With Stephen Curry unable to secure a spot inside the top-three finalists for the MVP award this season, the chatter just got louder on him having a down year in terms of production on the court.
It didn’t take long for that talk to find its way around to Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue, who quickly shot down that notion on Monday, according to Jimmy Durkins of East Bay Times.
“He’s a two-time MVP,” Lue said. “He’s a great player, a very dangerous player offensively. That doesn’t surprise me. You bring in another MVP, so you’re trying to figure it out and trying to figure how they can integrate Kevin Durant to their team. Steph took a little backseat to make sure everything worked right and then once the playoffs hit, he got back to his normal self scoring the basketball and being aggressive.”
Curry may have experienced a notable drop in scoring from 30.1 to 25.3 points this past regular season, but it was still the second-highest scoring output of his career on 46.8 percent shooting from the field and 41.1 percent from beyond the arc, while also averaging 6.6 assists and 4.5 rebounds per game.
What is also lost in all of these is that the Warriors had brought in another elite player in the mix in Kevin Durant, who quickly assumed the role as their top scoring option. Curry was going to experience a drop in production based on that fact alone given that there was going to be fewer scoring opportunities for himself. It did take a bit of time to adjust, but as the season wore on, his play picked up.
Curry finished the regular season first on the team in scoring and 10th in the league while also ranking 12th in assists and first with 324 made three-pointers. He also notched double-figures in 78 games while tallying 20 or more points 62 times, 30 points on 19 occasions, and five 40-point performances.
On top of that, Curry has been the leading offensive force in the playoffs for the Warriors averaging a team-high 28.6 points, including an active streak of 10 straight games of at least 20 points. All of these make any talk of a down year quite head scratching.