Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players in the NBA: Why Steph Curry is UNSTOPPABLE in the Warriors offense

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why do I have Steph Curry at number two? Like I said yesterday, I view a clear cut top tier in the form of Giannis, Steph and Nikolea Jokic. The gist of it is is those three guys. We have six current active former Finals MVPs, right but with Lebron there's been a little bit of a decline that we've

seen in the last few years. Kawhi Leonard literally can't stay healthy and on the court for an entire playoff run, and Kevin Durant hasn't won a Finals MVP since twenty eighteen and is coming off of two of his lesser playoff runs in his career. So I wanted to kind of make a clear delineation between number four and the rest of the field and three up because these are the last three guys who all in the last twenty five months have been consistently great regular season players. Each

of them have won a Finals MVP. Nikole Jokich and Giannis in particular have won MVPs as well during that span. Those three are clearly a level above the rest of the field, at least in terms of the level of re cognition that they deserve for what they've accomplished recently. Now, the reason why I have him below Jokicz pretty simple. Nikola Jokicz just dominated everybody, including a bunch of his Peers on his way to winning the title. He deserves

to be the clear cut number one this year. I have him above Yannis because Yannis is demonstrating some clear signs of regression in terms of his skill set, particularly free throw shooting and really anything away from the paint and away from the rim, I should say. And in addition to that, it like straight up cost his team in the first round series against Miami, as the Bucks lost the series they had no business losing, even if

we acknowledge the Yannis injury. So I think it makes perfect sense to have Steph in there at number two. I'll go even further. I personally very much regret not putting Steph at number one in my list last year. Now, the reasoning was at the time I was so impressed by Yannis in that second round loss to the Boston Celtics, and how without Chris Middleton and with the complete combustion of every spot up player on the roster, he still had them this close to winning that series and advancing

to the conference finals. And I didn't think Giannis deserved to get knocked off simply because his team was injured. But I should have applied the same amount of appropriate credit and respect for getting the job done that I'm applying to Jokics right now. I should have applied that to Steph last year. So I regret making that particular decision.

So when I look back on the twenty twenty two season, now, I feel like we as a basketball community should view Steph as having been the best player in the world during that twenty twenty two season. But you know, can't go back and erase the past. It is what it is. Like I said, I regret it, but as of right now, I feel very comfortable putting Steph in at number two. Now,

let's talk a little bit about last year. So in this previous season, as I predicted, because the year before, the year that they won the title, he actually had a down regular season. If you remember by it was like the first time he shot below forty percent from three in a full season in a long time. It was just a weird season where he just wasn't quite the same productive player. And I think it was fluky. I thought it was fluky in the time at the moment.

And I remember after they won the title, I was like, clearly, this playoff run demonstrates that the regular season was fluky Steph should get back on track this season, and he absolutely did. Twenty nine points per game, six rebounds and six assists, sixty six percent through shooting, which is obviously completely outrageous, played in fifty six games. It was a really weird Warrior season. A bunch of young players were

dissatisfied in their roles. This is one of the big reasons why I've been so critical of the two timelines plan. It's one thing if in a perfect world, if you can navigate everyone's personalities, it can make some sense. But the big downside is is that's not how life works. In life, like everyone has a personality, everyone has an ego,

everyone has expectations in a situation. And so if you're Jonathan Kaminga, or you're James Wiseman, or you're Jordan Poole, you have a certain expectation of what your life should be like, you have a certain expectation of your what

your role on an NBA team should be. And like, imagine being James Wiseman or Jonathan Kminga in particular, players that were the you know best, some of the best players in the country coming up and suddenly you're riding Pine in the NBA, and even though you probably deserve to play, and your buddies, who are also at the top of their classes in high school, are elsewhere in the league just off making mistakes. You're watching them be able to play thirty minutes a night, no matter how

many turnovers they get, no matter how many misshots they get. Meanwhile, you're on the Golden State Warriors, and you can't get in because Steve Kurr doesn't trust you to defend and

to make the right decisions offensively. Now, for the record, no one's wrong, Like Steve Kerr as an obligation to lead his team to win basketball games, and Jonathan Kaminga wasn't ready, and James Wiseman wasn't ready, And when Jordan Poole was struggling in this playoff run, he had to make a move in a different direction in terms of the rotation. Right, he had no choice. His obligation is

to win basketball games. So is it for Steph for Klay Thompson, for Raymond Green, for Andrew Wiggins, for Con Looney for all those guys, Right, And so I'm not blaming anybody on the Warriors front. It's just the reality of the situation. You're asking a bunch of younger players who, like everyone else in their early twenties, kind of lacks long term perspective, right, Because I would argue that there's great value in learning how to play basketball in that environment.

But try telling that to a twenty one year old who's watching his buddy drop twenty seven on twenty seven shots, you know what I mean. Like, so, I understand where those guys were coming from. I don't blame anybody, but that's what happened. There was a clear, you know, fissure taking place between the younger players and the roster and the older players on the roster, and you combine that with the Draymond punch and the fact that the team just couldn't gel on the road at all all season,

and it just was kind of a disaster. I mean, Steph did everything he could to float the shit, but things just never really settled down. I Mean, Steph scored forty or more points six times this season and the Warriors were only five hundred in those games. He had fifty twice and they lost both of those games. He was like the lighthouse in the storm, but there's just nothing he could do with all of that chaos around him to really get them to settle down and get

into a groove. As a matter of fact, the Warriors were just thirty and twenty six in the game Steph played this season, despite how good he was offensively. Now, let's take a look at the play some of the play type data, as you can imagine, was Steph Curry. His half court creation numbers were just completely off the damn charts. He ran seven hundred and seventy eight picking rolls this year, which led to nine hundred and fourteen points.

That's one point one eight points per possession. Now, that didn't qualify for a high volume list, right because our high volume list was a minimum of one thousand. But if I had just that list from one thousand to seven to fifty, there are thirty four players in the NBA this year that ran at least seven hundred and fifty picking rolls, and Steph ranked number one in the entire NBA pick and roll efficiency at one point one

eight points per possession. We're gonna talk a lot more about pick and roll here in a few minutes, because I want to highlight the Lakers series as a demonstration of Steph's superpower, how completely unguardable he is, and the way that he solved the Lakers pick and roll coverage. We will get to that here in a little bit. One point zero seven points per ISO. That was in the seventy sixth percentile. Although very low volume compared to some of his peers. Steph just doesn't run its on ISOs.

He certainly could, It's just it's not what he needs to do in that particular offense, although he does end up having to lean on that a little bit more when he gets to the postseason off screen actions the Warriors. Just so you guys know, this is actually a crazy stat. The Warriors run more off ball screens than any team in the NBA. To give you an idea, the Warriors took a shot off of an off ball screen nine hundred and fifty eight times this year, nine to fifty eight,

almost one thousand. Right the Jazz we're in second place at seven to twenty four. In twenty four of the thirty NBA teams ran fewer than four hundred off screen plays leading to shots. So that when I talk about how the Lakers are, excuse me, the Warriors run more motion than everybody. They run more sets than everybody. They take more shots and sets than everybody. It's literally not even close. The Warriors just run more organized offense than

anybody in the league by mile. Steph personally shot fifty two percent effective field goal percentage and off screen plays scored one point zero three points per possession. Here's a little bit of trivia for you guys. Which guy do you think led the NBA this year in points coming off of off ball screens? Take a guess. The correct answer is Klay Thompson at four hundred and seven. This is how crazy this is. Klay Thompson led the league in points off screens at four hundred and seven. Second

place was Lori Markinen at two thirty five. So Klay Thompson in and of himself is like the only guy in the league that leans that heavily on off screen stuff himself. Steph was also the very best drible handoff player in the league last year, one point two points per possession. He was number one out of twenty players to run at least one hundred dribble handoffs. He was one point three four points per spot up possession, which

is absolutely outrageous. Sixty seven percent effective field goal percentage now low volume because obviously Steph doesn't get a ton of spot up looks. But if I run a filter, there were one hundred and eighty two players in the NBA last year, basically half the league, who took at least one hundred and fifty spot up possessions, and you guessed it, Steph was number one on that list with

his one point three four points per possession number. So how do you become the best pick and roll player in the league, the best drible handoff player in the league, the best spot up player in the league, basically the best half court shot creator in the league. How do you do that through incredible shot making and just just

get ready because these numbers are just completely ridiculous. Catch and shoot jump shot STEPH two percent effective field goal percentage, pull up jump shot STEPH sixty one percent effective field goal percentage. That's best in the league. Only player in the league over sixty percent in effective field goal percentage, forty five percent on floaters, seventy three percent in the restricted area on volume. Not only is seventy three percent insane for a guard in the restricted area, but two

point two makes per game. That's more than Kawhi Leonard. That's more than Kevin Durant. That's more than James Harden. He actually got to the rim quite a bit during

this season. I've said, you guys might remember there was kind of a crazy sequence like a month ago where uh, Steph hits that like crazy putt wheor it like puts it up the hill and then it like slowly rolls down and goes into the hole and he starts walking away before it goes in, And I tweeted out, I was like, Steph has the best hand eye coordination in sports, and literally the very next day he hits a hole

in one in the same tournament. You get, but like that hand eye coordination you can specifically see in the shot making. Nobody is better in all of sports at precise body movements and muscle memory the way that Steph Curry is. That's his superpower and that's the reason that despite being below six y four, he's really the only player that's below six ' four that will probably ever get consideration in the top twenty all time NBA players.

If you ask people to build their top twenty list, it's a bunch of dudes sixty six and taller and Steph Curry, and every once in a while you might find somebody who throws Dwayne Wade in there on that list somewhere he's six 's four in freaky athletics. Steph has completely broken the mold for what succeeds in the NBA. You can be a small guard and be good in the NBA, but to be truly transcendently, unbelievably, historically great, it's unheard of except for Steph. And that hand eye

coordination superpower, I think is what drives that. So looking at the playoff runt, he absolutely eviscerated the Sacramento Kings, despite the Warriors road struggles continuing as they fell down two zero in that series, averaged thirty four to five and five on sixty two percent true shooting and drops fifty in Game seven, And I went back and watched most of that game this morning, and he missed a lot of shots that he normally makes in that game,

So like that fifty could just easily have been sixty or sixty five. The Lakers series wasn't his best statistical series, but it was the first time I could just say, like, the stats don't really tell the story there. Because Jordan pul and Klay Thompson both kind of like spontaneously combusted in that series. They both combined to take one hundred and fifty seven shots and only scored one hundred and

forty seven points on them. And with that and some of the offensive limitations in the front court, it really became Steph solo versus the entire Laker defense, and so

obviously there was going to be a dip inefficiency. And I can say personally is, as you guys know, the only team that I'm really a fan of right now is the Lakers because I'm a fan of Lebron James, and when he retires that I pretty much won't have a team that I specifically root for, and so like that, this is one of the last times that I'm gonna be experiencing like what it's like rooting for a series as a fan. And I can tell you rooting against

Steph Curry that series was absolutely terrifying. It was like there was literally nothing they could do with them. And so this is where I want to get to the Steph pick and roll thing, because you know, we talk a lot about the skills necessary to be a successful pick and roll ball handler on the show, right, Like, you got to have a really good handle so that

you can set your man up for screens. You've got to be able to shoot off the dribble really well, which forces players to go over the top of screens when they're guarding you from there. You've got to be able to score anywhere between there in the basket, whether that's a long mid range pull up, a floater in the short range, or anything around the rim, right, And then you've got to be able to make all of the reads. But that's just like the actual tactle skills

involved with UH with pick and roll, except for the reads. Right. Another big part of it is just the basketball IQ element, the chess match element, figuring out different angles and spacing

and different little tricks to generate better openings. And Steph was just unbelievable in that chess match in the Lakers series, And so I wanted to quick kind of breakdown Games one through Game four and kind of go over that chess match because I thought it was a great example of just how malleable Steph is and how he can figure out things over the course of a playoff series. So in Game one, the Warriors primarily run their motion offense.

The Lakers basically top lock all of the guards, forcing them to backcut, and Lebron James and Anthony Davis are ignoring Draymond Green and Kevon Looni and just trolling the paint, patrolling the paint, and they just shut down the Warrior offense. And yeah, I got close slate because the Lakers let

their foot off the gas a little bit. But then after they tied it, they didn't score a bucket the rest of the game because the Lakers defense shut them down again, and the Lakers actually led by fourteen and in the fourth quarter. So the Lakers kind of dominate Game one, right, and Steph only runs nine pick and

rolls in the entire game. So in Game two, the Warriors want to run more pick and roll, but they want to generate more space in that pick and roll, so they bench Kevon Looney, they bring on Jamichael Green, they space the floor, and they just start spamming pick and roll. Steph runs nineteen pick and rolls, which would have been more if the game was closer, but the Warriors bloom out. The Lakers get absolutely cooked by the pocket pass. Steph finishes with twelve assists, and the Warriors

win big. Then we go to Game three and Anthony Davis puts on a defensive masterpiece. So essentially this is where you know. And again, Anthony Davis got a high spot on this list in large part because of what he was able to do to the Warrior offense. But we talked a lot about the yo yo right, the ability to get up to the level of the screen to do something to disrupt the pocket pass, then to sprint back to the basket and be able to protect

the paint. And Ady just put on a clinic in Game three, was really really good at the level of the screen, being active with his hands, enforcing deflections and turnovers on that interchange there at the high ball screen right, So Ady dominates the game defensively. The Lakers win big. Game four is the game that I want to use as an example of Steph's basketball IQ. So Ad is causing problem up at the level of the screen with his hands, right, how does Steph counter it? He counters

it by holding onto the ball longer. Sometimes he'd just drag Ad off to the side, so set the screen and just make a bunch of lateral dribbles which pulls Ad over which created a much bigger pocket for him to make that pass. We didn't have to pass around Anthony Davis's hands as much. Sometimes two he would just get over the screen and kind of work his way

to the top of the key. He'd pin the dude on his backside and kind of get keep him in jail and just hold it until the big man actually got past Anthony Davis, and then he would like use pass fakes and wrap around ad. I was watching the film this morning. It was like Game four was one of the most magnificent pick and roll performances I've ever seen. The Lakers were literally throwing the kitchen sink at Steph. He ran twenty eight pick and rolls and the Warriors

scored thirty eight points on them. That's one point three to six points per possession in pick and roll in a pivotal playoff game on the road against the best defense in the league, and they just literally could not do anything with him. And if it wasn't for Lonnie Walker getting hot at the end of the game and Steph Curry again. Now this is another thing. To Anthony Davis's credit. The final possession, he switched the pick and roll and turned Steph into an ISO player and he

got a couple of stops. So credit to Anthony Davis there. But and again we'll talk about it in a second, but like the reality is is the Warriors eventually just ran out of gas in that series because they weren't getting anything out of Klay Thompson, because they weren't getting anything out of Jordan Pool, because the Lakers were able

to throw the kitchen sink at Steph. Eventually he fatigued, and over the final three games of the series, Steph was just ten for thirty nine from three And I do think that that's a huge I think that in large part is a kind of a residual effect of all of the fatigue that built up over the course of the series. But then again that's where Chris Paul

should come in. Like that, that's where having the ability to offload some of that slow down, methodical pick and roll attack to a different guard in giving Steph more off ball possessions where he can relax a little bit more, I think that will help a lot with that specific dynamic, and I think that's why they went that dynamic with

or that way with that trade. But make no mistake, like in that situation, thirty eight points on twenty eight pick and rolls when Anthony Davis is in almost every action, it was just unbelievable. So here's the bottom line. There are a lot of really great offensive players in this league, but there are only two that I view is truly unstoppable, where even if they don't shoot particularly well, you cannot prevent them from consistently generating great shots for themselves or

their teammates. And that's a great example that game that the game that I pointed out that thirty eight points on twenty eight pick and rolls. Steph didn't shoot particularly well, but he manufactured points come hell or high water with his ability to consistently warp the defense and make the

right play. And that's what I'm saying, Like almost every offensive player down the list as we go further down, whether it's Giannest, whether it's Kevin Durant, whether it's Lebron, Anthony Davis, Kawhi, Jason Tatum, Joel Embiid, all those guys are to a certain extent dependent on shot result. Like Joel Embid's mid range jumper stopped going in his offensive impact fell off a cliff right Lebron James couldn't get his pull up jump shot or spot up jump shot

to go at all in this playoff run. Suddenly he dropped from thirty points a game to twenty five points per game. Wasn't even the best player on his team anymore, right, You know, Jason Tatum is so much depends on whether

or not he's making that pull up three. But when it comes to Steph Curry and Nikole Jokic, they're the only players in this league or no matter what you do, no matter what you throw at them, you cannot stop them in their offense from consistently generating high quality shots which are going to go in over the course of a game and certainly over the course of a series. There's no coverage they can't beat. Like again, the Lakers literally threw everything at Steph Curry in that series, and

there was just nothing that he couldn't solve. There's no adjustment that Steph can't make to find an opening. No matter how great your defense is. Steph is the very best shot maker in the league. He is consistently a threat with or without the basketball, and he's worked incredibly hard to turn himself into a positive defensive player despite his physical limitations. And lastly, and this is the last thing I want to say on the Steph Curry front, He's got a nasty streak. He is one of the

most competitive players in the league. I talk a lot about this idea of the difference between loving basketball and

hating losing. In my time playing the game, I've met so many players that are incredibly talented, but when I'm in a situation, whether it's in an open gym when I was in college or pick up basketball here in town now as an adult, like I would see that guy and I'd be like, man, he's super talented, but I'd rather not play with him today, not because of touches or anything like that, but because I don't think

he hates it's losing enough. And I have a feeling that even if he makes a couple of nice plays, that it's gonna be a hard it's gonna be a chore to win this game because he's just not gonna give a shit enough about doing all of those things and like, and that's just something as I've grown older,

I've noticed the difference between that with players. And then you'll meet a lot of guys like I'm even in my time coaching in high school, there are specific players where it's like he's not as talented as the dude that's in front of him in the rotation. But like sometimes like us and the coaching staff would decide, like, hey, we should play him instead, because like he's just gonna

go out there and freaking fight. He's just gonna fight, because at the end of the day, winning basketball games is like fifty percent talent, skill execution, and fifty percent of it is just a knockdown, drag out fight. And like, that's what I love about Steph is like there's a nastiness to him. There's a fight to him, and he is obviously the most gifted shot maker in the league, but none of that matters if he's not nasty. And

Steph also has that nasty he's been. You know what's funny because like I during the Steph Lebron rivalry in the mid twenty ten's, I was younger, right, So I was like, what in my early mid twenties, what twenty four to twenty five years old, And I couldn't stay in Steph obviously because I was rooting against him all the time, and I was a big Lebron fan. Also, I was just younger, so I struggled to compartmentalized stuff, and as I've grown older, like I have just completely

fallen in love with Steph's game. And it's funny now looking back, because like he's legitimately my second favorite player in the league behind Lebron, and I like absolutely love watching him play and I've become such a huge fan of his and like it took time and distance from that to kind of figure it out, but like I it's just been kind of a cool like journey as a fan to kind of see the difference in the way that I viewed Stephan now versus the way that

I viewed him ten years ago or so I should say, like eight seven, eight years ago. Hey, guys, that puts Steph at number two. We got number one tomorrow, big shock, It's going to be Nicole Jokic. I'm excited to talk about that for a little bit tomorrow, and then heading into next week, we're gonna be doing our all time player rankings. Actually, I think we're just looking at the last twenty five years to basically everything post MJ. So

that'll be fun as well. Three weeks of that, and then we have three weeks of season previews heading into training camp, and from there we'll be breaking down actual basketball. That's all I have for today is always I sincerely appreciate you guys, and I will see you tomorrow. The volume