Stephen Curry He won the Finals MVP honor for the first time in his career, thanks to his highest ranked performance at this stage of the season. He averaged the highest 31.2 points in the series per game and put the Golden State Warriors in a familiar place. He is the fourth NBA champion in the last eight years.
Curry was clearly the only player most valuable in these finals, even after a featureless offnight in Game 5. He is the top scorer in the series, and his unprecedented ability to generate attacks from dribbles is the only main reason. The Golden State won the series against the Boston Celtics, who had the best defense in the NBA during the regular season.
Curry is the best shooter in league history because it has developed the ability to create his own jump-shoot opportunities from distances that were rarely used before he appeared. He can generate shooting space for any range of defense around the world, and thanks to his ultra-fast release and precise accuracy, he can knock down those homebrew shots at elite rates. ..
The Curry formula is an aggressive hack that not only changed professional basketball forever, but also brought the Warriors the most important advantages of these finals. It is a simple action that leads to a bucket with less maintenance from a long distance.
The 2022 NBA Championship quest wasn’t about numbers, but about this simple fact. Thanks to Curry, the Warriors had a credible and offensive scorer. I didn’t do the Celtics.
20 years agoThe NBA Finals was all about getting Shaquille O’Neal to throw it away and send him to work. Between 2000 and 2002, the Los Angeles Lakers won three consecutive titles because O’Neill owned a restricted area and had no answer to the opposite defense.
Over the last decade, Curry has turned basketball inside out. He can generate numbers of efficiency comparable to O’Neill, but only he does it from afar. And in 2022, the Celtics have no answer.
In these finals, the average possession was worth 1.09 points. The value of the average paint shot was even lower, at 1.05 points. Even after his horrific shootings in Game 5, Curry’s jump shots in this series averaged 1.35 points in a single attempt. His average shot distance on those jumpers: 25.3 feet.
And yes, Curry missed all nine three-pointers he tried in Game 5, but wasn’t able to create three-pointers for the first time in his post-season career, but Ime Udoka’s defense is different, or I didn’t do much more than that. From the previous four games. According to the Second Spectrum shot quality model, Curry’s jumpers were about the same quality in Game 5 as the rest of the series. He just missed a shot and made only one of the twelve jumpers at night. Those same shots fell in Game 6 and went into a 3 to 11-6 shot tone.
Even with that horrifying performance in mind, Curry recorded one of the most efficient jump-shooting performances he’s ever seen at this stage of the season.
In the era of player tracking, there were 131 instances of a player who attempted at least 70 jump shots in the playoff series. Within that huge group, Curry’s 1.35 points per jumper’s possession ranks third.
Even after Monday’s 0-9 night, Curry scored 31 3 points in the series. He has made at least 25 for the third time in his career. All other players in the history of the NBA have joined into one such series (Danny green, There were 27 people at the Spurs in 2013). Curry fell into the shyness of just one three-pointer of his own record in the final set in 2016-a series one game longer than this.
NBA success Superstars will be one simple thing. It’s about blending volume and efficiency at the elite rate.in the meantime Jaylen Brown When Jayson Tatum They created volume in these finals, averaging 45.0 points per game, far from Curry’s efficiency figures. Brown shot 43.1% from the field and 34% from the other side of the arc. And while Tatum shot from 3 seconds to 45.5%, his immeasurable 24-76 mark in the arc reduced his overall rate of fire to 36.7%.
On the other hand, Curry shot 53.0% in 2 seconds and 43.7% in 3 seconds with an average of 31.2 points per game, even considering Game 5.
Curry and trainer Brandon Pain has developed a unique grammar to systematize the movement of the curry’s surrounding scores. For over a decade, the pair has choreographed, formalized, and drilled various surrounding movements together to help the world’s best shooters create their own jumpers. Curry’s unassisted bag now includes step backs, side steps, on-screen shooting, pull-ups, floaters, and driving layups.
All that effort paid off as the Warriors handed the key to the point guard and asked them to get a bucket against this ferocious Celtics defense.
When Steve Kerr took over the role of coach of the Golden State in 2014, he installed an innovative motion offense that relies on the active movement of both the player and the ball itself, rather than relying on pick and roll action. Did. And over the last eight years, Curry’s stars have risen thanks to a set that eases the burden of playmaking on the ball and emphasizes sharing the ball and creating shots around it. But in this series, Cars is heading in the opposite direction. His greatest tactical tweak was to focus more on traditional pick actions, especially those that feature his MVP.
During the regular season, Curry performed an average of 34.5 pick actions per 100 possessions. In this series, the number was 48.2 per 100. This is what Curry turned these old-fashioned behaviors into buckets to drive the Finals MVP campaign.
With Tatum Marcus smart Played a total of 212 times as a pick and roll ball handler for this series. Curry stood 216 on his own. Many of his biggest moments in these finals began with the Warriors: Kevon Looney, Andrew Wiggins When Draymond Green I installed an old-fashioned ball screen for him on top of the arc.
With Tatum in the third quarter of Game 4 Derrick White I tried to fight for the screen at the top of the arc, but couldn’t recover fast enough to prevent the game and the huge three-point shots that could potentially change the entire series.when Al Horford The depressed curry dribbled straight from downtown to a juicy look.
No matter what the Celtics tried to defend against these pick actions, Curry adapted and roasted this elite Boston defense by playing properly. When the Celtics switched, Curry toasted them to a tone of 1.32 points per possession. When they tried to fight for the screen, it was slightly less efficient, but still ridiculous 1.18 points per possession.
These numbers are surprising, especially given the defending fleet he is doing this. There are no bad defenders in Boston’s rotation. They were ranked number one in defensive efficiency this season. Smart has won the Defensive Player of the Year and has become Curry’s leading defender throughout the series. it doesn’t matter. No one on the green was able to effectively contain the most dangerous jump shot professional basketball I’ve ever seen.
During the regular season, the Celtics had the best defense in the league, with the enemy’s jump shooter down to just 0.97 points per shot.In the first round, they held Kevin Durant To 0.83 points per shot of his jumper. However, despite Game 5’s nightmare, Curry made 40 out of 82 jump shots, including 31 out of 71 3-point attempts. He scored 12.2 points per game with an unassisted jumper. Brown was ranked second in the series with 4.8.
Curry’s unassisted scoring movement is like the movement of a modern NBA post. They provided simple attacks at reliable frequencies and he used them to punish the best border defenses in the league.
