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I took a break from this thread for awhile but this is one bit I haven’t figured out yet since coming back through.
The Official Off-Season NBA Thread
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by pmatic,
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I took a break from this thread for awhile but this is one bit I haven’t figured out yet since coming back through.
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Not when he’s about to become an unrestricted free agent they won’t.
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guess he spent everything against who exactly? maybe he got too excited with AD back or just trying to avoid Embiid with the narrative.
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arguably. I wouldn't say that while it's still not the post-season. otherwise, they might end up just like the hot Spurs in the 90s when they went against the Rockets.
Last edited:
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Steph hasn’t been right since that swinger story.
HOU$TON
formerly convertibleburt
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Which team in the west has a superstar comparable to the dream tho. I don't know a team that has enough talent and discipline to beat them 4 times in a week. Provided they're at full strength. That is Paramount.
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Anywhere to see the article? The athletic is a skeeze rag charging
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Looks like the warriors players look up to him
as well. They got his jersey and shoes before he left the floor last night.
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WTH was the point then??
Knicks fans were pretty hyped for like a week too
lawdog1
Supporter
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Thibs stint with the Knicks is starting to look at lot like his Wolves tenure (aside from him not being the GM in NY).
I think he makes through to start next season as the coach, but will be on a very short leash.
I think he makes through to start next season as the coach, but will be on a very short leash.
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Got you. I didn’t even bother reading this one initially tbh
The game was decided already but Jarred Vanderbilt, Minnesota’s 6-foot-9 menace of a ballhawk, was still all over Stephen Curry as he dribbled the ball up the court. Curry countered the pressure by driving. He couldn’t get Vanderbilt off his hip as he drove into traffic, and his kick-out pass was deflected back towards the top of the key.
After tracking down the loose ball, Curry turned and found himself staring at Jaden McDaniels, another one of the Timberwolves’ 6-foot-9 ballhawks.
Curry’s response? To hell with it. He didn’t even dribble again, just suddenly launched from right where he stood. A 30-foot dagger 3 not seen in a while from No. 30. The rim was unscathed.
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It was his sixth 3-pointer and the final bucket in the Warriors’ 124-115 win over Minnesota. And this time, he only needed 10 attempts to make six. If this was his breakout game, the breakthrough came on Wednesday.
During his normal post-practice shooting session, Curry was missing like crazy in practice, for him anyway. He knew what was wrong, what was missing from his usually succinct form. He just couldn’t isolate what was causing the issue. The problem was power.
“He started talking about how he wasn’t getting enough power and he’s kind of flicking balls at the top (of his shot),” said Warriors assistant coach Bruce Fraser, who has worked closely with Curry for years. “Especially when he was out more in range or off some movement.”
As Curry has explained it, the power starts at the base of his liftoff. It works up from his feet up, through his frame and into his shooting motion. A shortage of power disrupts the mechanics and such was evident in wins over Houston and Utah earlier this homestand. Though he made a game-winner after the buzzer sounded — the first of his career — on a midrange jumper against the Rockets last Friday, Curry was 5-for-26 from 3-point range combined in the two games. And some of the misses were uncharacteristic.
By the time he was releasing the ball, he was pushing with his arms because he didn’t get the power he usually generates. Especially on stepbacks. And when you’re Curry — running off screens and being crowded by defenders, grabbed and pulled every step of the way, and always shooting through closing windows — it is difficult to maintain the mechanics when relying mostly on arm strength. That’s why, he concluded, many of his shots were landing short or veering sideways.
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2022/01/28043525/Curry-missing.mp4
Fraser could see the lack of power. He could tell by the spin on the ball in flight, and by Curry’s inconsistent arm angles. But Fraser couldn’t figure out the origin of the power shortage.
But Curry had an Aha! moment in practice. He found the source of the shortage. It was too subtle for Fraser to see, too internal for anyone other than Curry to detect. In the process of self-diagnosing, he found the answers in his feet.
He had developed a habit of launching off his toes and not the balls of his feet. On his toes, he generates less power than when he gets a good push off the balls of his feet. The discovery paid immediate dividends. His shots started falling like normal in practice. The swishes came back. So did the pretty rotation on his ball. His balance corrected with the added burst. The oomph he regained behind the follow-through gave him much better control over the ball.
Curry took the court Tuesday against Dallas eager to see if this diagnosis was accurate. And to test it out, he focused on getting a little closer. The results were promising. He opened by making a floater, drilled his first 3-point attempt and made three midrange jumpers.
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2022/01/27145223/Curry-making-shots-vs-Dallas.mp4
The antidote he discovered wasn’t an immediate cure. He went on to make just two of his 10 attempts from 3 in the game. But the progress was encouraging. Even the misses were better.
Quietly, confidently, a big night was expected against Minnesota. Then he went out made more than half of his 3-point attempts for the first time since Dec. 23. It’s been a while.
The common sentiment was Curry’s shot would come around. But the truth is, shots don’t just come around. Not even for Curry. Especially not for Curry.
Curry’s career-worst slump hasn’t been a simple fix. It’s been persistent and confusing enough to require a thorough diagnostic. In some ways, a perfect storm of elements colluded to drop him to 37.3 percent from 3 entering Thursday — a dip significant enough to drop his career percentage below 43 percent. Even though he shot well against Minnesota, he isn’t out of the woods yet. Just a step towards progressing to his mean.
He isn’t dubbed the greatest shooter of all time merely because he’s made more 3-pointers than anybody. But also because of his mastery of the craft, expertise that allows him to be a great shooter under multiple contexts. So it stands to reason the troubleshooting process was less like banging the side of a television and more like running a diagnostic on a Tesla.
The irony: It’s a safe assumption the undoing of his highly efficient shooting was the much-ballyhooed pursuit of the 3-point record that would stamp his supremacy. The mental and physical toll of trying to expedite his coronation as 3-point king prompted a brick-laying stretch unbecoming of Curry. Like a home run hitter whose swing suffered from the home run derby.
The greatest shooter of all time had to become the Dr. House of shooting to pull himself out of this rut.
The numbers are downright staggering for a player who’s built a particular reputation over the first 12 years of his career. In the same season in which he broke Ray Allen’s record for most career regular-season 3-pointers, Curry has seen his percentages nosedive.
Throwing out the 2019-20 season, in which he played just five games, his shooting data this year is dramatically lower than the peaks he’s enjoyed. Under Steve Kerr, Curry’s true shooting percentage, which measures overall shooting efficiency, jumped to .638 in 2014-15. His career-high before that was .610. In 2015-16, it jumped to a league-high .669. He set a new best (.675) two years later. Last season, when the Warriors had a mediocre offense, he carried them against kitchen-sink defenses with a true shooting mark of .655.
He is now at .584, the lowest since his rookie year (again, not counting 2019-20).
Curry is shooting 41.5 percent on 3-pointers when the nearest defender is at least six feet away, which the NBA calls “wide open.” He’s never shot worse than 46.4 percent on wide-open threes under Kerr. Last season he made 46.9 percent. His best in the championship era was making 52.3 percent of his 279 wide-open 3-pointers in 2018-19.
On open 3s, when the defender is between four and six feet away, Curry is shooting 33 percent this year. Last season on open looks: 43.2 percent.
Oddly enough, Curry’s struggles on open 3-pointers is both the greatest cause for concern and the greatest reason not to worry. Watching him miss what are virtual layups for him prompts suspicions that something is wrong. But a world where Curry can’t make open 3s consistently doesn’t feel real.
So Curry’s season became a test of patience, waiting for the inevitable course correction.
“Who gives a damn about excuses?” Curry said earlier this week, nixing any elaborate explanation for his shooting woes. “You either make shots or you miss shots. So I’ve got to start making some shots.”
But behind the scenes, Curry was under the hood.
Curry has Fraser and his private trainer Brandon Payne to help him diagnose. They know him as well as anybody, which means they know they’re essentially lab assistants for the mad shooting scientist.
“It would be a lot of pressure if I thought I was that important,” Fraser said. “He knows his body and his shot better than anybody, as he should. If I see something that I think looks different than what it normally looks like, I’ll speak on that — more than be the expert on a basketball shot.”
Stephen Curry's shooting slump
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]TIMESPAN[/TD]
[TD]GAMES[/TD]
[TD]FG%[/TD]
[TD]2P%[/TD]
[TD]3P%[/TD]
[TD]TS%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Career[/TD]
[TD]807[/TD]
[TD]47.3[/TD]
[TD]51.8[/TD]
[TD]42.9[/TD]
[TD]62.4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2021-22[/TD]
[TD]45[/TD]
[TD]41.8[/TD]
[TD]48.8[/TD]
[TD]37.7[/TD]
[TD]58.4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Since 3-point record[/TD]
[TD]18[/TD]
[TD]39.7[/TD]
[TD]48.0[/TD]
[TD]33.8[/TD]
[TD]55.1[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The reasons and theories for the slump are layered.
Fatigue is a popular one. Not the need-a-day-off type, but the need-a-vacation type. The emotion of chasing the record compounded the mental strain of trying to figure out the defenses he has to face each night. And then once he got into a rut, that just piled onto the stack. Plus his average minutes are up at 34.7, a half a minute per game more than last season. But Curry has played in 45 of the Warriors’ 49 games. So he’s already up over 70 percent of his total minutes from last year’s 72-game schedule. Even if he sits six more games the rest of the way, he would still be on pace to log the most minutes he’s played since 2016-17.
This isn’t uncommon for Curry, who has often used the All-Star break as a recharge and turned up in the second half of the season. Curry is a career 44.9 percent shooter from 3 after the All-Star break, a noteworthy uptick from 41.8 percent before the break.
Another one: lack of practice.
“Part of this season, in particular, that’s been hard,” Fraser said, “is with the schedule stuff — and everyone has it, it’s not just us. But he hasn’t shot as many shots, practice-wise. Non-game days, he’s not shooting as many shots, and even on some game days since we don’t have shootarounds as much. When he shoots, he shoots better. You have to hit golf balls to be a good golfer. And if you’re Steph Curry, and you’re a precision shooter, you have to shoot basketballs to be a good shooter.”
Rhythm is also a culprit.
One rhythm buster is the variety of defenses, and the extra layer of help he sees most nights has changed the plan of attack. Curry likes to, as he says, see the pictures — the snapshots of what the defense is doing — so he can know how to counter. But the waves of help are coming more plentifully and from other angles. Even when he beats his man or the double team, the next layer of help is often locked in and on high alert. And on-ball defenders are habitually pursuing from behind instead of switching to the helper’s man.
Sometimes, you can see Curry trying to gauge where the help is coming from or figure out whether it’s a match-up zone or an aggressive man-to-man. He’ll get into the lane and get caught between a floater, a strong pull-up jumper or a drive all the way to the rim. Defenses know the Warriors’ sets and Curry’s favorite relocation tactics to get good looks. The constant overplaying and ball denying sometimes make him rush shots because he isn’t sure how long he has before the defender is back upon him. And when he hasn’t had a shot in a while, a hoist is almost guaranteed.
Another attack on his rhythm is the new rotation. Curry used to play the entire first and third quarters. Then he would sit the start of second and fourth quarters for six minutes, or until Kerr decided he had to get back in. But once he took the court, he didn’t leave it until the quarter ended. Now, Curry is being pulled in the middle of quarters or at the end. Kerr acknowledged the rotation is probably costing Curry rhythm and used that as an example of Curry’s unselfishness. Sometimes, he’ll start feeling good and then he has to come out because his minutes will get too high later.
And then there is the reality: Curry is approaching 34 years old and he is in his 13th season. While he’s in great shape, and as strong as he’s ever been, it’s only natural he can’t just spry his way through such issues. Rest becomes more important, and rhythm more essential, and mechanics more vital.
Are any of these by themselves the reason? No. But all together, on the heels of the discombobulating record chase, the scuffling makes sense. It’s also easy to see how he could develop the unfruitful habit. The frustration was mounting.
“It was usually a technical issue that turned into a mental one,” Kerr said, recalling his days of struggling with his own shot. “It was just one thing I needed to fix, but it was in my head more than anything. It’s tough to get out of. For me, it was different, too. I only got four shots a game. If you miss that first one, it was like, ‘Oh ****.’ They’re usually tied together. You’ve got one flaw which leads to a loss of confidence.”
Kerr, who had the renowned Chip Engelland as his shooting coach, said he has never given Curry or Klay Thompson, who started the 2018-19 season with the worst slump of his career and worked his way out of it with assistant coach Chris DeMarco, any advice about shooting. He leaves that to his assistants and offers emotional support.
But he said Curry hasn’t needed it. Through the slump, Kerr has raved about Curry’s play. His defense. His ball movement. His rebounding. His playmaking. Kerr refused to get concerned about Curry’s shooting. And Curry took the same approach, outwardly — shun anxiety.
Fraser said Curry isn’t handling this downturn like any other before him. In the past, Curry would’ve obsessed over it. It would’ve manifested in his body language and fits of frustration. He isn’t above a moment or two of an overt reaction. But he’s impressed his colleagues with his general calmness even while sides of barns prove elusive.
“There are times I joke with him to keep things light,” Fraser said. “And in a weird way, sometimes when things are really serious, he’ll joke with me and I’m thinking, ‘We’re serious. And you’re pointing something out of a kid in the stands with a funny hat?”
Curry said he understands his spirit, the joy he brings to the team, is too important for him to get lost in the frustration of his slump. So he focused on defense, on passing the ball and setting up his teammates, on keeping the energy high and execution consistent. Impact winning, he calls it. Operate as if the shot will come around eventually.
Thursday, it did. He took an outlet from Gary Payton II late in the first quarter and turned it into a transition opportunity. He took one dribble as he passed halfcourt and launched a sudden 3-pointer from 26 feet. This same shot had failed him so many times the last month or so. This time, he knew it was good.
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And then he started skipping. It was an obvious sign he is starting to feel like himself again.
“Just having fun with myself,” Curry said after scoring 29 points on the night he was voted to his eighth All-Star Game. “When a couple go down early, it’s a good feeling. You want to kinda ride that energy, ride that wave.”
After tracking down the loose ball, Curry turned and found himself staring at Jaden McDaniels, another one of the Timberwolves’ 6-foot-9 ballhawks.
Curry’s response? To hell with it. He didn’t even dribble again, just suddenly launched from right where he stood. A 30-foot dagger 3 not seen in a while from No. 30. The rim was unscathed.
Warriors on NBCS
@NBCSWarriors
Just Steph doing Steph things
1f937-200d-2642-fe0f.svg
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9:26 PM · Jan 27, 2022
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Read 11 replies
It was his sixth 3-pointer and the final bucket in the Warriors’ 124-115 win over Minnesota. And this time, he only needed 10 attempts to make six. If this was his breakout game, the breakthrough came on Wednesday.
During his normal post-practice shooting session, Curry was missing like crazy in practice, for him anyway. He knew what was wrong, what was missing from his usually succinct form. He just couldn’t isolate what was causing the issue. The problem was power.
“He started talking about how he wasn’t getting enough power and he’s kind of flicking balls at the top (of his shot),” said Warriors assistant coach Bruce Fraser, who has worked closely with Curry for years. “Especially when he was out more in range or off some movement.”
As Curry has explained it, the power starts at the base of his liftoff. It works up from his feet up, through his frame and into his shooting motion. A shortage of power disrupts the mechanics and such was evident in wins over Houston and Utah earlier this homestand. Though he made a game-winner after the buzzer sounded — the first of his career — on a midrange jumper against the Rockets last Friday, Curry was 5-for-26 from 3-point range combined in the two games. And some of the misses were uncharacteristic.
By the time he was releasing the ball, he was pushing with his arms because he didn’t get the power he usually generates. Especially on stepbacks. And when you’re Curry — running off screens and being crowded by defenders, grabbed and pulled every step of the way, and always shooting through closing windows — it is difficult to maintain the mechanics when relying mostly on arm strength. That’s why, he concluded, many of his shots were landing short or veering sideways.
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2022/01/28043525/Curry-missing.mp4
Fraser could see the lack of power. He could tell by the spin on the ball in flight, and by Curry’s inconsistent arm angles. But Fraser couldn’t figure out the origin of the power shortage.
But Curry had an Aha! moment in practice. He found the source of the shortage. It was too subtle for Fraser to see, too internal for anyone other than Curry to detect. In the process of self-diagnosing, he found the answers in his feet.
He had developed a habit of launching off his toes and not the balls of his feet. On his toes, he generates less power than when he gets a good push off the balls of his feet. The discovery paid immediate dividends. His shots started falling like normal in practice. The swishes came back. So did the pretty rotation on his ball. His balance corrected with the added burst. The oomph he regained behind the follow-through gave him much better control over the ball.
Curry took the court Tuesday against Dallas eager to see if this diagnosis was accurate. And to test it out, he focused on getting a little closer. The results were promising. He opened by making a floater, drilled his first 3-point attempt and made three midrange jumpers.
https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2022/01/27145223/Curry-making-shots-vs-Dallas.mp4
The antidote he discovered wasn’t an immediate cure. He went on to make just two of his 10 attempts from 3 in the game. But the progress was encouraging. Even the misses were better.
Quietly, confidently, a big night was expected against Minnesota. Then he went out made more than half of his 3-point attempts for the first time since Dec. 23. It’s been a while.
The common sentiment was Curry’s shot would come around. But the truth is, shots don’t just come around. Not even for Curry. Especially not for Curry.
Curry’s career-worst slump hasn’t been a simple fix. It’s been persistent and confusing enough to require a thorough diagnostic. In some ways, a perfect storm of elements colluded to drop him to 37.3 percent from 3 entering Thursday — a dip significant enough to drop his career percentage below 43 percent. Even though he shot well against Minnesota, he isn’t out of the woods yet. Just a step towards progressing to his mean.
He isn’t dubbed the greatest shooter of all time merely because he’s made more 3-pointers than anybody. But also because of his mastery of the craft, expertise that allows him to be a great shooter under multiple contexts. So it stands to reason the troubleshooting process was less like banging the side of a television and more like running a diagnostic on a Tesla.
The irony: It’s a safe assumption the undoing of his highly efficient shooting was the much-ballyhooed pursuit of the 3-point record that would stamp his supremacy. The mental and physical toll of trying to expedite his coronation as 3-point king prompted a brick-laying stretch unbecoming of Curry. Like a home run hitter whose swing suffered from the home run derby.
The greatest shooter of all time had to become the Dr. House of shooting to pull himself out of this rut.
The numbers are downright staggering for a player who’s built a particular reputation over the first 12 years of his career. In the same season in which he broke Ray Allen’s record for most career regular-season 3-pointers, Curry has seen his percentages nosedive.
Throwing out the 2019-20 season, in which he played just five games, his shooting data this year is dramatically lower than the peaks he’s enjoyed. Under Steve Kerr, Curry’s true shooting percentage, which measures overall shooting efficiency, jumped to .638 in 2014-15. His career-high before that was .610. In 2015-16, it jumped to a league-high .669. He set a new best (.675) two years later. Last season, when the Warriors had a mediocre offense, he carried them against kitchen-sink defenses with a true shooting mark of .655.
He is now at .584, the lowest since his rookie year (again, not counting 2019-20).
Curry is shooting 41.5 percent on 3-pointers when the nearest defender is at least six feet away, which the NBA calls “wide open.” He’s never shot worse than 46.4 percent on wide-open threes under Kerr. Last season he made 46.9 percent. His best in the championship era was making 52.3 percent of his 279 wide-open 3-pointers in 2018-19.
On open 3s, when the defender is between four and six feet away, Curry is shooting 33 percent this year. Last season on open looks: 43.2 percent.
Oddly enough, Curry’s struggles on open 3-pointers is both the greatest cause for concern and the greatest reason not to worry. Watching him miss what are virtual layups for him prompts suspicions that something is wrong. But a world where Curry can’t make open 3s consistently doesn’t feel real.
So Curry’s season became a test of patience, waiting for the inevitable course correction.
“Who gives a damn about excuses?” Curry said earlier this week, nixing any elaborate explanation for his shooting woes. “You either make shots or you miss shots. So I’ve got to start making some shots.”
But behind the scenes, Curry was under the hood.
Curry has Fraser and his private trainer Brandon Payne to help him diagnose. They know him as well as anybody, which means they know they’re essentially lab assistants for the mad shooting scientist.
“It would be a lot of pressure if I thought I was that important,” Fraser said. “He knows his body and his shot better than anybody, as he should. If I see something that I think looks different than what it normally looks like, I’ll speak on that — more than be the expert on a basketball shot.”
Stephen Curry's shooting slump
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD]TIMESPAN[/TD]
[TD]GAMES[/TD]
[TD]FG%[/TD]
[TD]2P%[/TD]
[TD]3P%[/TD]
[TD]TS%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Career[/TD]
[TD]807[/TD]
[TD]47.3[/TD]
[TD]51.8[/TD]
[TD]42.9[/TD]
[TD]62.4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]2021-22[/TD]
[TD]45[/TD]
[TD]41.8[/TD]
[TD]48.8[/TD]
[TD]37.7[/TD]
[TD]58.4[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Since 3-point record[/TD]
[TD]18[/TD]
[TD]39.7[/TD]
[TD]48.0[/TD]
[TD]33.8[/TD]
[TD]55.1[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The reasons and theories for the slump are layered.
Fatigue is a popular one. Not the need-a-day-off type, but the need-a-vacation type. The emotion of chasing the record compounded the mental strain of trying to figure out the defenses he has to face each night. And then once he got into a rut, that just piled onto the stack. Plus his average minutes are up at 34.7, a half a minute per game more than last season. But Curry has played in 45 of the Warriors’ 49 games. So he’s already up over 70 percent of his total minutes from last year’s 72-game schedule. Even if he sits six more games the rest of the way, he would still be on pace to log the most minutes he’s played since 2016-17.
This isn’t uncommon for Curry, who has often used the All-Star break as a recharge and turned up in the second half of the season. Curry is a career 44.9 percent shooter from 3 after the All-Star break, a noteworthy uptick from 41.8 percent before the break.
Another one: lack of practice.
“Part of this season, in particular, that’s been hard,” Fraser said, “is with the schedule stuff — and everyone has it, it’s not just us. But he hasn’t shot as many shots, practice-wise. Non-game days, he’s not shooting as many shots, and even on some game days since we don’t have shootarounds as much. When he shoots, he shoots better. You have to hit golf balls to be a good golfer. And if you’re Steph Curry, and you’re a precision shooter, you have to shoot basketballs to be a good shooter.”
Rhythm is also a culprit.
One rhythm buster is the variety of defenses, and the extra layer of help he sees most nights has changed the plan of attack. Curry likes to, as he says, see the pictures — the snapshots of what the defense is doing — so he can know how to counter. But the waves of help are coming more plentifully and from other angles. Even when he beats his man or the double team, the next layer of help is often locked in and on high alert. And on-ball defenders are habitually pursuing from behind instead of switching to the helper’s man.
Sometimes, you can see Curry trying to gauge where the help is coming from or figure out whether it’s a match-up zone or an aggressive man-to-man. He’ll get into the lane and get caught between a floater, a strong pull-up jumper or a drive all the way to the rim. Defenses know the Warriors’ sets and Curry’s favorite relocation tactics to get good looks. The constant overplaying and ball denying sometimes make him rush shots because he isn’t sure how long he has before the defender is back upon him. And when he hasn’t had a shot in a while, a hoist is almost guaranteed.
Another attack on his rhythm is the new rotation. Curry used to play the entire first and third quarters. Then he would sit the start of second and fourth quarters for six minutes, or until Kerr decided he had to get back in. But once he took the court, he didn’t leave it until the quarter ended. Now, Curry is being pulled in the middle of quarters or at the end. Kerr acknowledged the rotation is probably costing Curry rhythm and used that as an example of Curry’s unselfishness. Sometimes, he’ll start feeling good and then he has to come out because his minutes will get too high later.
And then there is the reality: Curry is approaching 34 years old and he is in his 13th season. While he’s in great shape, and as strong as he’s ever been, it’s only natural he can’t just spry his way through such issues. Rest becomes more important, and rhythm more essential, and mechanics more vital.
Are any of these by themselves the reason? No. But all together, on the heels of the discombobulating record chase, the scuffling makes sense. It’s also easy to see how he could develop the unfruitful habit. The frustration was mounting.
“It was usually a technical issue that turned into a mental one,” Kerr said, recalling his days of struggling with his own shot. “It was just one thing I needed to fix, but it was in my head more than anything. It’s tough to get out of. For me, it was different, too. I only got four shots a game. If you miss that first one, it was like, ‘Oh ****.’ They’re usually tied together. You’ve got one flaw which leads to a loss of confidence.”
Kerr, who had the renowned Chip Engelland as his shooting coach, said he has never given Curry or Klay Thompson, who started the 2018-19 season with the worst slump of his career and worked his way out of it with assistant coach Chris DeMarco, any advice about shooting. He leaves that to his assistants and offers emotional support.
But he said Curry hasn’t needed it. Through the slump, Kerr has raved about Curry’s play. His defense. His ball movement. His rebounding. His playmaking. Kerr refused to get concerned about Curry’s shooting. And Curry took the same approach, outwardly — shun anxiety.
Fraser said Curry isn’t handling this downturn like any other before him. In the past, Curry would’ve obsessed over it. It would’ve manifested in his body language and fits of frustration. He isn’t above a moment or two of an overt reaction. But he’s impressed his colleagues with his general calmness even while sides of barns prove elusive.
“There are times I joke with him to keep things light,” Fraser said. “And in a weird way, sometimes when things are really serious, he’ll joke with me and I’m thinking, ‘We’re serious. And you’re pointing something out of a kid in the stands with a funny hat?”
Curry said he understands his spirit, the joy he brings to the team, is too important for him to get lost in the frustration of his slump. So he focused on defense, on passing the ball and setting up his teammates, on keeping the energy high and execution consistent. Impact winning, he calls it. Operate as if the shot will come around eventually.
Thursday, it did. He took an outlet from Gary Payton II late in the first quarter and turned it into a transition opportunity. He took one dribble as he passed halfcourt and launched a sudden 3-pointer from 26 feet. This same shot had failed him so many times the last month or so. This time, he knew it was good.
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7:27 PM · Jan 27, 2022
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And then he started skipping. It was an obvious sign he is starting to feel like himself again.
“Just having fun with myself,” Curry said after scoring 29 points on the night he was voted to his eighth All-Star Game. “When a couple go down early, it’s a good feeling. You want to kinda ride that energy, ride that wave.”
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shooting was off, but the guys came through in the end
continue to doubt the greatest shooting duo of all time
#washedking
#justakidfromakron
continue to doubt the greatest shooting duo of all time
#washedking
#justakidfromakron
storm2006
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WTH was the point then??
Knicks fans were pretty hyped for like a week too
I know someone was….
Cam is going to play. He’s been stifled too long and will be developed.
He was traded for the 15th man on the bench so someone from the rotation likely getting shipped out.
Speaking of RJ, boy been ballin as of late with impressive splits. Broadway Barrett needs a point guard.
he & Cam compete for team 1st option. I’ve seen enough footage. I’m a believer. I am CamFam.
I could probably give Thibbs a lineup that’ll take his dumbass to the play-in at least.
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There's more moves coming. Re-evaluate the trade after the deadline.
Knicks fans were pretty hyped for like a week too
Name them. Misdemeanor doesn't count.
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Besides MM, I know my guy
Coupé It
in particular was real excited Least half of you guys were talking up a Duke reunion with Zion after the trade though
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What's the additional move though? It's not like they had to get rid of salary or something. Do they think some other team is interested in Reddish?
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Fournier plus pick(s) for Rubio?
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Haliburton has a full on bag holy ****
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