When’s the last time that you thought about Stephen Curry?
Maybe the answer is Tuesday night, when the two-time NBA MVP led his team in scoring as the Golden State Warriors crushed the Utah Jazz, one of their supposed threats in the Western Conference, although that seems unlikely. While Curry was good, he was far from a revelation, making just eight of 18 shots for 25 points.
So I ask again — when’s the last time you really thought about Stephen Curry?
Because for all of the Warriors’ glory this season as the NBA’s most spectacular superteam, Curry is the odd man out in Golden State — and the biggest loser in Kevin Durant’s decision to head West.
Think back to just a year ago. The Warriors were all anyone could talk about in the NBA, having destroyed the record for most consecutive wins to start a season. In fact, on this day in 2015, Golden State boasted an absurd 26-1 record.
Curry, meanwhile, was on pace for the best offensive season in NBA history, yet more important than what he accomplished is how he did it. His love affair with the 3-pointer redefined the game of basketball. There was clutching of pearls and rending of garments by old heads worried that Curry’s chucking would ruin the next generation. Some legendary shooters of the past voiced their support for Curry; others couldn’t get past their jealousy, their insatiable desire to have been as free as the MVP.
And in a single moment — that very second when Durant put pen to paper and switched allegiances this summer — Curry took a backseat.
No matter your metric, he’s no longer the toast of the NBA. Take the MVP race, for starters. The conversation in 2015-16 wasn’t, “Who should win MVP?”; it was whether anyone would have the gall to submit a ballot with anyone but Curry atop the list. And last season, Curry famously became the only unanimous MVP in NBA history.
This year? According to multiple sportsbooks, Curry isn’t even in the top-five likeliest MVP candidates for 2016-17 — although Durant is, coming in fourth at the time of this writing behind Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and James Harden. In the eyes of the oddsmakers (our sagest sports observers), then, Curry isn’t even the leader of his own team these days.
The general public is far less interested in Curry this year, as well. That will happen when you’re no longer making history on a nightly basis, but consider just how precipitous a fall it’s been for the Warriors point guard. Fans are searching his name on Google half as frequently in December 2016 as they did in December 2015. Now that Curry is just one cog in a terrifying, fire-breathing machine, there’s nothing enthralling about his individual performances. Truly, Curry has been subsumed by the whole in Golden State.
That’s had a chilling effect on Curry’s bottom line. After robust sales of his first two signature shoes, particularly in the youth market, sales of the Curry 3 have plummeted. The man who was supposed to be the next Jordan with his dominance in selling shoes to kids is suddenly no better or worse than someone like Damian Lillard, LeBron James … or Kevin Durant.
Lastly, there’s the most important factor: Curry’s on-court production. A year ago, he was leading a revolution. The NBA had fully embraced 3-point shooting, thanks to a pipsqueak playing among giants. Curry shattered his own record for made 3s in 2015-16 with 402 made triples on 45.4 percent shooting from deep, and one assumed he would continue to drain more and more 3s with every passing year. Would he make 500 in 2016-17? 750 by 2020?
Instead, Curry has gone ice-cold from behind the arc, at least by his volcanic standards. He’s shooting just 40.4 percent on 3-pointers despite ever more spacing in Golden State’s offense; at this rate he’d make only about 300 3s this season despite approximately the same amount of playing time per game as last year. Curry was always a threat to pull up at a moment’s notice when he was the one dominating the ball; now that he has to share with another alpha-scoring superstar, Curry’s game has taken a noticeable step back.
And to be fair, he’s probably just fine with that. Curry undoubtedly will win a ton of games while he’s riding shotgun with KD in the Bay. They’ll almost certainly win multiple titles together, too, which is the bottom line for a competitor like Curry. One imagines he would trade all the individual accolades in the world to take away the sting that came with blowing a 3-1 lead in the 2016 NBA Finals, and the only salve for that burn is conquering basketball from now until retirement.
In the end, Curry’s revolution has been co-opted for the greater good. We knew the Warriors would have to make sacrifices as a superteam, but we couldn’t have guessed that one of the NBA’s brightest stars would grow so dim.