Curry's shot last night was ridiculous. Ill bet if we had someone on our team who could hit a shot like that on a regular basis we would be celebrating it.
If you as a team don't like it, find a way to defeat it.
You can't That's the point. Its not a competitive sport at that point. Its more like golf. All you can do is find somebody on your side who can do the same thing, run up and down the court, never run plays, and just chuck up whatever you feel like.
BTW, Curry IS the best shooter of all time. At least at those sorts of shots. That's not the question.
A very long time ago -- so long it predates my own basketball watching, so that's not the point -- the 3pt shot was invented as a gimmick. It wasn't a core thing in any way. A fun gimmick shot that hey, maybe it went in. Sometime in the mid 90s to mid 00s it reached a point of balance. Where you could have great players who specialized in it, 3pt shooting roleplayers were valuable. It was a spacer. A valuable alternative strategy.
The problem is that that decision made back in the 70s to award a shot from one spot on the floor a full 50% more value than shots anywhere else on the floor was only a reasonable one if shots from out there were at least 50% harder (and much more at the time) to make. But now when you get a guy like Curry running around able to hit them effortlessly from anywhere, because you are rewarding that shot 50% over anything else, its basically the GOAT alternative. You can't compete with that. You can't defend it.
I've been watching the Warriors on/off numbers this year, and I'm even beginning to question just how great they are as a team sans Curry. You can do that for any team obviously -- we are nothing without Cuz too. But with the Warriors you're talking about a championship team, a 70 win team, and when Stephen Curry is on the floor they have an absurd 119.6 ORTG and .591 eFG%, then he leaves and they have a 104.1 ORTG and .499 eFG%. Which is to say when he is in the game they have an ORTG nearly 7 points higher than any other team in the NBA (OKC), and I would imagine quite possibly the highest of all time, and when he is out they have an ORTG and eFG% roughly equal to the 22nd ranked Indiana Pacers (104.1 and .495). When Curry is out of the game they actually LOSE their minutes, badly I might add. A -6.3 differential, which means that the Golden State Warriors, current and likely future NBA champions, are basically as bad as the Phoenix Suns, 27th in the NBA, without one player. That's absurd.
And all of the above can be converted into a celebration of Curry. It certainly is amazing. But its unbalanced in the extreme, and the way its being done is the problem. Its practically an exploit. If Steph was dominating in the post, or slashing like mad, or whatever, then the other team has a chance to respond, to strategize, to double, or whatever needs to be done. But what Steph does makes the opposing team an afterthought. He's not beating guys, or finding holes in defenses. He just shoots before he even gets into the defensive zone. He's almost in a 3pt shooting contest with no viable defense to stop him. Not important if you are a good defensive team, a bad one, a well coached team, a poorly coached team. You can't defend what he does. You can't even make it tough, since its all basically impossible. I happen to like the 3pt shot, its always been there since I began watching basketball. But if more guys like Curry began streaming into the league I would be beating down the door for the league to get rid of the stripe entirely. When a shot worth 50% more is that easy for you, then there is no need for it to be worth more. If it is, then soon there will be no point at all of taking or practicing any other kind of shot. A layup would even become a giveup shot when you had no other choice.
For those clinging to the idea that's a good thing, let's take the next step. Let's say Steph now has a kid, let's name him Chuck. So Chuck Curry makes the NBA in 20 years and Chuck comes in and he is even better than dad. He doesn't even have to cross halfcourt, can hit a halfcourt shot like most guys hit FTs. And so that's what he does. Every game he comes out, teams desperately try to deny the inbounds, he gets it, takes two steps, heaves, and swish! Is that basketball? There's nothing to do.
In a classic law of unintended consequences case, the NBA created the Curry phenomenon. They, unique in all of the major sports, made scoring from a certain point on the court worth much more than scoring from anyplace on the court. Then they got rid of illegal defense rules, allowing teams to gang up on players inside, and they did that at the same time they got rid of handchecking, collectively making the perimeter game much more attractive than being swarmed and hacked inside. Eventually a shooter of Curry's caliber was going to come along, and when he did they have over the years created a situation where its just simply the best strategy. Where there is no counter, no defense, no other way to achieve that efficiency. There's nothing to do. The rules have dictated one strategy is the best strategy. One player has come along who is better at the best strategy than anybody else. You can't even thug people anymore without being thrown out. Just nothing to do. Guess he wins. Now everybody run off over the summer and spend your time exclusively working on your own chucking, because that's the only hope.