Warriors Have a Superstar in Stephen Curry, but Can He Compare to the NBA Elite?

Stephen Curry is a superstar, plain and simple.

There are those who are fighting the notion that this could be possible. In fact, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of fans out there that really have a hard time giving any Warrior player props for any reason.

Many fans of teams other than the Golden State Warriors like to throw out the names of "legitimate" superstars while scoffing at Curry being mentioned in the same breath as Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant. Some even claim that Curry isn't at the level of Rajon Rondo or Kyrie Irving.

It's often said that Curry isn't even a top-five point guard.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that is just not the case.

So, let's have some fun, shall we? Let's break it down by the players that consensus-believing NBA fans claim to be better than Curry at the guard position and ask: Are they really?

Let's start with Kyrie Irving. One has to ask, "are you serious?" He's a very good player on a very bad team. But even as the sole option on a team not built around scoring, Irving doesn't produce what Curry does and can't reach the level of contribution that Curry can.

Whether Curry is better than Chris Paul is a fair question. But, this year anyway, Curry has owned Chris Paul. That alone makes him an elite player, as Paul tends to be regarded as the best point guard in the league.

A Kobe fan I am not, but any fan would have to admit that Curry is not at Kobe's level of all-around play. Kobe has lots of NBA jewelry to back up his superiority to anyone playing in the game today. That said, Curry has been a better shooter since he's stepped onto an NBA court than Kobe ever was. But Kobe makes the kill shot like no one else, or at least he did. And when he didn't, he was graciously shown to the free-throw line, a perk Curry doesn't enjoy, regardless of justification.

Is Curry better than Kobe? No. He's just a better shooter, and as of this year, Curry can also handle better than anyone since Nash…maybe even Isiah.

Rajon Rondo? His best year hasn't compared Curry's year this year, and I am a Rondo fan.

Russell Westbrook and Curry are different players, but most claim that Westbrook is better. That's a stretch. Don't believe me? Put Kevin Durant on the Warriors and make the claim that Westbrook is better. You couldn't with a straight face.

Derrick Rose can be great, but is he better than Curry? Defensively, probably. Otherwise? Curry shoots far better from the three-point line, penetrates well and makes more difficult passes. Rose had a 25 PPG season a few years back and Steph is at 22.5 PPG this year. Steph is better on the boards, stealing and shooting than Rose, but their turnovers are a wash.

Tony Parker is no longer better than Curry. He was prior to this year, but the discussion is about the here-and-now. If we are talking about all-timers, that's a different discussion which would remove everyone but Kobe from this discussion.

Dwyane Wade? He makes for a unique case. Without the ridiculous amount of foul calls that Wade is given for falling down, Wade is a better-shooting, lesser-passing Rondo at this point. If you are talking about who has more of an impact on the game today, the answer is Curry. Every year prior to this, Wade was better.

As it is, Curry is the best three-point shooter in the league. He is also on course to potentially set the record for threes in a year this year, and remarkably, at the best percentage for someone who leads in that category.

It is interesting that many fans also fail to mention James Harden as a superstar. He, too, is one of the most impactful players in the NBA today, far more so than most of the players listed by those attempting to claim that Curry lacks credibility as a superstar.

Curry vs. Harden. Different players, really, and who is better would depend on the day you asked.

The final digs on Curry's superstardom: defense and injuries. Curry started the season playing very well defensively, especially before the All-Star break. But his defense has not been as good since. That said, 'Melo and plenty of others considered "superstars" are no great shakes defensively either, so that hardly seems to be the defining characteristic of what it is to be a "superstar."

As for injuries, this may be the Curry-naysayer's most hypocritical area of all. One reads time and again that Curry has been injury-prone since he came into the league. This is a fallacy perpetrated by misinformed or deliberately deceptive journalism.

The reality is that Curry's ankles turned to glass last year, causing him to miss 40 of 66 games. But he missed only two games his first year and eight games his second. That's hardly the "plagued-by-injury-since-the-day-he-stepped-onto-NBA-courts" generalization we have all read in plenty of articles.

Curry has missed just four games this year. That's 54 games missed of 308. In comparison, in his first 310 games, Blake Griffin has missed 82—that's his entire first season; over those same four years, Andrew Bynum has missed 133 of 308 games; Derrick Rose has missed 107 of 307 games during that period; Kevin Love missed 102 games out of the last 308 games; even Chris Paul has missed 57 of those 308 games.

Yet we don't hear about how "fragile" these other players are and second-guess their contributions to the game. No one questions whether these players are superstars.

So what is it? Why shouldn't Curry be considered a superstar when he is just that?

Sometimes the qualifications are more nebulous than pure numbers, so here's the bottom line: On a day when Curry is "on," really on, only Kobe or Durant can be better at this point…and maybe Melo.

And like Durant, Curry is getting to the point of having very few "off" days.

That is what makes a superstar a superstar.

Curry qualifies.

Next.