We're Done with the 80s
Let me take you back to 1992. Magic Johnson was entering his 13th year as a pro. With his Hall-of-Fame resume, Magic was offered a surefire position as a starter and second-in-command to Michael Jordan on the Olympic team that is coined today as “The Dream Team.” Magic was already a 3x MVP and had cemented his position as one of the five or six best players in NBA history.
Steph Curry can be described very similarly. After 15 seasons of elite game-changing play in the NBA, he set off on his quest for the illusive Gold Medal despite having little else to prove on the basketball court. Like Magic, Curry was viewed as the second option behind 2x Gold Medalist LeBron James.
It’s no secret that Curry got off to a slow start in the Olympics. Through the first four games (preliminaries and quarterfinal), Curry averaged just 7.3 PPG on 10-28 shooting. The 7.3 PPG was the 9th best on a 12-man team and was lower than Bam Adebayo, Jrue Holiday, and Anthony Davis who are not known as score first players. Against heavily inferior opponents, South Sudan and Brazil, Curry had three points and three shots, respectively. He only reached double digits once in those first four games which was an 11-point game against Serbia—a team not known for its defensive prowess at the guard position.
There were immediate comparisons to Magic, who was on the Dream Team; the 1992 team beat its opponents by an average score 43.8 and people seem to believe Magic was his usual self, adjusting to international basketball like the best of the greats. And yet, Magic wasn’t the immortal figure we make him out to be during those Olympics either. Through preliminary games and the quarterfinals, here are his and Curry’s stats up against each other. They make Curry’s first four games look half decent.
But as we all know, it was the semifinals and finals that put Curry in the Olympic history books, and in my opinion, helped set him apart from Magic on the list of the greatest point guards of all time.
Curry’s final two rounds blew Magic out of the water as he accomplished feats that nobody else could even dream about. Not only did he hit 17 three pointers in a two-game span—something he only did twice last season—, but he also went on one of the most dominant two minute runs and hit one of the most memorable shots in not just Olympic history, but also basketball history.
I’ve been lucky enough to witness most of Curry’s illustrious career. He’s the player that got me into basketball in 2016 with his 38-foot bomb against Oklahoma City, inside-and-out dribble move into a three vs the Clippers, his 13-three performance against New Orleans, and countless other memorable hallmarks of his unanimous MVP season. My favorite basketball play remains his half-court heave against the Clippers in 2017 that sent the Golden State crowd into a frenzy. Nine threes in the 2018 Finals, 62 points against the Trail Blazers in 2021, 43 points on the brink of a 3-1 hole in the 2022 Finals, and clutch game-winners against OKC, Phoenix, and Houston in 2024 are all the more reason to love Curry. But none of those were as impressive as the video you just watched.
The magnitude of the moment, the weight of a Gold Medal, and the fact that the 2024 Gold Medal game was one of the greatest basketball games ever played solidifies Curry’s mind-boggling 12-point run capped off by his sky-scraping three-pointer over two defenders as one of the greatest moments in basketball history. In my opinion, it surpasses Magic’s Baby Skyhook—known as one of the greatest shots in 77 years of NBA basketball—leading me to the overarching message. Steph Curry has just surpassed Magic Johnson as the greatest point guard in NBA history.
I’ve been on the record of arguing that championships are overrated when it comes to evaluating a player’s legacy. The stat: “number of championships won” is such a small number and there are millions of little intricacies that factor into winning a championship, many of them being based on luck.
Steph Curry has hit over 3,747 three-pointers in his career. Even if 40-50 of those came on lucky bounces, he would still be far and away the all-time leader. And everybody gets a lucky bounce here and there.
On the other hand, if Kawhi Leonard doesn’t get one of the luckiest bounces of all time on his 4-bounce shot in game 7 against the Sixers, he very well might be a 1x champion. He also wouldn’t have won the championship if Kevin Durant wasn’t hurt. Or if he wasn’t traded to Toronto in the first place.
See what I mean? Statistical production—in this case three-pointers—occurs no matter where you are and a bit of luck hardly changes the value of your legacy. Championships on the other hand can be won and lost with one lucky bounce and the difference between a player with two rings and a player with one is all of sudden very large. Kawhi Leonard goes from being Canada’s hero, the third player (along with Kareem and LeBron) to ever win Finals MVP with two different franchises, and the head of one of the most improbable championship runs ever, and the 33rd best player of all time (according to the NBA’s top-75 list) to being a guy who could never be the best player on a championship team who peaked in his mid-20s, and a fringe top-75 player.
Unfortunately for Magic, my argument greatly weakens the value of his five championships and somewhat bolsters the general reputation surrounding Curry’s.
My favorite basketball YouTuber, Jxmy Highroller, once made a list of the difficulty of each championship run extending from 1984 to 2020 using the combined SRS score of the champion’s opponents determined their total difficulty score. SRS (Simple Rating System) focuses on plus-minus and is much like DVOA for the NFL. This year, the Celtics had a league-leading SRS of 10.75 while the Hornets had the worst SRS with -10.12.
I added to the list by including all the years in which Magic and Curry captured their championships.
As you can see in my revamped list which includes years 1980-2024, the 1995 Rockets have the highest SRS of 23.96, going through the 60-win Jazz, 62-win Spurs, 59-win Suns, and 57-win Magic as the first 6-seed to ever win an NBA championship. As you sift through some most impressive championship runs in league history, you’ll eventually reach by far the most championship run in this decade—the 2022 Warriors led by none other than Steph Curry. In that season, they took down league MVP Nikola Jokic, Ja Morant’s 2-seeded Grizzlies, Luka Doncic’s Mavs who took out the 64-win Suns in the round prior, and the Celtics who had the highest SRS of any team that season and finished the year on a 26-6 tear while running through the loaded Nets, defending champion Bucks, and 1-seeded Heat en route to the Finals.
You’d think that given the ease that the Warriors won their two championships with Kevin Durant, maybe those would be some of the easier championships of all time. Not exactly true. Those rings as well as the Warriors’ 2015 championship are all middle of the pack and more difficult than some of the more notable championship runs in history such as the 2021 Bucks who had to face the Heat, Nets, and Suns, and 1992 Bulls who had the most difficult run to the championship as possible.
On the flip side, Magic’s championships aren’t found until the low-difficulty column where his five rings represent the 31st, 33rd (should be shaded green), 38th, 43rd, and 44th hardest rings in the last 45 years. In other words, the 15th, 13th, 8th, 3rd, and 2nd easiest titles. That’s no coincidence. The average difficulty score for a championship run in the 80s was just 9.99. In the 2010s—when Curry won the majority of his championships—that number was 15.03.
Here’s what the two players’ championships look like next to each other.
Long story short: Magic played in an era where the playoff competition—for whatever reason—was much weaker than it is today. Curry has had to fight through gauntlets on the way to his titles, while frequently, Magic’s path was relatively easy.
So, if you want to say Magic Johnson was better than Steph Curry because he has five rings to Curry’s four, that’s fine. But by that logic, Kobe and Tim Duncan were better than LeBron, Steve Kerr was better than Klay Thompson, and Bill Russell is the best player of all time. Still want to make the rings argument for Magic? Didn’t think so.
“But Webb, Curry had Durant in 2017 and 2018! He wouldn’t have beaten prime LeBron without KD!” (It should say something that Curry had to go face prime LeBron for four years. Magic faced Julius Erving twice, Isiah Thomas once, Larry Bird pre-back-injury once, and Bird post-back-injury once. Those players are no slouches but I’d put my life in 2015-2018 LeBron’s hands in a 1v1 tournament).
Though Durant won both Finals MVPs (I thoroughly believe Steph should have won in 2018), some of the most important numbers indicate that Curry was the slight number one option on those teams.
And if you ask any Golden State Warriors fan who has been through the trials and tribulations of the last decade and a half (though there haven’t been many), they’ll tell you that Steph was always the number one guy. I’ll tell you the same thing and I’ll also tell you that Curry has been robbed of two Finals MVP awards. He should have won in 2018 and he most definitely should have won in 2015 when Andre Iguodala was given the award for holding LeBron to 36 PPG, 13 RPG, and 9 APG.
What’s more is that when you talk about Curry’s and Magic’s best teammates, KD comes in a firm second to Kareem, who is widely regarded as the third best player of all time. And Kareem stayed for all of Magic’s years but three. Here were their accolades alongside each other from the start of Magic’s first championship to his last.
Now, here are Curry’s award finishes with his best teammate each year from his first championship to 2023.
Durant only provided Curry with 2nd-team All-NBA play for three years before he left town for Brooklyn. And by the way, if KD was available for the 2019 Finals, Curry would be a 5x champion just like Magic. The notion that Steph Curry has had the success he’s had because he’s been put in such good situations may be true, but it’s also true of Magic Johnson who entered the league to Lakers team with the most unguardable player in the NBA at the time was at the peak of his powers. He’s arguably had more help than Curry.
Statistically, Curry has had a more impressive career than Magic. When it comes to generating points, it’s pretty cut and dry. Magic is a better passer and Curry is a better scorer. Magic has 17,707 points and 10,141 assists. Curry has 23,668 points and 6,119 assists. To me, it’s obvious that being a good scorer should have more weight than being a good passer. The rankers of ESPN’s NBA Top 75 list in 2022 would prove me right. The average ranking in the top-20 assisters in NBA history was 65.85 (low) For the scorers, it was just 22.55 (high)
And before you try to argue that Magic being on the assist list and Curry being on neither makes him the better player, check yourself. Rod Strickland and Terry Porter were not better players than Allen Iverson, Charles Barkley, and Dwyane Wade—a few notable players just outside the top 20 on the scoring list.
But more impactful than scoring’s correlation to individual greatness is the relationship between three point shooting and team success. The teams that shoot the best from three win nowadays and this has been known since the start of the 2010s—particularly starting in 2015 when the Warriors captured their first championship with the greatest shooter of all time in Curry at the helm. We already know Curry is the best shooter ever, but it’s important to put his accomplishments into perspective.
Curry sits at 3,747 three-pointers which is 774 clear of Ray Allen in second place. That gap is the same as the one between Allen and 13th ranked Kyle Lowry. If Curry plays four more relatively healthy seasons (assuming he sees a slight minutes decrease in the twilight of his career), he’ll make about 1,110 three pointers which would put him at 4,857 for his career. The gap between that and James Harden who I project will be in second place with 3,460 in four years is 1,397—the same difference between second place and 21st ranked Jason Kidd.
Here’s what comes up when you look up the all-time leaders for most three pointers in a season on Basketball Reference.
That’s right. Curry is the possessor of five of the top six and seven of the top 12 three-point shooting seasons in NBA history. In 2016, he made 402 threes which smashed the previous record which was his 286 threes just a season prior. Since then, he has reached at least 320 in 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2024. All in all, Curry has nine seasons in the top-20 and ten seasons with at least 260 threes.
The best off the dribble three point shooters of the modern era are Curry, Harden, and Damian Lillard. All three are consistently pressed from 40 feet away from the basket and double-teamed, chased around the court for 48 straight minutes, and have the opponents’ best defenders thrown at them on a yearly basis. So, naturally their three-point percentages dropped due to how closely they are guarded because of their deadliness from beyond the arc. Lillard has only cleared 40% from three once in his career and Harden has never reached the 40% threshold. They’ve shot 37.1% and 36.4% from downtown, respectively. This happens to everybody. Everybody except Curry. Despite being the most tightly guarded player ever from three-point range, he’s managed to shoot 42.6% and has shot over 40% in (get this) every single season of his 15-year career except for one.
It’d be unfair to say that Curry is better than Magic because Magic wasn’t a good three point shooter. But it is completely fair to argue that Curry is better than Magic because not a soul comes even close to touching him in one of the most important skills in basketball. Magic might be the best passer we’ve ever seen, but not by much. And the stats don’t back it up. The eye test and the numbers would tell you that Curry demolishes the field when it comes to three-point shooting.
I get it. You’re probably thinking that this entire article is a product of recency bias. After all, I was born more than nine years after Magic played his final game. But as a wise man once said, “we’re done with the 80s.” Curry is still dominating the NBA in his 15th season, and as if the NBA weren’t enough, he has now taken over international basketball en route to winning the grandest prize in all of sports with one of the greatest two-minute runs of basketball we’ve ever seen. This guy has officially done it all and in my eyes, is well-deserving of the title: Greatest Point Guard of All-Time.