Stephen Curry woke up Wednesday morning as the NBA’s official all-time leader in 3-pointers.
For years, he hesitated to acknowledge his clear throne. For weeks, the record appeared to increasingly hang over him and the Warriors.
But now history is behind Curry, and the Warriors guard is on pace to obliterate the record. Curry reached the record with his 2,974th 3-pointer in 789 regular season games; Allen needed 1,300 to set the bar.
Curry is one of the most unstoppable offensive forces in NBA history. It takes entire teams, let alone individual players, to slow him down. His unrelenting movement, omnipresent shooting threat and superhuman court vision make him equally as dangerous on and off the ball.
That doesn’t mean some defenders aren’t better suited to slow him down than others. Last spring, Curry listed the five toughest defenders he’s had to play against in his career: Jrue Holiday, Tony Allen, Avery Bradley, Patrick Beverley and his brother Seth. Against those defenders, Curry has to work a bit harder, play a little smarter, to produce. Their thoughts on guarding Curry, in turn, carry just a bit more weight.
“Those guys exist, and that’s what they get paid to do, is to defend the best guys in the league,” Curry said.
His brother Seth “frustrates me the most,” Curry said. He often anticipates his older brother’s moves. He knows his tendencies from the days they spent playing one-on-one growing up to all the games Seth has watched of his brother.
In the 2019 Western Conference finals, Curry remembers his brother being especially pesty — “He was everywhere. I couldn’t figure it out,” Curry said. Seth recorded a team-high seven steals in the series.
“You’ve got to have the stamina and the mental edge, first of all, to guard Steph,” Seth told KNBR. “He obviously moves around a lot, plays a different style than anyone else in the league. Got to have good hands, got to be a smart defender, and just got to stick to it. You can’t get discouraged if he scores, goes on a little run here and there. You’ve got to be mentally tough. And me personally, you’ve got to know certain guys’ games. Obviously I know his game.”
The other players on Curry’s list don’t have the inherent fraternal advantage Seth does. But they do have other attributes in common.
Bradley, for one, is a small, quick, physical on-ball defender. When the Warriors invited him to training camp on a non-guaranteed contract this fall, Curry called him a “bulldog” and said he’s the first person that comes to mind when thinking about the toughest defenders to score against.
Beverley, Holiday and Allen, at 6-foot-1, 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-4 respectively, also fit that mold.
Curry has an interesting type, given one common strategy teams use is putting more length on the all-time great. The Suns, for instance, recently gave Curry trouble in part by sticking Mikal Bridges to Curry. Philadelphia 76ers wing Matisse Thybulle also shut him down as well as anyone in recent memory, GSW coach Steve Kerr said after Curry shot 3-for-14. If Curry was re-doing his list now, Bridges and Thybulle make strong cases.
Beverley arguably has had the most tense battles with Curry through the years. There was the since-disputed “you had the last five years, I’ve got the next five years episode,” along with Beverley (wrongly) calling Curry a defensive liability.
Bradley told Bleacher Report in 2015 that he doesn’t watch film on Curry. Instead, he focuses on staying glued to him through screens, limiting backdoor cuts and generally trying to make everything difficult on him.
Holiday, meanwhile, has called Curry an “alien.” He compared guarding Curry to a “long distance track meet” and, like Bradley, said staying locked to the shooters through screens is necessary.
“We already know that I’m staying with Steph no matter what,” Holiday told Bleacher Report in May. “If I get hit by a screen, then I fight through the screen, over the top or underneath. But most of the time over the top because I can stay closer to him and possibly run him off the 3-point line. I’m stronger than him so I try to be physical with him and I don’t want to give him any room to get comfortable. I don’t know the exact metrics, but for us to win the game he’s going to have to fight.”
According to Marcus Thompson of The Athletic’s data collection, Curry has hit 22 3s while being contested by Holiday, tied for sixth-most of any defender. Bradley, whose challenged 18 Curry makes, is the only other defender in Curry’s top-five that pops up on the list.
Allen, the only retired player on Curry’s list, played a similarly bruising style. Though he was more often matched up against Klay Thompson, there’s still a nine-minute video compilation of him defending Curry in the 2015 Western Conference semifinals.
According to Statmuse, Allen has limited Curry to 24.3 points per game — the lowest total of any of the five defenders on the list; Curry averages over 25 points per game while matched up with Bradley, Holiday, Beverley and Seth. But even against Allen, Curry still shot 41.7% from 3 and 46.6% overall.
Even the best defenders have struggled to slow Curry down. And now he has the all-time record to show for it.
“I mean, it’s special,” Seth said of the record. “He deserves it. He changed the game, changed the way every team in the league and a lot of people growing up approach the game and what they want to work on. He should be the leader in that. He’s the best shooter to ever do it, not only from 3 but midrange, finishing, off the dribble off the catch. He can do it, in every sense of the word, shoot. He’s worked for it. It’s a longevity record, too. He’s been consistently the best shooter since he stepped in the league.”