The take away from these playoffs, regardless of the outcome, is Curry is the best player on a great team. He is a good player. But when it comes to playoff or NBA final performances Curry is in the Hall of Good, not Hall of Fame and certainly not the GOAT of NBA final appearances.
Even if (when) GSW wins this NBA finals this year the Curry comparisons to Jordan need to stop. I already posted some regular season reasons in the
Curry thread, but the NBA playoff and Final numbers are worth taking a peak at.
The
NBA Playoff records and bests have Jordan all over them. We all know Jordan was 6 of 6 in NBA Final appearances & Jordan was the MVP in each (caveat: if he was 6 of 9 while carrying 3 bad teams to the finals that would be more impressive IMO, but that is neither here or there).
But it isn't just that he was the MVP in each finals, but how he did it.
First, in his 179 playoff appearances Jordan averaged 33.5 pts per game. He holds the record for most points in a playoff game (63) and had 8 games with 50+, 38 with 40+, and 109 with 30+ (60% of his games), and 173 with 20+ (97%). He is the only player to record 15 pts in every playoff appearance (min. 25). To compare Tim Duncan, an all time great, had at least 10 pts in 237 games. Different players and roles but shows how even on bad nights (which Jordan had) he rarely disappeared.
Jordan's playoff per (player efficiency rating) is 28.6, that is his
career average. Curry's best playoffs (2015) was a 24.5 last season. Jordan had 11 playoff appearances where he was above 24.5.
And what got me thinking about this entire Jordan vs. Curry debate that has brewed on ATOT is how *bad* the loss was last night. A Jordan finals team never lost by 30. And looking back at the OKC series I don't ever remember a series where a Jordan team got spanked so badly so many times in a single series.
In 35 NBA Final games, Jordan led teams lost by more than 10 points 4 times. The worst was when they were up 3-0 against a very good Sonic team that had lost a couple close games.
1991
11 pts, game 2 (OT), up 1-0 to Trail Blazers
1996
24 pts, game 4, up 3-0 to Sonics
11 pts, game 5, up 3-1 to Sonics
1997
11 pts, game 3, up 2-0 to Jazz
Yet Curry has not only disappeared frequently the last 2 playoffs but has been on the bad end of some really bad losses. Curry has not been the best player on his team the last 2 series. He wasn't the MVP of last year's finals--heck, LeBron was robbed last season. Jordan was never shown up in a finals series by another player.
It looks like the GSW *team* is going to win a 2nd NBA title in a row (sorry Cleveland fans--having all that money and player capitol into a player like Love who doesn't mesh with your team and they are better without him is an albatross that may prevent Cleveland from ever getting a title). But it isn't, "Curry and his GSW" winning the title like the, "Jordan and his Bulls." This is, "GSW, with the contribution of Curry, Thompson, Green, and their awesome bench" winning these games.
So can we stop with the Curry GOAT narrative already?
I would even argue LeBron James in his many playoff appearances, and 7 NBA Final appearances, has been better. In a mythical NBA playoff lottery of all time playoff performers I am picking James before Stephen every time. And I don't think it is even close.