Stephen Curry has been incredible this season. Only so many words can contribute to our collective understanding of how insane his start has been for the 11-0 Warriors, and only so many wait-is-that-doctored Vines can be believed.
5 charts that show how much better Stephen Curry is than everyone else
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So let’s turn to yet another art form to attempt explain Chef Curry’s dominance: the beloved chart. Here are five showing different facets of Steph’s hegemony atop the league.
1. Steph is on track to have the best individual season ever.
We’re only 11 games in, but nothing we’ve seen indicates this is a fluke. If he hangs on, he’s going to top the best statistical seasons ever produced by the likes of Wilt, Jordan and LeBron.
2. He’s making more threes than some teams.
It’s not enough that Curry is on track to shatter (his own) NBA records for threes made and attempted. In the process, he’s going to go ahead and make more than some entire teams this season. That’s how thoroughly he’s changing the NBA: Some sophisticated teams can’t even get as many looks from deep as he can.
3. Among the highest-usage stars in the NBA, Steph stands apart.
This scatterplot shows the top 50 players in the league in usage rate (20 minutes per game minimum). Curry isn’t No. 1 in usage rate -- he has talented co-workers, to be sure -- but among the most prolific stars in the league, Steph is by far the most efficient.
4. Steph doesn’t even play much late.
The curse of an incredible team: the Warriors usually have such big leads that Curry sits much, if not all of the fourth quarter. He’s played 63 fourth-quarter minutes in 11 games, just under six per game. And he’s still leading the league in scoring by no small margin. Here’s his quarter-by-quarter scoring breakdown.
5. His range knows no bounds.
Steph actually shoots better the further out he goes. He leads the league in attempts from beyond 25 feet by a wide margin with -- get this -- 8.1 shots per game. And he’s hitting more than half of them. Here’s how efficiently (in raw shooting percentage) the top 10 takers of beyond-25-footers shoot them.
