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Move over, LeBron James: You are no longer the best basketball player on the planet.
LeBron has passed the torch, and what is amazing is whom the torch was passed to and how convincing the move has been.
The new best player in the world is not Kevin Durant, who has long been second-best. It is not Anthony Davis, despite the assumption of many that Davis was the heir apparent.
Rather, it is that shooter out of Davidson College, Stephen Curry.
And how did the 6-foot-3 (wink, wink), not-really-a-shooting-guard, not-really-a-point-guard ascend to the throne of World's Greatest Basketball Player just nine years after barely being recruited out of high school?
He became the perfect basketball weapon, a force who can't be guarded and can be stopped only if he stops himself.
We all know about his great shooting and incredible range. But what separates Curry is that he doesn't need off-the-ball movement and picks to create space for a shot. He has an amazing ability to create his own space, and he doesn't even need that much.
And he can shoot from anywhere on the court, so the defense can't ease up or sit back, even from deep.
The combination of not needing a lot of space and having incredible range creates a huge problem for defenses.
Whoever is guarding Curry needs to respect Curry's range and play him tight. Curry leads the NBA with 110 points on pull-up shots, 28 more than anybody else, and he is making a whopping 48.8% of those shots.
That means getting a hand on him 25 feet from the basket, an area defenders are not used to guarding.
But when a defender does come up tight, Curry is so quick that he can then blow past the defender for an easy layup.
Or an easy dish to a big man for a wide-open bucket. Once he has a step past the defender, the defense is broken.
So the defender can't play off Curry, because that is basically like giving him a 22-foot layup, and the defender can't play too tight, because Curry will just use his quickness and blow right by.
The only other alternative is to send two to three defenders at Curry.
He will also beat that.
Notice how calm he stays despite being surrounded by three defenders. Rather than panic and rush the dribble, Curry actually hesitates on the dribble after going behind his back, waiting for the ball to be in a better spot for his left hand.
Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas summed up the greatness of Curry with a column in The Players' Tribune, in which he explains why it is so difficult to guard Curry, noting that what makes him dangerous is that on defense, "you're always guessing."
Thomas says you have to respect the 3-point shot, saying "that's where everything starts for him." But Thomas notes that Curry is not thinking 3-point shot when he gets the ball:
I don't think he ever goes down the court thinking 'I'm pulling up' or 'I'm taking it to the basket.' He reads the court so well that he doesn't need a plan. He can just rely on his instincts and react to the defense, and he can do it all, so he takes whatever you give him ... Steph plays like he's a wide receiver in football running an option route on every play. Everything he does depends on what the defender is doing. So when he's coming at you, if you're afraid of the three — which you should be — and you give him too much space, he'll knock it down. If you play too far up on the three, he'll take you off the dribble. If he beats you on the first step because you were playing too far up, say goodbye. He's already gone. If you sink back with him, he has the shiftiness and the quick release to step back and shoot ... And the worst part is that he's such a good passer, nobody's leaving their man to step up and help. You're on your own.
But what is really scary about Curry is that not only was his MVP season last year not a fluke, he has gotten better this season.
It has been only nine games, but Curry's shooting has improved, and his numbers are up. The most striking improvements are to his eFG%, or effective field-goal percentage, which adjusts field-goal percentage by giving more value to 3-pointers, and PER, or player efficiency rating, which measures a player's overall production. Curry's 36.2 PER is 6.2 better than any other player's. The league average is 15.
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