Explain One Play: Steph’s impact without shots

Stephen Curry had his worst shooting night in Game 3. However, he certainly did not have his worst game. He made many wonderful winning contributions besides shooting.

I don’t blame fans for not seeing Curry’s impact, but it really galls me that many people paid to cover the NBA would summarize his game as 11-5-6. That’s criminally incompetent. I mean the #1 expected adjustment coming into Game 3 was for CLE to trap, to stop Curry from torching them as he did in Games 1 and 2. And indeed, CLE trapped, and GSW got a pile of layups out of Steph’s gravity. Or did people think JaVale McGee and Jordan Bell just miraculously scored 20 points on 9-for-12 for no reason?

If you only read the box scores or if you can only follow the ball when watching the game, or apparently, if you are the majority of NBA writers, you might not have noticed Curry’s huge impact. Well, this article will catch you up. This will require actually watching the game.

Here’s a short video of some of the impact Curry made without shooting, through his passing well out of double-team traps, his hustle getting loose balls and rebounds, and his general gravity as the defense over-committed to stopping him, opening up the floor for the other Warriors. For brevity’s sake, we looked only at plays in the third quarter and start of the fourth quarter, when the Warriors were making their comeback, and when Coach Kerr finally committed to exploiting the Cavaliers double-teams of Curry.

Scenes from the big 3rd quarter comeback, co-starring Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, JaVale McGee, Jordan Bell and LeBron James:

(alternate YouTube link)