By Dan Ferrara, NBA International
He may be the greatest shooter the game has ever seen. He has limitless range, back-to-back MVP awards and happens to be a reigning NBA champion as well. In today’s NBA, Warriors point guard Stephen Curry is on an offensive plateau all by himself, as he shatters his own records from year to year. Still, one area of his game has been debated: his defense.
Curry is not known as a disruptive defender and some stars have, on the surface, found success against him. For example, Damian Lillard and Russell Westbrook, two premier scoring point guards, have averaged 29.1 points and 10.3 assists per game this postseason against the Warriors when Curry has played, with five double-doubles in seven games.
A closer evaluation of the numbers besides points and assists tells a different story – those two have combined to shoot just 37.4%, and Westbrook is just 8-for-25 with seven turnovers when Curry is his primary defender. All of this seems to suggest that the points and assists are essentially steady accumulations that can be accredited to more possessions in games against Golden State given the torrid pace (Warriors have a 101.7 pace this season, 2nd in NBA) and surplus of shots early in the shot clock.
Consider this: point guards who have recently been All-Stars – Chris Paul, John Wall, Kyle Lowry, Isaiah Thomas, Derrick Rose, Jeff Teague, Westbrook and Lillard – averaged an incredible 25.8 points and 7.1 assists per game against the Warriors this season. While that would appear to be a poor reflection on Curry’s defense, a deeper dive into the metrics prove the opposite is true.
| Stephen Curry’s Defensive Statistics | ||||||||||||||
| Category | Statistic | |||||||||||||
| Defensive Field Goal Percentage | 40.2% | |||||||||||||
| 3-Point Defensive Field Goal Percentage | 31.5% | |||||||||||||
| Defending Isolation Plays | 34.4% | |||||||||||||
| Guarding Against Post-Ups | 38.2% | |||||||||||||
| Defense After Getting Screened | 34.0% | |||||||||||||
| Defending In The Paint | 36.6% | |||||||||||||
It turns out that Curry’s defense may be better than originally thought. Though he isn’t necessarily a big or strong point guard, he doesn’t get bullied in the paint or on post-ups. Similarly, though he’s known primarily as a jump shooter, he’s athletic enough to put up stout numbers on isolation plays and after getting screened.
Klay Thompson is generally considered to be the better defender of the Splash Brothers, but Curry’s defensive field goal percentage is 2.8% better than Thompson’s 43% mark. It’s also 6.4% better than Clippers point guard Chris Paul, who was selected to the NBA’s All Defensive First Team earlier this week.
Curry may not be in the upper echelon of premier perimeter defenders or worthy of being in the Defensive Player of the Year discussion, but the numbers suggest he’s not a liability out there for Golden State. He battles hard, handles the assignment he’s given and competes on every possession, which is even more impressive considering what he gives the team on the offensive end.
Sometimes the box score just doesn’t do the game justice, and the perception about Curry’s defense appears to be a direct correlation to that misconception – points and assists just don’t tell the whole story. If Curry’s defense was so poor in a league loaded with highly skilled offensive point guards, the Warriors would have never broken the all-time wins record with 73 this season and wouldn’t be in pursuit of their second consecutive NBA Championship.
