There was a time when a
three-pointer was considered a useful accessory to basketball rather than its
central organising principle. Coaches wanted the ball inside, guards were
expected to penetrate or feed the post, and a shot taken several feet behind the
arc could earn a player a disapproving glance from the bench. Then Stephen Curry arrived and
began doing something that looked, at first, almost unreasonable, he treated
the entire length of the basketball court as shooting range.
Curry did not invent the three-point
shot. The NBA introduced it in 1979-80, and
players such as Reggie Miller and Ray Allen had already demonstrated how
devastating an elite long-range shooter could be. What Curry changed was
something considerably larger. He transformed the three-pointer from a specialist
weapon into the foundation of an offensive philosophy, forcing coaches,
defenders and an entire generation of players to rethink what constituted a
good shot.
The scale of the transformation
becomes clearer when Curry's 2015-16 season is examined. The Golden State
Warriors guard made 402 three-pointers, becoming the first player to break the
400 mark in a single NBA regular season. He did it while shooting 45.4% from
beyond the arc and averaging 30.1 points per game, numbers that helped make him
the league's first unanimous MVP.
Yet the number 402 does not fully
explain Curry's revolution. It was the nature of those attempts that mattered.
Curry was not merely standing in the corner waiting for a pass. He was pulling
up off the dribble, shooting after screens, releasing the ball before defenders
could recover and launching from distances that had previously been regarded as
tactically unnecessary. In 2015-16, he attempted 11.2 three-pointers per game,
with NBA tracking data showing that a substantial portion of his offence came
from pull-up threes.
That changed the geometry of the
game.
A defender could no longer simply
retreat towards the paint and invite a guard to shoot from long range. Against
Curry, the opposite was often required: defenders had to meet him far beyond
the conventional three-point line. The consequence was profound. When Curry
moved several metres beyond the arc, his defender moved with him, creating
space elsewhere on the court for cutters, screeners and teammates.
This became particularly destructive
alongside Klay Thompson and within the Warriors' motion-heavy attack. Golden State could use
screens, hand-offs and constant movement to create situations in which Curry
was either free to shoot or capable of attacking a defender who had been forced
to close out from an uncomfortable distance. The three-pointer was no longer
simply the end of a possession. It became the mechanism through which the
entire possession was designed.
That principle spread.
Teams increasingly embraced the
mathematical argument behind the modern offence: a three-pointer is worth 50%
more than a two-pointer, so if a player can make enough threes at a respectable
percentage, the shot can be more valuable than a mid-range attempt. The result
was a gradual disappearance of the long two-pointer from many offensive
systems, replaced by attempts at the rim or beyond the arc.
Curry's influence can be seen in the
numbers. In the 2015-16 season, NBA teams averaged far fewer three-point
attempts than they do today. By 2024-25, the league average had reached 37.6
attempts per team per game, compared with 35.1 in 2023-24 and 34.2 in
2022-23. The three-point revolution had
moved from being a Warriors experiment to becoming the NBA's operating system.
Perhaps the most revealing evidence
came from teams that never played like Golden State. The Houston Rockets, under
Mike D'Antoni and later Mike D'Antoni-influenced systems, pushed the philosophy
to an extreme: attack the rim, draw fouls and shoot threes, while largely
abandoning the mid-range jumper. The Rockets became one of the clearest
examples of how Curry's success had altered the strategic conversation even
beyond his own team.
But Curry's influence extended
further than statistics and playbooks. He changed what young players were
encouraged to practise.
Children who might once have been
told to establish themselves close to the basket began practising deep
three-pointers. Coaches at every level began incorporating more spacing, ball
movement and perimeter shooting. The idea that a relatively small guard could
become the most feared offensive player on the floor without relying on
physical dominance became increasingly believable.
That mattered because Curry's
greatest contribution was not simply proving that a player could shoot from 30
feet. It was proving that such shooting could be weaponised against an entire
defence.
Defences consequently evolved. Teams
began switching more screens, trapping high pick-and-rolls and assigning their
best perimeter defenders to Curry-like threats. Centres were increasingly asked
to defend in space. Big men who could not survive away from the basket became
harder to accommodate, while versatile forwards and centres who could switch
and recover became increasingly valuable.
In other words, Curry's offence
produced a defensive revolution of its own.
The ripple effects can be seen in
the modern NBA's shot profile. By the opening weeks of the 2024-25 season, the
league was taking 41.8% of its field-goal attempts from three-point range, a
figure that would have been the highest rate in the 46-year history of the
three-point line if maintained. That was
not simply a statistical curiosity. It was evidence of how thoroughly the
game's assumptions had changed.
And Curry himself continued to
embody the evolution. His shooting was never merely about volume. In his
historic 2015-16 campaign, he shot 45.4% from three despite taking 886
attempts, according to NBA statistics. His efficiency made the supposedly reckless
shot selection look rational.
That is the crucial distinction
between Curry and the many players who followed him. Plenty can shoot from
deep. Far fewer have possessed the combination of accuracy, speed,
ball-handling and range that allowed Curry to make almost any defensive
coverage feel inadequate.
His legacy, therefore, cannot be
reduced to the record books. Curry did not merely make more three-pointers than
his predecessors. He changed the question coaches ask when constructing an
offence. Instead of wondering whether a team should shoot more threes, the
modern coach is often asking how to create better threes, and how to make the
defence pay when it takes them away.
The revolution is now so complete
that its most radical idea has become ordinary. A player pulling up from
several feet beyond the arc no longer necessarily shocks anyone. A centre
standing outside the three-point line is no longer automatically regarded as
abandoning his responsibilities. A team attempting 40 threes in a game can be
pursuing conventional wisdom rather than tactical madness.
That is Curry's enduring
achievement. He did not simply move the three-point line farther away in the
minds of NBA players. He effectively made the court bigger.
And once he did, basketball could
never quite become small again.
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