Stephen Curry is a top-tier MVP candidate through the first two weeks of the regular season, playing some of the best basketball ever for a 35-year-old.
He's averaging 30.9 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists in a career-low of 31.8 minutes per game, blowing past his gaudy personal best for rate of points scored. More impressive? Curry's shooting 64% on twos and 47.5% on a whopping 12.4 three-point attempts per game all while getting to the free throw line nearly as much as he ever has, good for a scorching 73.3 true shooting percentage—another easy career-high.
Don't forget Curry's crunch-time heroics, either. He leads the league with 28 points in the clutch, per NBA.com/stats, going 5-of-9 from deep, 5-of-5 at the line and making all four of his two-point attempts—including this ridiculous layup past one of the game's best isolation defenders and over one of the its best shot-blockers to send the Warriors to last-second victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the in-season tournament opener.
What's crazy about the standard Curry has set over the last decade-plus is that his historic excellence isn't all that surprising. It's just more of the same for an all-time great who continues forcing his way up the league's list of 10 best players ever, with no final end in sight.
Curry's inherent size and defensive limitations will surely keep him from challenging Michael Jordan as the consensus GOAT, and the same goes for him potentially passing LeBron James in the game's ultimate individual hierarchy. Bill Russell's case as basketball's greatest winner is ironclad.
But finishing his career as a broadly acknowledged top-five player is well within Curry's grasp, especially if he wins a fifth title with the Warriors this season. The biggest reason that seems more possible than ever entering Wednesday's road clash with the defending-champion Denver Nuggets? How Golden State is playing not with Curry on the floor, but its longtime bellwether on the bench—clearly the most pleasant surprise of the Dubs' impressive start to 2023-24.
Warriors have been much better with Stephen Curry on the bench
Chris Paul's presence makes Golden State's performance with Curry off the floor something less than shocking. After all, nearly as much as keeping Jordan Poole's salary slot while maintaining maximum long-term financial flexibility, the Warriors' summer trade for Paul was about propping up bench lineups that have bled points on the scoreboard whenever Curry sits for the duration of the Steve Kerr era. Not even prime, pre-injury Kevin Durant could keep the Dubs afloat with Curry getting a breather.
Golden State's net rating with Curry off the floor last season was -2.3, per NBA.com/stats. It was -1.4 in 2021-22, -5.6 the year before that and -4.3 during Durant's final season in the Bay. The 73-win Dubs also failed to keep their head above water without Curry running defenses ragged, getting outscored by -5.4 points per 100 possessions.
This season, though, the dynasty's most nagging negative trend has been erased. Golden State's net rating absent Curry is a mind-blowing +11.5 in 130 minutes, just short of the Nuggets' dominant third-ranked overall mark. Andrew Wiggins is the only other player on the roster with a higher off-court net rating, evidence of lineups featuring Curry dragging down his plus-minus. The Warriors' vaunted starting five sports a -19.3 net rating across the first eight games of season, too.
Needless to say, Golden State won't be playing like a first-rate title contender when Curry is on the bench all season. There's still small-sample theater at play here, like non-Curry lineups being boosted by fortunate opponent three-point shooting luck and Wiggins still trying to find his two-way footing after fracturing his ribs late in last year's playoff run.
The effectiveness of the Dubs' revamped bench units are the real story behind Curry's on-off numbers anyway. The team's turnover rate with Paul in the game sans Curry dips more than three points to 11.2%, per Cleaning the Glass, a number that would rank first in the league overall. Paul's been a metronome of table-setting and ball security for Golden State, handing out 62 assists against six turnovers, a tough-to-fathom ratio of 10.3 dimes to for every one giveaway.
The Point God isn't the only one off the Warriors' bench playing to extreme type.
Gary Payton II, finally fully healthy, has re-emerged as a two-way Swiss Army Knife this season, locking up ball handlers, raking in deflections and juicing Golden State's transition attack. Dario Saric is hitting 40.6% of his triples on career-high volume, spacing the floor with with the threat of his jumper while also keeping the offense humming with quick, creative passing. Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga are both enjoying mini third-year leaps at the very least, on obvious upward trajectories.
Golden State hasn't boasted so much quality depth since sacrificing it to accommodate Durant's arrival in the summer of 2016. Kerr confidently goes 10-deep on a nightly basis these days, rolling out all-bench quintets while mixing and matching different groups even deep into crunch-time. Just imagine how much better the Warriors will be if Wiggins can shake off early-season labors, scraping the peak he reached while helping his team to its latest title in 2022.
Don't expect Curry's blood red off-court rating to sustain as the 82-game grind continues. Kerr would no doubt make much-needed changes to his lineup combinations if it somehow persists. Regardless, just the fact they're clearly deep and cohesive enough to outscore opponents at all absent Curry is an extremely encouraging sign for Golden State, one that portends legitimate championship contention as much as anything else about the Dubs over the first two weeks of 2023-24.
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