Modern Moves: Stephen Curry’s step back 3-pointer

Here’s an uncontroversial statement: Stephen Curry is the greatest 3-point shooter of all-time. The answer to why he is the greatest 3-point shooter of all-time is surprisingly hard to pin down.

Curry is not the most accurate 3-point shooter of all-time. He is close, but he is still about two full percentage points behind the leader — his head coach, Steve Kerr. And what could be more meaningful in determining the best shooter of all-time other than winning these razor-sharp contests of accuracy? Curry has also not made the most 3-pointers of all-time. Right now, he is close. In three or four years, he will seize the title from Ray Allen. But if Curry retired today, he would be the best 3-point shooter of all-time — he will not suddenly become the best only in that distant moment when he passes Allen.

Is Curry the best because Curry makes 3-pointers more often than anybody else? Because on one level, he does. His career average of 3.4 makes per game is by far a record. Also, on the list of individual seasons with the most 3-pointers made, Curry is responsible for the top three seasons, and also five out of the top-10. But hey now, this is the analytics age. Why would per-game averages or counting totals be used when we have so many more precise tools? When you look at the all-time list of 3-pointers made per minute or 3-pointers made per possession, both Steve Novak and the unlikely dominant king, Troy Daniels, are meaningfully ahead of Curry.

These arguments are all straw men. Curry is the greatest of all-time. The reason Curry is the greatest is he has fully weaponized the 3-pointer. That’s the short answer. The rest of this is the long answer.

When you watch one of the original masters at his best — Kerr — the NBA of just 20 years ago looks astonishingly like a relic. Kerr is playing well enough in this March 1997 game against the Dallas Mavericks that Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen are kept on the bench. Still, aside from one modern-looking fast-break 3-pointer, I can’t shake the feeling Kerr is getting his buckets in part because the Mavericks do not know how to play against a 3-point threat. Defenders wander away from Kerr at exactly the wrong time — or they duck under the screen in the pick-and-pop, gifting Kerr the crucial feet of separation to get a shot off:

It has been years and years — perhaps going all the way back to his time at Davidson — since Curry has faced such an ill-prepared defense. And as defenses have gotten more sophisticated, more aware of how to handle 3-point marksmen, shooters like Curry need increasingly sophisticated ways to create their shots.

The step back is an elegant solution to a thorny problem: how do you create a responsible 3-point shot on a possession with no ball movement? Even for a marksman as great as Kerr, for all his skill — this is above his pay grade. An essential part of Curry being the best 3-point shooter of all-time is that he is also a dangerous two-point shooter. If Curry is not a dangerous 2-point shooter, then the Step Back is an empty threat, a gimmick. Instead the Step Back is potent enough that it can easily make the defender dance the drunken dance of the crossed-over:

All of the 3-point pyrotechnics that follow — all of the doctorate-level offensive work that the Warriors perform on a nightly basis — is built on this foundation: one man, with the ball, and maybe a screen, gets Golden State a good shot. That’s all Curry truly needs. Since Curry knows he can make things work, if necessary, with such minimal resources, he has tremendous freedom to get creative with different methods of attack early in the possession.

Much has been made of Curry’s ability to bend the geometry of the NBA floor. Since a 30-foot shot is reasonably in Curry’s range, the defense will get stressed and stretched to its breaking point. While this is true, Curry and the Warriors most commonly confront defenses with the problem of initiating their offense the instant they get the ball.

Even though the NBA game is fast enough to confound the most skilled draft picks on an annual basis, it’s also true most teams take at least a few seconds to collect themselves before initiating their offense. By eliminating these seconds of effective downtime, the Warriors force the defense to defend both the entire court and the entire 24-second shot clock. The relentless attack is as stressful mentally, for the opponent, as much as anything else. Only fast break bulldog Russell Westbrook shoots more often within the first six seconds of the shot clock than Curry:

Much of Curry’s greatness as a 3-point shooter has nothing to do with him actually shooting 3-pointers. Seriously. Consider this — when Curry is on the floor this year, the Warriors are shooting a collective 42.6 percent on 3s. Yet Curry himself is at 41.4 percent. This means Curry, in a real way, drags down the Warriors’ 3-point accuracy when he is on the floor.

In reality, it is exactly Curry’s 3-point shooting which creates so many opportunities for his teammates — or, to be more precise, the threat of Curry’s 3-point shooting. This is what it means to fully weaponize the 3-pointer. Curry’s shot is not just beneficial to his team during the three or four possessions a night when he actually connects. It is beneficial to his team any time he is on the floor. After all, when Curry sits, the very same Warriors suddenly dip to a pedestrian 34.8 percent on 3s.

How about this: there are 17 players ever, including Curry, who have averaged more than two made 3-pointers a game for their entire careers. Fourteen of them are active, including several of the most dominant point guards in the game: James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas and Damian Lillard. But of all those players, all fall well short of Curry’s remarkable assist rate — 9.7 assists per 100 possessions.

Next: The Encyclopedia of Modern Moves

If the opponent has successfully performed the counter-intuitive feat of checking Curry from the half-court line or beyond, odds are that another Warrior has managed to cruise past unimpeded. Curry will unselfishly hit them with the simple-but-elegant pass for a high-percentage bucket:

There is one final level to weaponizing the 3-point shot. It almost sounds mystical, or impossible: Curry will successfully create baskets for his teammates without touching the basketball at all. It’s true. Notice, in these clips, how Curry creates his own gravitational field around himself. Defenders will remain tightly clustered around him even while leaving the basket, or ball handler, wide open:

And this is why Stephen Curry is the best 3-point shooter of all-time. The other statistical accomplishments are like party tricks — cool, but ultimately empty. Nobody else uses their 3-point shot so effectively, and in so many different ways, to help their entire team get buckets.

Stats from Basketball-Reference and PBPStats. Video from LamarMatic and 3ball. Stats as of games played on 1/22.