Final thought: The next time someone tells you Stephen Curry is "only" the 12th best player ever, ask them one question: "Name the five players in history you would draft ahead of him to win a Game 7 tomorrow." If they don't hesitate, they haven't been watching.

Curry is not a shooter. He is a force of nature who happens to shoot.

He is underrated because he arrived in an era still obsessed with fists, not finesse. He is underrated because he ruined our expectations—we now think 35-footers are normal. He is underrated because he sacrificed individual counting stats for their system. He is underrated because he is small, and we have a bias against small.

Consider this: Before Curry, the most three-pointers made in a season was 286 (Ray Allen). Curry blew past that by 116 shots. That is like someone breaking the single-season home run record by 40 homers. It broke the sport. Defenses literally changed overnight. The now shoots more threes than the record-setting 2016 Warriors.

In the 2022 playoffs, he held his own against Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum in isolation. He finished second in the entire playoffs in steals.

We assume that if something looks fluid and graceful, it requires less effort. In reality, his off-ball movement is the most exhausting skill in basketball. He runs an average of 2.5 miles per game, most of it at sprint speed through a gauntlet of hip checks and jersey grabs. That isn't a system. That is martyrdom. Part III: The Clutch Myth One of the strangest critiques of Curry is that he is "not clutch."