To review Curry’s legacy is to conclude that while he is celebrated as a star, he is still undervalued as a basketball genius. We have normalized the abnormal, and in doing so, we have underrated the revolutionary.
In the pantheon of NBA greats, no player has been more dissected, celebrated, and yet fundamentally misunderstood than Stephen Curry.
This is the first layer of his underrated status: .
The Warriors entered the series against the Boston Celtics as underdogs. They were older, dealing with injuries, and lacked the overwhelming secondary star power of their previous championship runs. Stephen Curry- Underrated
By the 2024–25 season, those numbers had more than doubled: the league average climbed to 37.6 three-point attempts per game, with 13.5 makes. The NBA is now a three-point shooting league, and Stephen Curry is the primary reason why.
The moment Curry crosses half-court, defenses panic. He doesn't pass the ball and stand still; he enters a state of perpetual motion, sprinting through a maze of back-screens, baseline cuts, and hand-offs. Because he is the most lethal shooter in history, opposing teams routinely commit two defenders to him when he is 35 feet away from the basket, completely away from the play.
Left with few options, Curry committed to tiny Davidson College in North Carolina, a school whose basketball program was respectable but far from the national stage. There, under the tutelage of coach Bob McKillop, he began his improbable ascent. To review Curry’s legacy is to conclude that
Perhaps the most damning line of all came in the official pre-draft analysis, which concluded that Curry was "far below NBA standard in regard to explosiveness and athleticism." The same document bluntly advised, "Do not rely on him to run your team." This was the established basketball orthodoxy of the era: without elite size, speed, or vertical pop, a player could not succeed at the highest level.
These words became a chip on Curry's shoulder. While the Minnesota Timberwolves infamously passed on him twice to draft two other point guards (Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn), the Golden State Warriors took a chance on Curry with the seventh overall pick. Even then, the narrative was that the Warriors were settling for a risky, fragile shooter.
: Labeled as "far below NBA standard" in regard to explosiveness. Positioning This is the first layer of his underrated status:
Then he won consecutive MVPs and led his team to a championship.
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That question — where Curry ranks among the all-time greats — is precisely the question that proves he is still underrated.