The trio of Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and Klay Thompson represents the most remarkable single-team assemblage of shooters in modern basketball history. There simply hasn’t been another collection of players on the same roster which can shoot the lights out from three-point range. In the 1980s and 1990s, the NBA as a league did not embrace the three-point shot as analytics had not made their way into the league just yet. Nowadays, though, threes are a focal part of the sport as coaches want players to shoot from deep. Within this context, let’s take a look at a key prop in the the Golden State Warriors-San Antonio Spurs matchup on Tuesday and see how many their terrific trio will come up with.
Stephen Curry
Curry has been all over the place as a three-point shooter in the past two weeks. He was 2-of-8 from three-point range on Jan. 24 in a win over the Washington Wizards. He was 6-of-12 on January 26 against the Boston Celtics. He was 6-of-8 on Jan. 28 in a win over the Indiana Pacers. He was 10-of-18 on Jan. 31 against the Philadelphia 76ers and 2-of-9 this past Saturday against the Los Angeles Lakers.
What does that add up to? Two bad three-point performances and three great ones makes Curry hard to read. However, after a bad shooting game against the Lakers, it is reasonable to think that he might bust out in a big way on Wednesday night against the Spurs. He has averaged 2.7 threes against them and the Spurs have issues at the point guard position with Derrick White out.
Kevin Durant
Durant has been a terrible three-point shooter over the past three weeks. He hasn’t made more than two threes in a game since January 16 against the not-very-good New Orleans Pelicans. The last time Durant made two three-pointers in a game was on January 18 against the Los Angeles Clippers when he went 2-of-7 from long range. Overall, he is 7 of his last 32 from behind the three-point arc.
In his career against the Spurs, he’s averaging just 1.2 threes per game, so don’t expect more than two from him — if that.
Klay Thompson
Thompson has had a few extraordinary three-point shooting performances this season, including a 10-of-11 outing against the Lakers on January 21, 7-of-11 versus Chicago on January 11 and an unconscious 14-of-24 against Chicago on October 29. Those three games combined gave Thompson a shooting line of 31 -of-46, or roughly 67 percent. That’s incredible but it also means that in the rest of his season, Thompson is 116-of-338, which is 34.3 percent, a not-very-good shooting average.
Thompson has made more than four threes in a game only once since January 16 and averages 2.1 in his career against the Spurs. Two makes seems like a reasonable bet here.
Outlook
We’re probably looking at about eight in total from this trio. Curry should be good for three, Thompson for two and Durant for one or two. Then we’ll also factor that one of these three should get hot. The Spurs are just 15th in opponent three-point field goal percentage and 24th when on the road. That should bring the Warriors trio to around eight threes on Tuesday.
