Stephen Curry Proving He's Ready to Join NBA's Elite Ranks in 2013-14

Stephen Curry is just a great shooter. He doesn't stay healthy enough to make a big impact. He's not any good at defense. He's slow. He looks like he's only 12 years old.

Yeah, yeah. We've heard it all at this point, to the point that even the Golden State Warriors' star player is making fun of the critics.

And now, Curry is ready to make all of those critics eat their words with as much frequency as an actual 12-year-old stuffs his face.

In 2013-14, Curry is out to prove that he's unquestionably a member of the NBA's elite ranks, and he's already doing exactly that just a week into the season. While helping carry the Dubs to a 3-1 record, the sharpshooter is averaging a jaw-dropping 22.0 points, 4.5 rebounds, 9.8 assists, 1.8 steals and 0.3 blocks per game. 

He's recorded a triple-double, torched numerous defenses and made the 50/40/90 club look like child's play. Through four games, Curry is lighting up scoreboards on 53.2 percent shooting from the field, 50 percent from downtown and a perfect 4-of-4 at the charity stripe. 

Could we soon have to build a 50/50/100 club? 

Probably not, but it's becoming awfully difficult to second-guess Curry's shooting prowess at this stage of his career. At the very least, we'll have to acknowledge that he's an elite player in the NBA. 

Shooting the Ball

Is there any doubt that Curry is as good as it gets when shooting the basketball? 

Not only did he make more three-pointers last year than anyone ever has in a single season, he did so while shooting a scorching 45.3 percent on three-pointers.

This year, he's putting together an even better encore. 

Curry has upped his three-point attempts per game to 9.0, 1.3 more than last year, and he's hit 50 percent of his looks thus far. That's an unheard-of combination, and while it would normally be called unsustainable, this is Curry we're talking about. 

Do you really want to doubt the man who makes three-pointers look like layups? 

What's truly crazy, though, is how he makes his shots. He isn't just a spot-up shooter who relies on other players to create looks for him. When it comes to pull-up jumpers, he's perhaps better than anybody in the league. 

NBA.com's statistical databases define a pull-up attempt as "any jump shot outside 10 feet where a player took one or more dribbles before shooting." And no one is better at them than Curry. 

Here are the top 10 players in terms of pull-up attempts per game, and you can see how the number of tries correlates with pull-up field-goal percentage: 

Any question which one is Curry? 

He'd be the one averaging—by far—the most attempts and the highest percentage. But let's break it down further and do the same exercise with three-point pull-up attempts: 

Again, it's Curry out at the top-right corner. He's both averaging the most attempts and shooting the highest percentage, though Damian Lillard is actually challenging him along the y-axis. 

Curry is not a spot-up shooter. He's damn good at spotting up, but there's no one better at shooting jumpers off the bounce. 

And this season, that's not the only facet of his offensive game that's becoming elite. 

Passing

Let's not view Curry as a one-trick pony. He's about as far from that as could be, even though he's already asserting himself as the greatest shooter in NBA history. 

The Davidson product is one of the game's most deadly passers, and he's racking up assists at a higher rate than almost everyone in the Association. Through the first week of the season, only Chris Paul has averaged a higher figure than Curry's 9.8 assists per game. Plus, Ricky Rubio and the rest of the field are 0.8 dimes per contest shy of Curry. 

Impressive, right? 

It gets better. 

Take a look at the top 10 assist men in the league and see how many passes per game they're throwing, as well as how many assist opportunities they've dealt out, courtesy of NBA.com's statistical databases. Because the latter is a new stat, it's defined as any pass that, if the resulting shot had been made, would have counted as an assist. 

Player	Assists Per Game	Passes Per Game	Assist Opportunities Per Game
Chris Paul	13.3	81.8	21.8
Stephen Curry	9.8	44.3	15.3
Ricky Rubio	9.0	66.3	17.8
Jeff Teague	8.7	59.8	16.3
John Wall	8.7	71.7	18.7
Deron Williams	8.0	53.8	14.0
LeBron James	8.0	54.6	13.2
Eric Bledsoe	7.8	54.8	14.0
Michael Carter-Williams	7.8	63.5	13.8
Tony Parker	7.5	64.8	15.8

While small-sample-size warnings are obviously still in effect here, Curry has done the most with the least. He doesn't completely dominate the ball for the Golden State Warriors, but he's able to maximize the value of every possession. 

Of the 10 players represented up above, Curry has the second-most assists per game, but he's doing so on the fewest passes per game. Only Chris Paul, Ricky Rubio, Jeff Teague, John Wall and Tony Parker are creating more assist opportunities, but Curry is also creating opportunities off fewer passes. 

Here are three more metrics, this time ones that I'm deriving from the chart up above: 

Player	Assists Per Pass	Assist Opportunities Per Pass	Assist Opportunity Conversion Percentage
Chris Paul	0.163	0.267	61.0
Stephen Curry	0.221	0.345	64.1
Ricky Rubio	0.136	0.268	50.6
Jeff Teague	0.145	0.273	53.4
John Wall	0.121	0.261	46.5
Deron Williams	0.149	0.260	57.1
LeBron James	0.147	0.242	60.6
Eric Bledsoe	0.142	0.255	55.7
Michael Carter-Williams	0.123	0.217	56.5
Tony Parker	0.156	0.244	47.5

At this point, can we call Curry the best passing guard in basketball? 

No disrespect meant to CP3, Rubio and everyone else, but the numbers back it up. Curry is averaging the most assists on a per-pass basis while passing enough to rank No. 2 in pure assists per game. He's also creating the most opportunities for his teammates per pass, and they're easy enough looks that he boasts the highest conversion rate among the 10 players in question. 

Sure, the shooting ability of his teammates helps him out here, but we can't penalize him for what he's working with. The only real argument against him deals with the turnover figures, which need to be much lower. 

Curry is averaging 2.3 more cough-ups per game than CP3, so this becomes more of a subjective debate at that point. 

Don't let his marksmanship cloud your judgement. You may not be willing to go as far as calling him the best passing guard, but—at the very least—you have to admit that he's not far from that title. 

The Whole Package

Curry is never going to develop into a defensive force. He doesn't have the athleticism, instincts or lateral quickness necessary to challenge for a spot on the All-Defensive team, nor does he have enough energy to make such large offensive contributions while locking down on the less glamorous end. 

However, he's actually making more of a concerted effort to play solid D this year, and it's worked out nicely.

Through four games, he's earned 0.2 defensive win shares, according to Basketball-Reference. While that may or may not be an unsustainable pace, it projects to 4.1 over the course of a full season, which would shatter the career-high 2.8 that he earned last season. 

Curry can now afford to gamble more than ever before, as he's playing next to an elite wing defender (Andre Iguodala), beside another quality stopper (Klay Thompson) and in front of a premier protector of the rim (Andrew Bogut). That's part of the reason why you're seeing a rise in steals per game and overall defensive confidence. 

If Curry can continue to play even adequate defense, then it's hard not to view him as a superduperstar. His offense is just that good thanks to the elite combination of his scoring and passing. 

More so than ever before, Curry is a well-rounded point guard. The rest of the league needs to take notice. Four teams already have, and more will follow suit throughout the year. 

This dude is elite.