Stephen Curry- Underrated May 2026

By Marcus Thompson II (Author’s Note) In the pantheon of NBA greats, no player has been more dissected, celebrated, and yet fundamentally misunderstood than Stephen Curry.

We have since watched the Warriors system collapse without him (the 2019-20 season, when they won 15 games) and flourish in weird lineups because of him. Yet the narrative persists. Stephen Curry- Underrated

We have normalized Curry’s production. Because he consistently hits shots that no human should hit, we treat his 4th quarter pull-up from 30 feet as routine. It is not routine. It is magic. By Marcus Thompson II (Author’s Note) In the

We confuse noise for dominance . Russell Westbrook screaming and rebounding his own miss looks like dominance. Giannis Antetokounmpo bulldozing three defenders looks like dominance. Curry’s dominance is quiet. It is a subtle jog around a screen. It is a relocation three seconds before the ball arrives. It is the opposing center stepping up to the free-throw line, terrified, leaving the rim wide open for a layup. We have normalized Curry’s production

That is the "Curry Gravity"—a phenomenon that has no statistical box. It is the panic in a defense’s eyes. Because it is invisible to the standard box score, we chronically undervalue it. For the first half of his career, a loud contingent argued that Curry was a product of the "Warriors system." The discourse went like this: Put him on the Charlotte Bobcats and he’s just a rich man’s J.J. Redick.

It was not an outlier. It was a revolution.

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.