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No player is more synonymous with the modern NBA’s offensive evolution than Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.
He is the only player in NBA history to make more than 400 3-pointers in a single NBA season, and the only one to make more than 3,000 in his career. For a decade, he has been the face of the NBA’s most successful team, a four-time champion and a two-time MVP.
And yet, after a recent win over the Philadelphia 76ers, Curry marveled at the way Philadelphia’s star center, Joel Embiid, had gotten virtually whatever he wanted throughout a 46-point performance — including a stretch of 13 consecutive points in the fourth quarter.
“For Joel, he’s been doing it for multiple years now,” Curry said after the Warriors’ 120-112 victory on March 24. “But it seems like he’s taking it up a notch in his game, and has an understanding around him of how to create as much space for him to go to work. … You have to try to send bodies at him, but he still finds a way to go get 46.
“Around the league, everybody plays different styles, but the stars, or the volume scorers, seem like they have the right pieces around them.”
The result has been an offensive explosion the likes of which the NBA has never seen. Six players — Embiid, Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic, Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum — are averaging at least 30 points per game, tied for the most in a single season in NBA history. Curry and Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant are each averaging more than 29 points per game.
No NBA season has featured more 30- and 40-point games, and Lillard and Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell made 2022-23 the first season in league history to feature two different players scoring at least 70 points in a game. (Each scored 71, the most since Kobe Bryant’s 81 in 2006.)