said he wasn’t a point guard, tell that to the 7.7 assists he averaged last season or the 8.5 dimes he averaged the year before that.
Curry isn’t just the best point guard under 30 years old. He’s the best point guard in the NBA, and he’s made that clear. He won the MVP last year and very easily could have been named the MVP of the 2015 NBA Finals — in spite of a slight drop off.
Think about this: he’s 1,782 threes behind Ray Allen’s all-time record of 2,973. If Curry averages 200 threes for the next nine years, he’ll reach 3,000 threes — breaking Allen’s record with ease.
It’s a lot to do, but Allen only broke the 200-threes mark five times in his 19-year career, and 269 was his career high for one season. Here is what Curry has done in the last three years: 286, 261, and 272.
He’ll probably go down as the best three-point shooter of all-time, and he was the No. 7 overall pick in 2009.
Next: No. 7 Anthony Davis