For Curry, who’s averaging 38.2 points per game this month, the shots are falling easier than ever in part because his head is at ease.
Asked what’s going through his head when he is on this kind of shooting streak, Curry responded:”When you are in this type of rhythm, nothing”
“It’s the ideal way to explain it,” he continued. “It is just trying to find a decent look, get your feet underneath you, and then the remainder is muscle memory, confidence and just creativity, so just trying to be in the moment as much as you can. When you are missing, that is when you start thinking about mechanics, you start thinking about other things, those thoughts creep in mind. But when you’re at a stream, in rhythm, then there’s not much going on upstairs. It’s fine.”
Curry’s ability to hit shots from all around has not only raised the Warriors to seven wins in their previous nine games, in addition, it has raised his teammates’ amount of drama to its highest collective stage of this year. As longtime teammate Draymond Green acknowledged, Curry’s streak makes his teammates want to play even better to match their star.
“If it doesn’t, you should probably hang them up,” Green stated. “Since you’re probably a little soft and it probably don’t matter enough to you. And in order to win in this league, it must matter. When you have a man playing that, you owe it to him to give it everything that you have as a way to help win those basketball games”
Curry’s month of April has already included two big milestones. The first arrived on April 12, when he handed Wilt Chamberlain to develop into the Warriors’ all-time leading scorer. The second came during a stretch from March 29 to April 19, when Curry became the first player in NBA history age 33 or older to score 30 or more points in 11 straight games — departure Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, who scored at least 30 at 10 straight games in December 2012.
Curry’s consistency has repeatedly left his teammates and coaches in amazement.
“It seems like I’ve run out of ways to describe Steph’s play,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr explained. “I am just going to quit trying. I will ask you to go back three or four games past, examine my comments then and use those tonight . … I don’t know what to say. The shot-making is simply mind-boggling and incredible, but I have used those phrases . However, I understand you got to keep asking — as long as he keeps playing like this, you must keep asking, I got to keep replying.”
Green knows how striking Curry’s recent stretch was, but what is much more impressive to him is how Curry has lifted up everybody else around him.
“Incredible, man,” Green said of Curry’s run. “The rim is about the size of a sea, literally. A couple of those ones he hit tonight, it is incredible. How he is leading us, it has been incredible to watch. His scoring is merely a byproduct of the — the leadership, the demeanor that he’s taking on the ground each and every night to give guys, the case that he’s setting.”
He’s shooting 52.9% from the field in April and a robust 47% from beyond the arc.
“The best thing about what we have to do is that you don’t focus on outcomes, you focus on the procedure,” Curry said. “And that, for me, is how this occurs. Plus it does not make me get bigheaded and believing I am the world’s best in terms of that I can not get better. But it makes me fall in love with the procedure even more and keep doubling down what goes into attempting to perfect your craft and set the work in and find new ways to make better”
Rest assured, however: Curry believes he’s the world’s biggest shooter — he doesn’t need the excess attention from the run he is about to deviate from the work and the mindset which attracted him to this point in his career.
“Obviously, when I am out there, I feel as the best shot on the planet,” Curry said. “It means I still got to put the work in.”