Stephen Curry’s 2015-16 season was amongst the best ever in NBA history

Stephen Curry’s 2016 season: His playmaking

Curry’s playmaking is like the inner-workings of a Lamborghini; his shooting is the almost iconic outermost-design. Most people praise Lamborghini’s for their beautiful, cool-looking exterior but the interior functionings (i.e. the engine and whatnot) are just as impressive (so I’d imagine; I’m no car expert). Curry’s playmaking in 2016 was just as impressive as his scoring.

But when you’re as good as a scorer as Curry was in 2016, playmaking admittedly comes a tad bit easier for you. The eyes of defenders were always on Curry, not his teammates when he had the basketball. Take pick-and-roll situations for example; when Draymond Green set a screen for Curry before slipping as a roll man, the defenders were more worried about Curry stepping back for the 3-pointer or Green cutting to the basket? Curry stepping back for the 3, of course.

It’s the same situation when Curry shoots his way to the basket off a drive, opposing wing defenders have to decide whether between to sagging off of Curry’s teammates on the perimeter or letting Curry get a clear lane to the basket; most of the time they’ll avoid the latter option.

This is shown perfectly by ESPN’s QSQ stat (Quantified Shot Quality) which measures what the effective field goal percentage of the “league average shooter” would shoot when getting passed to from Curry. It essentially measures the quality of shots that Curry created in 2016, and to no surprise, nobody created better shots than he did that year. Curry had a 57.9 percent QSQ in 2016, which was good for 1st in all of the NBA that year.

Per bball-index, Curry ranked in the top 96.5th percentile in terms of playmaking when lined up against the rest of the league. In 2016, Curry was not only the league’s best shooter and scorer, but he was also in the upper, upper-echelon of playmakers as well. As stated earlier, those two things sort of go hand-and-hand. That is because of something called “gravity,” which is yet another aspect of basketball that Curry reigned (and still reigns) supreme over in 2016.

His “gravity”

Go back and watch any Warriors game from 2016 (any year really, for that matter) then pause at any point when the Warriors are on the offensive end; make a mental note to yourself how many eyes or bodies are directed towards Curry each time when you pause it. If you pause it when Curry doesn’t have the ball, I’d still assume 2-3 defenders are paying heavy attention to him each time; if you pause it when Curry does have the ball, I’d assume there would be times when you notice all five defenders paying close attention to him. That is what we call “gravity.”

And if I were to call Curry something in relation to gravity, I would call him the king of it; he is the “King of Gravity.” Just being on the same floor as Curry makes a player better; arguably more so than any player ever before. Think of it like this: you’re playing two-on-two and your teammate (somehow) is Steph Curry (yeah, lucky you).

Your game is predominantly inside, but usually, you’re playing with a rather subpar-shooting partner; usually you end up just getting doubled up inside.

With Curry, that suddenly becomes the least of your worries; cause who in their right mind is going to leave Curry open on the perimeter? You have been blessed with the chance to finally work one-on-one against your man (who is now constantly checking to assure his teammate is keeping up with Curry) inside this time around; you and Curry score the easy victory.

This analogy is how it likely feels (though to a much more realistic degree) to be teammates with Curry in the NBA. Per Ben Taylor, Curry had a “gravity score” of 0.287207 in 2016, which tries to measure the amount of attention he draws from other off-ball defenders. That score is ridiculously high; for a solid comparison, that is 67 percent higher than anyone on the Warriors that year (second was Klay Thompson at 0.198503).

After looking at Curry’s playmaking and gravity in 2016, on top of his all-time shooting/scoring, I’m going to say, at least, this: 2016 Curry was the best offensive season in basketball history. Now, perhaps pushing you to agree on any further statement is asking too much, but I’m going to do exactly that. Here’s one final slide, “my home stretch,” for why Curry’s 2016 season might also be one of the greatest overall seasons in basketball history.