The Warriors beat the Magic on Thursday as they’ve won so many games this season. Steph Curry saw a crisis, put the team on his back, and lifted them to a come-from-behind win in spectacular fashion.
Ok, maybe Curry hasn’t dropped 56 points in every win he’s needed to drag the Warriors to this season — making Thursday’s win all the more special — but the Dubs needed every last one of those points to beat an Orlando team that’s been reeling in mediocrity (at best) for the last few weeks.
Sounds familiar, right?
But in that rehashed script, we can see how much things have changed for the Dubs since Jimmy Butler’s acquisition. We can see why the Warriors have something to play for this season.
I don’t want to take any credit away from Curry, whose performance mere days before his 37th birthday puts him in yet another exclusive class of NBA greats — his 56 points is the second-most by a player 36-years-old or or older, trailing only Kobe Bryant’s 60, which happened in the legend’s final game. (Curry took half the shots of Bryant to score four fewer points.) But Thursday’s game-winning outburst is part of a more significant trend that cannot be ignored.
Now that Curry finally has a worthy No. 2 (and who could mistake the order?), he is playing some of his best basketball in years. It’s a renaissance for one of the great artists of our day.
Yes, we still had Curry Flurries and highlight games when Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, or Dennis Schröder (has that marriage been formally annulled yet?) were trying to be this team’s second scorer. Still, such moments were far more wrought and sporadic.
Before Butler arrived, Curry’s season — 42 games — was solid but unquestionably a decline from recent form: 23 points per game on 43 percent shooting from the field.
It’s only been eight games, but Curry leads the NBA in scoring since Butler’s arrival — one 56-point game doesn’t make that happen — and he’s shooting a blistering 51 percent from the floor.
He has been given the greatest gift one can receive on a basketball court, or, perhaps in life: time and space.
This guy is pretty awesome when there aren’t four players draped over him every time he touches the ball.
And because he hasn’t been carrying a team night in, night out for the last few weeks, he had more than enough to offer on a night where Butler provided little but passing on the offensive end.
Can Curry do something similar again on Saturday, when the Warriors play the 76ers? Probably not. We saw the limits of this kind of work requirement leading up to the NBA’s trade deadline — the Dubs lost as many games as they won and were heading nowhere, slowly. There were moments where it felt like the best thing to do was tank to save Curry’s legs and land an outside chance at Cooper Flagg in the NBA Draft.
Instead, the Warriors traded away their 2025 first-round pick and, justly, no one cares.
But the beauty of the Warriors’ new situation is that Curry doesn’t need to turn in herculean performances every night. The difference between “can” and “must” is as massive as Thursday’s performance.
Because the Warriors machine — back in action for the first time since the 2022 season with this Butler trade — is fully operational, Curry is still the key cog, and he’s both more insulated and more open.
On shots of more than 10 feet, Curry is open (defender four or more feet away from him) four percent more than before Butler’s acquisition.
For a player like Curry who needs so little space to get off a good shot, that difference is far more than marginal.
It all adds up to a few more points, a little less nightly wear-and-tear, and a much brighter future for the Dubs.