Stephen Curry, officially, remains second on the NBA’s all-time list for 3-pointers made. Friday night in San Francisco, the greatest shooter any of us has ever seen became the unofficial record holder, and that’s just as good an excuse as any to gawk at his numbers.
Combining the regular season and playoffs, Curry has surpassed Ray Allen’s total of 3,358 career treys. It’s only a matter of time before Curry catches Allen on the list that counts for the record books, regular-season threes, at 2,973.
Lest anyone think that Curry has his edge from the playoffs because of a heavy discrepancy in games played there, he’s had 112 postseason appearances, compared to 171 for Allen (Curry is the all-time playoff triples leader, followed by LeBron James and then Allen). It’s just that Allen has 326 more regular-season games under his belt, having played until he was 38. And of course it’s no slight on Allen — a Hall of Famer, two-time champion, and NBA 75th anniversary team member — that Curry hit this milestone on the way to the true record. Curry is just that special.
It’s no guarantee that Curry will have a decade holding the 3-point record, not when James Harden, a year younger than Curry, is a little more than a season’s worth of downtown deliveries behind. Even so, Curry’s average of 3.7 made 3s per (regular season) game is what really tells the story — a number shy of the nine that Curry hit on a 40-point night against the Bulls in a 119-93 romp for 11-1 Golden State. The only other players even at three per game are Duncan Robinson (3.3), Buddy Hield (3.0), and Damian Lillard (3.0). Harden, at 2.8, is sixth all-time with Klay Thompson in fifth at 2.9.
Allen is tied for 16th at 2.3 per game. He and Peja Stjaković are the only players in the top 30 who aren’t active. The game has changed so much, in part because of Curry’s influence, that 76 of the top 100 threes-per-game men of all time are playing (or recovering from injury, or are Kyrie Irving) right now.
With the shot that launched thousands more shots, Curry is indisputably the king. Friday night he got his scepter, and soon enough he’ll have the crown.
Nobody beats the Wiz
Chicago’s loss at Golden State meant that the Wizards, at 8-3, now stand alone with the best record in the Eastern Conference, percentage points ahead of the Nets after Brooklyn’s win at New Orleans.
It’s still November, but if you’re into dreaming, Washington hasn’t finished atop the East standings since 1978-79, when the No. 2 team in the conference was the Spurs, the last place team was the New Orleans Jazz, and over in the Western Conference, the Midwest Division was won by the Kansas City Kings.