Warrior Wonder: Steph Curry, Sky Fu%*er

As I log in to write my article this morning, it almost feels redundant to write yet another piece highlighting this man’s play - and yet... here we are.

Given Curry’s outrageous performance - 38 points (on 17 shots) in 26 minutes - it’s impossible for us to give Curry too much attention. Coming in to the game, we all knew that things were going to be different for this game but I don’t think anyone expected the incandescent explosive display that Curry put on last night. I mean, he was out for 26 days - there’s got to be some rust there, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

The Sky Fu&*er: Steph Curry

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but after games like this I am always reminded of the reddit user that popped up to relate Curry’s nickname on Chinese social media site Weibo (it’s kind of like a cross between Twitter and Reddit from what I can tell). As per Reddit user Stellewind:

Well that nickname starts this season. It's like we always praise a player "sky is his limit", and Curry this season is like "f*#k the sky I am going higher".

And every time Curry puts up ridiculous stats, people would say "Oh boy he f%@ks the sky again. Poor sky."

Poor sky, indeed.

Curry was out for nearly the entire month of December, and coming in to the game, Kerr was talking about easing him back into the game - limiting his minutes, making sure he didn’t play too long of a stretch at one time.

But in spite of all of this, Curry turned in one of the greatest single-game performances of his career and reminded everyone who exactly makes the Warriors who they are.

Yeah, 9-2 in his absence is impressive, but the fully-powered Warriors with Curry launching and making threes is still one of the most impressive sights you’ll see in sports. Pick your favorite adjective: transcendent, inimitable... it falls short of explaining how thoroughly Curry meets and exceeds expectations and what that means for the Warriors.

While they have looked plenty good so far this season, this was one of the most visceral reminders of the sheer, raw, unadulterated power of this offense when the team is fully engaged.

Oh, and about that shooting

As Apricot pointed out, this is Steph Curry’s ninth career game with 10 or more three-pointers. Second place on that list? Klay Thompson and JR Smith, both tied with three.

And remember early in the season, we were wringing our hands over Curry’s sub-par outside shooting? Well, after last night, he is back above 40% from deep on the year. As transcribed by the Mercury News, Curry is very much aware of this threshold and it’s significance:

“I obsess over it because it’s something I work on every single day and something I pride myself on in my career,” Curry said. “That’s the low end where I want to be. Shooting 40 percent from 3 is the well established point of above average.”

For Curry, though, shooting below 40 percent from 3-point range suggests he has struggled.

“Especially for me when you dip below that, everybody is asking you questions on what’s going on,” Curry said. “For me I’m in my own head: shoot the shots you take and keep working on your game. Usually the law of averages will work out in my favor. Hopefully that continues the rest of the season. That’s kind of the obsession about that particular number and shooting 3’s, especially with how many I shoot per game.”

This wasn’t just a huge scoring night, it was yet another absurd display of Curry stretching the bounds of what we think is possible. 10-for-13 from deep - that’s about 77% on incredibly high usage and puts him back among the league leaders in this category again. Knowing what we know about Curry, this number is likely to keep rising.

Oh, and the other guys

Well, it’s almost a shame that their performance got overshadowed by Curry, but there were a couple of guys that deserve a nod of appreciation.

Klay Thompson (21 points), Kevin Durant (20 points) and Zaza Pachulia (13 points, eight rebounds, six assists), and Jordan Bell (11 points, 4 blocks in limited minutes) were all key players.

But you can’t really call those guys the Warrior Wonder from last night’s game.

Threesus has returned.

Praise the sky fu%#er!