Stephen Curry’s 2016 season: The shooting
It doesn’t matter what NBA franchise you fan over unless it’s the Warriors, of course, you have felt the agonizing wrath of a Curry 3-point dagger. To this day, especially now considering basketball has been absent, I’ll still reminisce on what it felt like to get hit with one of Curry’s 402 3-pointers. The release on his jumper was (and still is) so quick that you barely had enough time to register what was happening before the ball hit the net; if you blinked, you missed it.
His threes were the kind of shots that froze time; I mean that metaphorically and literally. I’m sure if there was a stat that measured how often a specific “play” resulted in the other team taking a timeout, Curry’s 3-ball in 2016 likely ranks right up there with a LeBron fast court jam at the top of the list. I’d imagine that is because of how spectacular Curry was (and, again, still is) as a shooter. There seems to be no stopping his shooting in the heat of the moment. And in reality, back in 2016 there theoretically wasn’t any stopping Curry’s shooting.
In 2016, Curry had a 66.9 percent real true shooting percentage; that is good for almost 12 percent over the league average for that respective year; 12 percent over the league average. “Unstoppable” is how I’d begin to describe that statistic; that’s only a fraction of it.
Curry averaged 1.17 points per possession in 2016, which is better than any player in the league regardless of frequency or amount of possessions (the closest was JJ Redick, who played in half the possessions as Curry did). One look at his Synergy profile and it becomes clear: he ranked so high thanks to one thing, his shooting.
Curry’s Synergy Tracking Stats – 2016
- All jump shots: 1.28 PPP (top 1 percent in NBA)
- Catch-and-shoot jumpers: 1.44 PPP (top 1 percent in NBA)
- Off-the-dribble jumpers: 1.21 PPP (top 1 percent in NBA)
- Spot up shooting:1.50 PPP (top 1 percent in NBA)
It didn’t matter how Curry was getting his shot up, it was going to find its way into the basket. Curry also had 71.9 effective field goal percentage from the corner three areas (3rd in NBA) and he also led the league on 3’s from 28-47 feet at 51.6 percent (the rest of the league was only shooting 20.8 percent from that same range), per ESPN.
How unprecedented, and unstoppable, Curry’s shooting was in 2016 should now be evident. That evidence holds even more weight considering how heavily we value shooting today. We live in a world where shooting ability is the single most valuable thing in basketball; the “revolutionary” realization that shooting 50 percent on 2-pointers essentially equals shooting 33.3 percent on 3-pointers has taken over the sport. Curry in 2016 was the upstart of that revolution.
Other scoring
Curry’s shooting alone would be enough to justify his 2016 season ranking amongst the all-time greats, but it wasn’t a one-dimensional season; Curry dominated with every way of scoring.
Curry also led the league in field goal percentage on layups in 2016 on a 68.7 percent clip (those are inside numbers you’d usually expect to see from a post-up big man). You know of the layups I’m talking about: the high-arching, quick-release finger roll layup that looks more like a “prayer shot” rather than a league-leading accuracy shot. But that’s 2016 Curry for you.
Curry also ranked in the top 10 percent of the league on runners and floaters from any distance, per Synergy Sports. And as an added bonus, per ESPN, in 2016 Curry averaged more 4th quarter points per 48 minutes than any player of the 21st century (including LeBron and Kobe Bryant). He also ranked in the top two percent of players in efficiency when under a short shot clock.
Not only was Curry the undoubtedly greatest shooter of all-time in 2016; he was an elite, elite, four-level scorer (layups, mid-rangers, 3-pointers, long-range threes) who evidently only stepped up his game when most necessary (short shot clock situations, the 4th quarter, etcetera). His offensive impact doesn’t stop there though, no, it keeps getting better.