Stephen Curry: Clutchest Player In The NBA

After a start filled with turmoil, the Warriors did something that’s almost been an unthinkable for them this season: Mount a comeback, and finish the job.

Their overtime win against the 1st seed in the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics, was capped off by another legendary Stephen Curry game-winner, and while it took a village to get them there (major props to Trayce Jackson-Davis and Jonathan Kuminga in particular), the highlight of the night was largely Curry’s brilliance - a consistent occurrence year-to-year despite the narratives that we see all the time. This time, across the 4th quarter and overtime, Steph poured in 20 points and 4 assists on 7-for-11 from the field, 4-of-5 of which were from beyond the arc.

Not only did he manage to lead the comeback in dominant fashion, but he did this with 5 fouls, his 5th coming halfway through the 3rd quarter when Celtics forward Jaylen Brown made the mistake of taunting Curry with a “too small” gesture after scoring an and-1: The Celtics made a concentrated effort to try and pick Steph out for Jayson Tatum’s isolation plays in the 4th and OT, but his teammates were able to show the proper help. It was excellent execution by the Warriors as a whole, but especially on Steph’s part to take on a much bigger player while playing smart defense and avoiding the foul that’d lock him out of the ending.

While the Warriors haven’t necessarily executed down the stretch all that well recently, Curry is (as usual) the exception. He leads the NBA this season in clutch points, clutch field goals, clutch threes, overtime points, overtime threes, 4th quarter threes, and is 2nd in 4th quarter points. It’s not particularly close between his clutch scoring and the next guy, Damian Lillard, either: Lillard has scored 78 total clutch points this season on 46% from the field, while Steph’s scored 91 on 51% shooting. Of his 25 free throws taken in the clutch this year (ranking 4th despite his status as the only credible scoring threat on the team during Klay Thompson’s prior slump), he’s made 24 of them. All in all, pretty light work for the toughest shot-maker in the NBA across the board.

These numbers are only somewhat representative of what Steph’s been able to do down the final stretch this year, as they include desperation shots while trailing and even some heaves which most players don’t take… Curry’s credibility has never been questioned as a shooter, in part because nobody can even fathom to do that without sounding like the only hoops they’ve watched was a highlight reel of his misses, but the entire rest of his game is not credited properly, especially in these situations.

Just under 54% of his total shots have been unassisted late, with 63% of those being 2-point field goals. His ability to weaponize the threat of his shot combined with an all-time great handle and all-time great finishing at the rim have given him the lanes to not solely rely on jumpers, emphasizing his versatility in late-game situations which has always been there. The threes fall at a 48% clip which is absurd, but he’s also made 55% of his 2-point attempts, which are largely contact-affected layups and mid-range jumpers with a trailing defender in close proximity based on the game film. A 51/48/96 slash in a high-pressure environment, even on low volume given the limited minutes of clutch stats, is as real of a deal as it comes.

Beyond scoring, Steph’s making the right reads out of the blitz coverages he sees nightly with the game on the line, specifically so what happened to Boston doesn’t happen to everyone else. We’ve seen this a few times already this season: He beat Oklahoma City at the buzzer with a layup, has made numerous go-ahead shots late, and while he hasn’t made them all, there’s nobody who shoots 100% in the clutch no matter what the rose-colored lenses are, and that’s just how the game of basketball goes. The re-emergence of Klay Thompson as a credible scoring threat has given Steph the spacing he needs to be the playmaker that every other lead star in the league has the privilege to do, and that was on full display last night.

The otherworldly expectations layered onto Curry come from disingenuous discourse, and by all metrics, he’s the clutchest player in the NBA this season. The state of the Warriors was once that Curry didn’t have to play the 4th quarter, meaning his clutch statistics didn’t pop nearly as much - when you win 73 games, not a lot of them end up close, as shocking as that sounds. Without the strong rosters he’s had prior, he’s been able to show off his late-game magnificence more often, at the expense of a few lost games before Klay started to find his rhythm once again.

As of now, it’s pretty cut-and-dry that the leader for the new Clutch Player of the Year award is the same guy that the NBA governor survey pointed to this offseason as the player they’d want taking the last shot for their team the most. That’s not likely to change the more the Warriors keep playing, as he’ll keep making the tough late-game shots and keep proving the narrative wrong. Players, coaches, the front office, everyone who is close to the game and isn’t just a fan watching from the sidelines knows that Stephen Curry is the clutchest player in the NBA right now, and his skill level has to be respected if their teams want to win games late.

It’s time the rest of the media, and NBA watchers everywhere, got on board with what anyone who’s good enough to work in or around the league already knows.

(Photo credit: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)