The greatest shooter of all time.
Honestly, that might be all you need to know about Stephen Curry.
There has never been another player who made a basketball arena feel quite like Steph did. For anyone who had to watch their team play Golden State during those dynasty years, you know exactly what I mean.
The chants inside Oracle Arena. The crowd waiting for that inevitable explosion. Steph crosses half court, gets half an inch of space, launches a three from a distance that shouldn’t even make sense—and suddenly the building erupts.
Then another three.
Then another.
You look at the scoreboard five minutes later and somehow the Warriors are up by 75.
Heartbreaking.
Steph wasn’t simply an incredible shooter. He completely changed our understanding of what constituted a good shot.
Before Curry, watching someone routinely pull up several feet behind the three-point line would drive a coach insane. Steph made it normal. Kids started trying it. NBA players started extending their range. Defenses had to start worrying about a player’s shot almost as soon as he crossed half court.
That’s influence.
And the résumé behind that influence is ridiculous.
Curry is the NBA’s all-time leader in made three-pointers. He’s a four-time NBA champion, two-time league MVP, 12-time All-Star, two-time All-Star Game MVP, Finals MVP, and the first unanimous MVP in NBA history.
And those accomplishments still don’t fully explain the dominance.
Curry was the leader of a Warriors dynasty that reached five consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 through 2019, winning three championships during that stretch. For half a decade, the road to an NBA championship essentially ran through Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.
Those Warriors teams have a legitimate argument as the greatest basketball team ever assembled.
But that’s an article for another day.
What makes Curry’s story even better is that when everyone thought the dynasty was finished, he wasn’t.
Kevin Durant was gone. Golden State had endured injuries and missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons. The league had seemingly moved on.
Then Steph brought the Warriors right back to the mountaintop in 2022, winning his fourth championship and finally capturing the Finals MVP that had been missing from his résumé.
He is, without question, the greatest player ever to wear a Golden State Warriors uniform.
But what made Curry special wasn’t only what he accomplished. It was how he did it.
This man would launch a three, turn around before the ball even reached the basket, start running back on defense and sometimes throw in a shimmy for good measure.
The disrespect was unbelievable.
The crazier part was that he had earned the right to do it.
There are players who can shoot. There are historically great shooters. And then there is Stephen Curry.
His shooting created gravity unlike anything basketball had seen. Defenders couldn’t relax when he crossed half court. Lose track of him for a second and he could relocate, catch the ball and bury a three before the defense even realized what happened.
That gravity helped unlock everything around him and became the foundation of a dynasty that dominated an entire era of basketball.
Steph didn’t just master the three-point shot.
He weaponized it.
The most three-pointers ever made. Four championships. Two MVPs. The first unanimous MVP. Five straight Finals. The leader of a dynasty. The greatest Warrior ever.
And above everything else:
The greatest shooter to ever touch a basketball.
That’s why Stephen Curry is #9 on my list of the 10 greatest NBA players of all time.
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