For the 20th time in his career, Steph Curry is the Western Conference Player of the Week.
Curry got the award after the Golden State Warriors went 3-1 last week (and 4-1 if you included last Sunday’s win over Houston). Curry averaged 30.1 points per game for the week while making 23 three-pointers in the four games – on 52.3% shooting. Of course, the NBA also wanted to reward him for his stellar 30/8/7 line in Friday’s In-Season Tournament victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he made a game-winning layup in the final seconds.
It was Curry’s ninth game-winning shot in the final five seconds of regulation/overtime since 2012-13, the most in the league. Russell Westbrook is second, and tied for third is the black Falcon himself, Harrison Barnes.
While In-Season Tournament games don’t count extra in the standings, they probably do count extra when it comes to NBA awards, as commissioner Adam Silver desperately wants his pet project to succeed, the the point where they hired Michael “Christopher Moltisanti” Imperioli to star in a commercial and made Green dress as a security guard.
Steph’s shot was great for Silver and the league. It was a dramatic finish in a playoff-like atmosphere. The subsequent controversy over Draymond Green and Josh Giddey touching the basket showcased the NBA’s replay center in Secaucus, New Jersey. Curry’s heroics made fans forget the lingering damage to their vision caused by the league’s heinous special tournament courts.
Curry’s prolific three-point shooting is exceeding even his incredbily-high standards for bombing away from deep. He’s averaging 5.7 threes per game, and has drilled 40 of his 82 attempts. That puts him on pace for 468 thre-pointers in 82 games, which would shatter his own record of 402 triples in a season. That’s slightly ahead of Chris Paul, who is on pace to make 25 three-pointers this year.
In the Eastern Conference, some guy who Nemanja Bjelica shut down in the 2022 NBA Finals won Player of the Week. Good for him, I guess.
