Just before Stephen Curry broke the NBA’s career 3-point record in December of 2021, his longtime Warriors teammate and vociferous hype man Draymond Green took to his own podcast to declare that Curry’s record would “100 percent be broken” within “five to six years” of Curry’s retirement.
“Reason being,” Green began, “Trae Young comes into the NBA attempting six or seven 3-pointers per game. Donovan Mitchell comes into the NBA attempting six or seven 3-pointers per game. Steph Curry came into the NBA attempting two to three per game because it’s just a totally different ballgame, in large part due to Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and the ways those guys shot the basketball.
“It totally changed the way the game is played just by the way Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have been playing the game all this time. When I look back on the 10 years that I have been [with the Warriors], most people, especially in the analytical department, didn’t think Steph Curry shot enough 3s. To this day, they still don’t think Steph Curry shoots enough 3s. That just goes to show you where the game is going and why his record will be broken probably within five to six years of [when he stops] playing the game.”
The foundation of Green’s logic sounds solid. We all know everyone shoots a lot more 3s now than they used to. In theory, a worse shooter could pass Curry on pure volume. But when you start actually doing the math, it’s not such a slam dunk that Curry’s record gets broken — not just any time soon, but ever.
Before we go any further, let’s try to guess what Curry’s final 3-point tally will be when the curtain comes down on his career. Entering play on Thursday, he’s made 4,008 of them. At his current pace of 4.4 makes per game, that would give him about 4,060 by season’s end.
Curry is 37 years old. His current contract runs through 2027, and he recently said he would like to “outplay” that deal, when he will be 39. Just to put a round number on it, let’s say Curry plays until he’s 40, meaning three more years after this one. Even at 250 3s per season, which would be significantly fewer than he has averaged over his last three seasons, that would put him 4,800 in 2028. I’ll tell you what: Let’s make it an even 5,000 to account for the very real possibility that Curry either plays more than three more years or makes more than 250 per year over that stretch.
Five-thousand 3-pointers, people.
Whoever is going to have even a chance at sniffing a number like that is going to have two avenues to doing so: Either he’s going to have to blow Curry’s pace out of the water early in his career (because good luck keeping up with Curry’s pace after about year six) or he’s going to have to play about 25 seasons. Does anyone fit that mold right now?
Warriors’ Stephen Curry becomes first NBA player to make 4,000 3-pointers, and 5,000 is within his reach
Jasmyn Wimbish
Warriors’ Stephen Curry becomes first NBA player to make 4,000 3-pointers, and 5,000 is within his reach
Let’s just look at Green’s two examples for argument’s sake. Through the first six years of Trae Young’s career, he only attempted 282 more 3-pointers than Curry did through the first six years of his career, and even that is only because Curry missed virtually his entire third season. That isn’t nearly a big enough volume advantage to cancel Curry’s extreme efficiency edge (44% to Young’s 35%), which is why Curry made 132 more 3-pointers than Young through their first six seasons. And from there, obviously, it’s not even close.
Same story for Donovan Mitchell, who, as Green correctly said, has attempted over eight 3s per game through the first eight years of his career. Want to know how many 3s Curry attempted per game through his first eight years? 7.6. So basically identical. Now calculate the difference in percentages — Mitchell’s career 36% rate to Curry’s 42% — and add in the next eight years of Curry upping his volume to 11.5 3s per game without even a tiny decline in efficiency, and again, it’s not even close.
You’re going to find this to be true of pretty much every so-called threat to Curry’s record. One, their edge over Curry in 3-point volume through the early part of their careers — considering just how much track Curry started chewing up in just his fourth season, when he started launching 600-plus, at a minimum, annually — isn’t nearly as significant as Green, and many others who choose to build their cases on theory rather than actual numbers, would have you believe.