Golden State Warriors: Can Stephen Curry Be Even Better In 2015-16?

On that emotional night of the year when the defending champs open their season with a ring ceremony and the unveiling of a championship banner, sometimes it takes awhile to shake off the jitters and just focus on basketball. But for Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors Tuesday night, it didn’t take long for them to get things going against the New Orleans Pelicans.

In a thoroughly dominant 111-95 victory, the Dubs moved to 1-0 on the 2015-16 season, but with the way Curry played in the first quarter, it’s amazing the demoralized Pelicans were even able to keep it close in the first half.

Everything went right for the Dubs to start their title defense. Draymond Green drilled his first three of the game and held Anthony Davis to 4-of-20 shooting. The Pellies were playing without Jrue Holiday, Tyreke Evans and Norris Cole. Festus Ezeli had 13 points off the bench and even rejected the Brow at one point.

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But the biggest takeaway of the night, as was the case for so many nights last season, was that Stephen Curry is an unbelievable basketball player whose shooting ability extends beyond that of your normal NBA heat check. New Orleans may have battled back and even taken the lead in the second quarter, but let’s be honest: that game was over in the first quarter.

With Kendrick Perkins working Andrew Bogut down low early on, Curry quickly put momentum back on Golden State’s side with a flurry of triples, ultimately unleashing 24 first quarter points on 9-of-13 shooting. Basically, the MVP picked up right where he left off last year.

When the Pelicans’ bigs gave him too much space out of pick-and-rolls, he made them pay with pull-up threes that might as well have been layups. When they double-teamed him, he found the open man and the Warriors’ offense hummed. Even when they tried to keep him away from the ball, he made them pay.

There’s just no defense in the NBA for this kind of play.

I REPEAT: THERE IS NO DEFENSE FOR THIS TYPE OF PLAY IN TRANSITION.

Against a backcourt of Nate Robinson and Ish Smith, it’s hard to get too stoked on Curry’s big night, which saw him put up 40 points, seven assists, six rebounds and two steals. But the way that the reigning MVP dissected the Pelicans’ defense was a marvel to behold.

He completely picked his spots on the floor. Anything he wanted, he got. In fact, a fair amount of his three-point misses were actually wide open. Curry was unbelievable last season, but last night, he took that “league’s most un-guardable player” label to lengths beyond video game levels.

Put the league’s top defenders in the same position on that pull-up three in transition. How do they stop it, other than put a hand up and hope he misses? Even if the defender somehow anticipated what was about to happen and came out to play the pull-up shot, Curry would just blow by his man and attack the basket with a smart pass or a nifty finger roll like he did all night against New Orleans.

It wasn’t just that Curry dropped the most first quarter points in a season opener in 20 years. It wasn’t just that he became the first player since Grant Hill in 1999 to drop a 40-5-5 statline in a season opener (according to ESPN). It was that he did all of this while looking completely in his element. He finished shooting 14-of-26 from the floor, 5-of-12 from downtown and committed only two turnovers.

Very few players in this league make a 40-point game look so “Stephortless.” Had it been a closer game, he would’ve dropped 50.

Maybe part of it was the excitement of professional basketball being back in our lives after a long summer. Maybe it was a long absence of Curry step-backs and sublime Golden State ball movement that did it. But there’s also a chance that the hyper-focused, supremely efficient Steph Curry we saw last night is the improved version of last year’s MVP that we’ll see all season long.

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Let’s clarify: expecting Curry to put up a 40-7-6-2 stat line for the whole season would obviously be unrealistic. It’s also worth noting that head coach Steve Kerr should be in interim head coach Luke Walton‘s ear about the fact that the starters played far too many garbage time minutes in a blowout win, with Curry’s minute total ballooning to 36 by game’s end.

But the Dubs breezed through so many games last year, blowing teams out early and benefitting from resting their starters for quite a few fourth quarters. With the top of the Western Conference a bigger bloodbath than ever before and the importance of home-court advantage being paramount, isn’t it possible that we see and uptick in Curry’s minutes — and therefore, his production — in 2015-16?

Last year, Curry averaged 23.8 points, 7.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.0 steals in 32.7 minutes per game. Tack on a couple of extra minutes per game and it’s entirely possible that a motivated, constantly-working-to-improve Chef Curry finds a way to add a little extra spice to his stat line as well.

The Warriors are better off taking the same minutes management approach they took last season, but if Walton gives his superstar those extra few minutes on a nightly basis, don’t be surprised to see the 27-year-old Stephen Curry how that he not only has another gear we thought to be unfathomable, but that he deserves to win back-to-back MVPs as well.

Next: Stephen Curry: Top 10 Moments From His MVP Season

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