I know there is not enough written about Golden State and Stephen Curry so I wanted to rectify that. Is Curry the Messi of basketball? At the moment, this year definitely seems like it. I remember reading this great post about Messi: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/
and it inspired me to try and do the same for Curry.
I looked at each player's statistics for every season in the past 20 years and there are several categories which the 2015-16 Curry is out performing everyone by a mile.
First let's look at efficient field goal % (see below for details) as a function of field goal attempts. Mostly I'm interested to see how efficient a player is when they are asked to do a lot (i.e. many field goal attempts):
I marked some of the outliers in the figure. Curry is taking many field goal (over 20) attempts and makes them at an unprecedented EFG % (65%). The only player to achieve over 60% EFG with more than 15 FGA is LeBron James which has done it twice. On the other hand, we can see the poor start for the year by Bryant and Rose. In terms of volume shooting Bryant (2005-06) and Iverson (2001-02) are separated from the pack. While Bryant was taking all those shoots at slightly higher EFG % than the NBA average (which is around 48% in the last 20 years), Iverson was doing it at much lower EFG precentage.
Let's look at true shooting which should favor the quality free throw shooters:
Curry's gap from the rest of the NBA is even larger. Bryant and Rose are closer to the pack due to their good free throw shooting %. Iverson (2001-02 season) stands out in terms of volume of true shooting attempts and also low efficiency.
Since the Warriors seem to end the majority of their games in the 3rd quarter, Curry does not get as many minutes as he would otherwise. If we plot points per 36 minutes vs. minutes we can see how great Curry's year is so far:
Generally speaking, players that score a lot get more playing time. Aren't you glad I'm here to explain such complicated ideas?
Only once in the past 20 years a player managed to average over 30 points per 36 minutes of play (Bryant 2005-06). This year both Cousins and Curry are on pace to achieve this feat where Curry has separated himself from the rest by a large margin. Other noticeable players on this figure are Rodman which managed to score less than 5 points a game while playing over 25 minutes, and Mason who averaged 43.1 minutes of play in the 1996-97 season while averaging 13 points a game. It is obvious that those two did not get their playing time due to their great scoring skills.
Let's look at the plus minus stats:
The plus minus mostly reflects the great start the Warriors have had to this season. Even though their entire starting 5 have a great plus minus Curry and Green stand out from the rest.
Last but not least, we can look at 3 point shooting vs. volume:
Curry is on a different planet right now!
And then he can do this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFMID10-1Qs
Conclusions:
Many of the outliers in the data presented in this post are from this season. This is partially due to the fact that only 20 games have been played so far. My guess is that some of the trends, for example Bryant shooting so poorly, are going change as the season proceeds.
Stephen Curry - will you marry me?
Technical Details:
Data is taken from NBA.com. All season starting from 1996-97 are included. All games up to 12.03.2015 are included in the 2015-16 season.
EFG% - (FGM+0.5*FGM)/FGA
TSA - (FGA+0.44*FTA)
TS - PTS/(2*TSA)