Is Stephen Curry the best point guard since Magic Johnson?
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With Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry off to a record-setting start in the wake of a season that saw him win MVP and his first title, that's the company he's now keeping, even if he doesn't have the same amount of hardware yet.
So could it be that Curry is playing point guard better than anyone has since Magic?
Point guards and wins
For apples-to-apples comparisons of players from different eras, advanced stats help us understand and isolate exactly how much each player contributed. In the case of Johnson, Paul and Curry, we need metrics that include the late 1970s.
By one such set of metrics, Curry added 20.9 wins last season for Golden State. That allowed him to join Johnson, Paul, Jason Kidd, Gary Payton and John Stockton as the sixth point guard to reach 20 WARP (wins above replacement player) since the NBA began tracking individual turnovers in 1977-78. (Two-time MVP Steve Nash topped out at 17.8 WARP in 2006-07.)
Here's the best of those seasons in terms of player win percentage, the per-minute version of WARP.
Because he averaged just 32.2 minutes per game, Curry's WARP total lags behind the other best seasons by point guards. On a per-minute basis, however, his 2014-15 rated better than any season by Stockton, Kidd, Payton or two-time MVP Steve Nash. Just Johnson and Paul have surpassed him in the past 38 seasons.
Surprisingly, Paul's 2008-09 campaign tops the list. As former Insider John Hollinger noted at the time in a controversial column, Paul's advanced stats even topped Magic's before he suffered a knee injury the following season that kept him from continuing at such a high level.
Point guards and efficiency
Hollinger's player efficiency rating (PER) offers a similar list. Because Basketball-Reference.com estimates turnovers for players from previous eras, it adds Tiny Archibald and Oscar Robertson to the list.
That leaves one notable difference between the two lists: Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook, whose super-high usage gave him the second-highest PER for a point guard on record last season.
Of course, that was only Curry's 2014-15 MVP campaign, and he's been even better so far this season. If he were to maintain it, Curry's 34.9 PER would be the best by any player regardless of position.
( Wilt Chamberlain had an estimated 31.8 PER in 1962-63, the season he averaged 50 PPG, while LeBron James and Michael Jordan have both posted 31.7 PERs since individual turnovers were tracked.)
By the way, Curry's .866 player win percentage in my metric also would be the best on record, surpassing James' .839 mark in 2008-09.
Still, the first 12 games will ultimately make only a small difference in Curry's final stat line. If he played at the same winning percentage as last season over the remaining 68 games, Curry would finish with a .806 rating, better than Paul's 2007-08 campaign but behind his 2008-09 season.
Point guards and RPM
ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM) gives a slightly different perspective on the question. Because it requires play-by-play data, RPM dates only to 2000-01, so we can't compare Curry to Magic.
Despite cutting out his prime, the multiyear predictive version of RPM still puts Stockton at the top of the list for his age-38 season.
Thanks to his past track record, Paul actually had a slight advantage in predictive RPM over Curry last season. On the other hand, Curry led all players in the version of RPM based solely on 2014-15 stats that is available on ESPN.com.
Given how well Curry has played, it's possible he'll soon pass Paul for the best stretch of point guard play by RPM since Stockton.
Curry vs. Paul
While Stockton certainly deserves consideration, the numbers generally suggest that the question of best modern point guard ultimately comes down to Curry vs. Paul. That's fascinating in part because while they get similar results, the two point guards have such different styles.
As Kirk Goldsberry explored Wednesday on FiveThirtyEight, Paul is the ultimate distributor, the more classic point guard who can score but would prefer to set up his teammates. The worst assist rate of Paul's career would be tied for Curry's best.
In fact, while Curry improved as a playmaker the past two seasons, he has taken a step back in that regard in 2015-16, handing out assists less frequently than Golden State power forward Draymond Green. Yet Curry has been better than ever because of how dangerous he has become as a scorer.
In making the case for Curry to win MVP last season, I noted that he was posting the best adjusted true shooting percentage by any guard in modern NBA history. Adjusted for their share of the offense (usage rate), no guard had ever been as efficient a scorer (in terms of true shooting percentage). Well, Curry is blowing that record-setting mark out of the water this season.
Curry has increased his usage rate from finishing 28.9 percent of the Warriors' plays with a shot, trip to the free throw line or a turnover in 2014-15 to 33.4 percent his year, putting him in the same territory as James Harden (33.2 percent) and LeBron James (33.8 percent). Yet Curry has been more efficient than ever as a scorer, posting the best true shooting percentage (.689) among all qualifying players.
Combine those figures and Curry's adjusted true shooting percentage (.750) would be as far ahead of James' current record (.704) as the difference between LeBron's record and the 76th-best season.
Steph and Magic
Surely, Curry won't keep shooting quite this well. If he can come anywhere close to maintaining this start, however, Curry will be a favorite to win another MVP and another championship, pushing him past Paul and closer to Johnson.
Just as Johnson once changed our vision of what a point guard should be with his unique combination of size and playmaking ability, Curry is doing the same with his shooting and scoring ability. "I think he's going to create a new kind of player," NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West -- who built the Showtime roster around Johnson as Lakers GM and now serves as an adviser to Golden State's front office -- told Tim Kawakami last week.
Indeed, The Logo appears to be right again. There has never been a point guard quite like Curry before, and we might soon be forced to conclude that only one can compare: Magic.
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