Nash Calls Curry Greatest Shooter Ever
Stephen Curry leads his Warriors into the NBA Finals as League MVP in record-breaking fashion – he’s already smashed the all-time mark for playoff three-pointers with 73 so far and the Finals still to be played.
The previous mark of 58 from hall-of-famer Reggie Miller in 2000 took 22 games. Curry’s played just 15 so far this post-season.
So how does this historic performance rank him among the all-time greats? Steve Nash doesn’t hesitate to put Steph at the top.
“The only pause I have is from fear of being ignorant,” Nash told Bleacher Report‘s Ric Bucher. “Am I missing someone? Does he need to play longer or do it longer? Does he have to do it in the playoffs more years? But my first reaction is, ‘Why not?’ He’s as good as anyone I can think of on every level—pure shooting, array of shots, percentage, getting hot, plays to the end—he checks all the boxes.”
“Steph takes it to another level,” Nash continued. “I was able to do it going left and right, and we can both do it at speed, but I was always trying to get to the three-point line. He can do it from deeper and, frankly, I never took a step-back. He has no trouble taking a step-back and making it. You add that to all the other shots. It could be a clincher in this game of deciding who’s the best.”
Nash is no stranger to all-time great shooting. He retired this season as the all-time leader in free-throw percentage and registered an unprecedented four seasons with the vaunted 50-40-90 line of shooting percentages.
Curry didn’t quite hit the 50-40-90 (he shot 48.7 overall, 44.3 on 3s and a league-leading 91.4 from the line), but Nash believes that has to do with the level of difficulty inherent in shots Curry is taking compared to his.
“He’s probably going to shoot a lower percentage than me his whole career because he’s going to take more shots and he should,” Nash said.
“It’s just a difference in mentality. I would shoot a higher percentage than Steph because I was much more conservative. I would try to shoot as high a percentage as possible to save shots for my teammates and then shoot more in the fourth quarter. I had coaches tell me I was hurting our team at times by trying to set up my teammates, but I always thought I got it back by how I made them feel and incorporated them into the offensive scheme and the chemistry of the team. He’s capable of that, but he’s more inclined to score. There are things he can do that I can’t. He’s such a beautiful shooter with such an array of shots and such a quick release, you wouldn’t want to take that away from him at all.”
It seems soon to crown the sixth-year guard the GOAT, but with all-time greats including Nash himself singing Curry’s praises he could be arriving ahead of schedule, from deep and on point.
