011. Steph Curry's Shooting Woes
Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter in the history of the NBA, has been seeing a decline in his shooting this past year. In this year’s preseason alone, Curry has shot 1-4, 3-8, 2-8, and 1-9 from 3-point range. That’s 7/29 total, or a little over 24% from 3. Although this is just preseason and it isn’t an indicator of what is to come, it does not bode well considering the shooting season Steph had prior, despite winning a championship.
Surprisingly, a lot of NBA fans don’t actually believe Curry was in a shooting slump last season, despite the numbers saying otherwise. Strictly focusing on his 3-point shooting, Steph shot 38% last season, which is still a reasonably high percentage and could attribute to why people believe Steph’s shooting is fine, but ignoring his 2019-20 season where he shot 24.5% on only 5 games played due to injury, last year was Steph’s worst shooting season in his entire career. It is also, again barring the ‘19-‘20 season, the only season he shot below 40% from 3 and well below his career average of 42.8%. In January 2022, Steph was shooting 36.5% from the floor, which would be the first time in his career he shot below 40% in a calendar month (with a minimum of 100 Field Goal Attempts). Interestingly, in the playoffs Steph shot fairly close to his playoff career average of 40.1%, shooting 39.7% from 3. Because of his solid shooting in an environment with tougher defense and ultimately winning a championship, it would seem Steph had overcome his shooting woes. However, it can’t be ignored that starting last season, his shooting had not only started declining, but his form started shifting as well as the season progressed. While the true reason for these changes may never be truly known, through careful analysis and statistics, a plausible theory can be made. Source.
Curry’s shooting form can be broken down to four key points that he keeps consistent and does at the top level that makes him the greatest shooter of all time. Those four points are shooting motion, tilt, sway, and follow-through / release. Comparing these four points from before the 2021 - 2022 season to his shot now, Curry’s change in shooting can be seen, and perhaps not for the better.
Starting with Steph’s shooting motion, overall it has stayed relatively the same. Curry popularized the one motion shot, dipping the ball slightly on the catch and then releasing immediately at the apex of his jump and when his arms are at the highest point. Through this motion, Curry ends up with an extremely smooth one motion shot from bottom to top:
However, looking at Curry’s shot from this year’s 3pt shooting exhibition in Japan for preseason, you can see that Curry has a VERY slight pause at the apex of his form before he flicks for the follow-through:
This pause has shown itself on multiple occasions throughout this past season. What this effect can have is a slight loss in power, a slower release time from the catch, and a much more inconsistent shot overall. Although Curry absolutely dominates in said 3pt contest, when there is more pressure to shoot quicker and a tighter defense surrounding him, these slight changes may impact his shot in a negative way.
Edit: Here are two great examples from the most recent Warriors vs Pistons game on Oct 30th:
Moving on to the “tilt”, which represents a shooter’s orientation to the basket, there seems to be a change in this area as well. According to Steph’s own MasterClass, he states that one should have their ten toes facing the basket and he shows that shoulders should be square to the basket. Interestingly, Steph doesn’t follow his own advice and points his toes toward the side, and while his shoulders aren’t perfectly square to the basket, Steph tends to do a good job of aligning his whole shoulders, torso, and feet on a straight vertical line. Also, his right foot tends to be placed slightly in front of his left, causing him to have some natural angling, but not a lot.
In Curry’s preseason match against the Wizards this year, his orientation towards the basket was wildly inconsistent. Some shots look fairly square, or at least Steph’s angling of square, while other shots start square and he confusingly twists mid-air to end up more sideways towards the hoop. This shot felt especially egregious where his right foot looks incredibly farther ahead of his left foot, making his overall tilt angle feel almost double his normal / old orientation:
The effect of his tilt being more sideways is hard to measure, especially since a lot of NBA players also tilt to varying degrees. However, because one side becomes increasingly more dominant with one foot much farther forward than the other, a loss of power and consistency would be plausible outcomes.
For vintage Curry shooting, Steph tends to mostly jump straight up for his shots, unless shooting beyond 30 feet, in which he tends to jump forward about a foot only.
However, a lot of his shots in the 2022 season has Curry jumping and leaning back a little, while kicking his feet out in front, also known as the “sway”:
Again, the change in form itself isn’t a problem, but it can definitely factor into his inconsistency.
Lastly is Steph’s release and follow-through. Steph was known as the fastest releaser in the League and follows through with a four finger down approach. Also, while Steph’s alignment and leg power stays relatively the same, Steph adjusts for power and range through his forearm and wrist.
In Steph’s more recent follow-throughs, it looks like there is less power coming from the legs, but he compensates by flicking extremely hard with his wrists. Also, his follow-through looks to be a lot more to the right than in his older forms. From the 3pt contest in Japan during preseason, the difference can be seen even when he’s wide open:
In conclusion, there are several things that can be pointed out. First of all, most of the examples shown are of Curry MAKING the basket, despite his form being different. This is to prove that the examples are not being cherry-picked against Steph himself, but to show that his form is indeed changing. Being the greatest shooter in the world, it is entirely feasible for Steph to completely change his form and still have incredible success with it. However, with his dip in 3 point shooting percentage, and him missing a lot of wide open shots in game, these changes are worrisome. Secondly, his new shooting form tends to be much more successful in environments without pressure, such as in practice, warmups, or a 3pt contest, but a lot less successful at NBA pace. Thirdly, Steph looked surprisingly good in the playoffs. He was making insane shots and his form was a lot of the time pretty solid. It was the playoffs that made me think Curry was truly back to shooting form. Lastly, his missed shots seem to happen the most under defensive pressure, timing pressure (such as a late closeout), or external pressure (beating a record). In his 2022 All-Star Game appearance, he tied for the most points scored in an All-Star game, shot incredibly well until the end when he started getting double teamed and had pressure to beat the record itself, and his form looked much closer to vintage Steph shooting:
My personal prevailing theory is the change in the official NBA basketball from Spaulding to Wilson. With many players saying the new ball feels different and stiffer, overall in the 2021-2022 season, the League average in 3pt shooting is 34.2%, which is the lowest since 1999. I believe that the stiffness of the new ball makes it harder for Curry to do his normal release and give it the same rotation, thus he tends to flick harder to get similar results and this change snowballs his entire form from a later release all the way to compensating with a bigger tilt angle. The second theory is he has lingering injuries that is affecting his comfort.
In order to correct his form and thus bring his shooting percentage back up, Curry needs to bring back his fundamentals of his shooting from feet placement to jumping angle to one motion release point. Afterwards, to adjust for the new ball affecting his release and rotation, Curry should experiment with different hand placements, finger spreads, release angles (maybe his new release is a good change but is slightly too much to the side), and elbow / forearm follow through angle. All in all, Curry is an expert at his craft and will eventually figure out why his shots aren’t falling, but I pray it happens soon as I hope Curry’s legacy and especially his shooting accolades stay unmatched for a long long time.