Stephen Curry makes a lot of 3-pointers in a lot of games. So many, in fact, that he may be costing himself a chance to make even more.
On 107 occasions, an NBA basketball player has made at least nine 3-pointers in an NBA basketball game (regular season or playoffs). Stephen Curry has been 18 of those players.
As the threshold of makes increases, so too does the Golden State Warriors point guard’s percentage share of the list. He accounts for nearly a third of the double-digit 3-point performances (11 out of 35) and nearly half of the 11-plus triple showings (six out of 13).
He makes up exactly half of the 12 3-pointer club (two out of four) and exactly all of the 13 3-pointer club (one out of one).
But while Curry is to 3s is what Cy Young is to wins (or to keep it in the basketball realm, what Wilt Chamberlain is to points), here’s the amazing thing: This data is skewed — in a way that hurts Curry.
Young won 511 games in an era where going the distance was the norm. Chamberlain scored 50 points 122 times, but did so in basketball’s own complete-game era: He played 48 minutes or more in all but 17 of those games and never dipped below 43.
As for Curry, his time on the court has been more of a hindrance than an advantage. Only two of Curry’s nine-plus 3-point performances have taken 40 or more minutes, while 41 of the other 89 players on this list have broken that minutes mark.
Curry has hit nine-plus 3s in under 30 minutes as often as he has in over 40, and has averaged just 35.2 minutes across his 18 games on this list.
That Curry’s greatest outbursts come in such modest time frames makes his feats all the more impressive, but it is not entirely coincidental. Curry transforms the court more than just about any player ever has simply by stepping on it. When he catches fire, he consumes all his surroundings.
The Warriors are 15-3 when Curry hits nine 3s, and 13 of those wins have come by double digits. In five of those instances (including last Wednesday’s win over Washington), Curry has sat out the entire fourth quarter.
Curry has made nine or more 3s in just three quarters more times than anyone else (other than Klay Thompson) has ever made nine or more 3s in a game, period.
This relates to one of the weirdest quirks of Curry’s career. For all the 3-point records that Curry set as he rose to superstardom, “most 3s in a game” eluded him.
He became the first player ever to ride his outside shooting to an MVP, the first to carry a team to a title on the back of his long-range jumper, and yet had still never made as many 3s in a game as Donyell Freaking Marshall.
It took his teammate nearly punching his coach, an ankle injury scare, an overemphasis on regular season wins and overtime for him to finally match Kobe Bryant and Marshall at 12 on Feb. 27, 2016, in Oklahoma City.
The following November, he finally hit 13 on a strange night at Oracle in which the New Orleans Pelicans somehow just hung around.
This begs the question: How many 12, 13 or even 14 3-point games would Curry have if he played minutes commensurate with others who have hit nine-plus 3s in a game?
Given the high variance of 3-point shooting and Curry’s tendency to make several 3s in clusters rather than evenly across the course of a game, averaging everything out might make the most sense.
We could calculate the expected quantity of 3-point makes for every second that Curry is on the court, and then apply that to the difference between his average minute total (35.2) in nine-plus 3-point games and that of everyone else (38.2).
However, there is another way to approach this. A simpler way. What if we look only at the five occasions that Curry, on pace to tie or break the single-game record after three quarters, has not returned to the game?