Stephen Curry: Doing More With…More?

Warriors Crumble Without Curry

Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Bill Simmons of Grantland once said that the Warriors could still possibly win 55+ games and compete for a playoff spot without Curry. As deep as the Warriors are, it kind of made sense with all the talk about the Warriors’ bench being a playoff team in the Eastern Conference.

But in the West? The whole system in Golden State literally relies on Curry. The system, the team — it’s all built around him. He’s the point that opposing defenses center on, thereby opening up a plethora of opportunities for his teammates. He finds his teammates for good looks rather than trying to do everything himself. On the other end, he guards opposing floor generals and disrupts passing lanes like no one else in the NBA this season.

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Without Curry, the Warriors plummet.

Now conventional wisdom would suggest that were Curry to step out, his fellow Splash Brother would step up to the plate and take on the scoring load. Green would be there to contribute, Barnes would still do his thing on corner threes, Andrew Bogut would still man the middle and Livingston would step into the starting lineup.

The thing is: they’ve used that lineup before. When Livingston, Thompson, Barnes, Green and Bogut are on the floor together, the Warriors have an abysmal offensive rating of 83.7, but boast a respectable 95.4 defensive rating. Still, that’s a net rating of -11.7; in other words, even with Golden State’s best guys playing together on the floor sans Curry, their offense stalls horribly.

While some may look at Thompson and see an All-Star caliber player, much of his growth can be traced back to Curry; that’s not taking away from the player that Thompson has become, but Curry is still a huge part of why Thompson has grown to be an elite player.

One of the marks of an elite level player is the ability to create his own shot. While Thompson has gotten better at creating for himself, over half of Thompson’s 2-pt field goals are assisted (53.8%), and the majority of Thompson’s 3-pt field goals are assisted (90.9).

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To no one’s surprise, Curry is mostly the one setting up his backcourt mate, assisting Thompson on 157 of his 381 assisted field goals made. Even when we look at Thompson’s 37-point quarter, Curry assisted him on at least half of those points. The only Warriors teammate that comes close to matching that number is Green with 75 assists to Thompson.

And speaking of Green — who is beginning to be recognized as one of the Warriors’ “Big Three” — he’s assisted 73.3 percent of the time on 2-pt field goals and 100 percent of the time on 3-pt field goals. Out of his 259 assisted field goals, Curry accounts for 125 of those shots.

In other words, the Warriors’ so-called “Big Three” highly depends on Curry. It’s not like the Big Three the Miami Heat had with LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh — while James was clearly the leader of the three, the other two were still able to create for themselves. That doesn’t apply to the Warriors.

The Warriors don’t have another player able to create his own shot at an elite level like Curry, who shoots 67.1 percent of his 2-pt field goals and 41.1 percent of his 3-pt field goals without an assist.

And on those numbers, he hits 52.4 percent of his 2-pt field goals and drains 43.5 percent of his 3-pt field goals (top-5 in the NBA), earning him the highest true shooting percentage (63.2%) and effective field goal percentage (58.6%) among MVP candidates.

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