Stephen Curry remains one of the best players in the world. The Golden State Warriors superstar has gotten better in recent years, showing the world that he's the greatest shooter of all time.
Even though Curry always stays humble when talking about this honor, it's clear for his peers and the fans that this man is a generational talent. He has made history during his 12-year NBA tenure, but Steph is always looking for more.
Recently, the 3x NBA champion and his trainer, Brandon Payne, revealed their approach for this season. The Chef wants to be more accurate with his shots and has taken big decisions to reach perfection.
The work Curry has put in this past offseason might seem as familiar as any other offseason. He takes plenty of shots. But Curry and his trainer, Brandon Payne, detailed to NBA.com a new wrinkle in Curry’s training regimen last summer. It has played a factor in Curry climbing to third place for most 45-point games for a player at least 33 years old (six), trailing only Michael Jordan (11) and Bernard King (eight).
“Making shots in workouts is no longer good enough,” Payne told NBA.com “We’ve established he’s going to make a lot of shots in workouts. He consistently does that. So for us, we’ve utilized technology to be even more precise.”
After shattering numerous scoring records and climbing to No. 2 on the NBA’s all-time list for most 3-pointers (2,842), Curry relied on shot-tracking technology that determined that not all of his made baskets are created equal.
Each time Curry hoisted a shot, the technology tracked the ball’s movement, the ball’s arc and how deep the ball went into the rim. If the ball failed to drop through the middle of the rim, Curry and Payne simply counted that attempt as a missed shot. Curry and Payne also kept the same standard when he took shots on the move, an approach he took to emulate shooting against a swarming defender.
Curry is already dangerous from beyond the arc. He changed the game of basketball thanks to his 3-point shooting, but he's not satisfied. No. 30 is constantly trying to improve his game to lead his team to the win. Still, he admits that it is never easy and sometimes things can be tough.
“It was a mental challenge of trying to be as perfect as possible,” Curry said. “If I make 10 shots and they are outside of that window and then I have to do 10 more for that drill, it becomes a conditioning drill if you don’t knock them down earlier in the drill. So you have to stay locked in and focused. It creates a game-like situation with pressure. You don’t want to be out there all day feeling dog tired because you can’t beat the drill.”
It's fair to say things have started well for Steph this season. Even though he thinks he played like trash in the season opener, the sharpshooter recorded a triple-double. Following that first game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Curry took his game to the next level, dominating the Clippers with a 45-PT explosion in front of Paul George and co.
This season is expected to bring a lot of good things to the Warriors. They added interesting pieces in the summer and with Klay Thompson back in the next months, the Dubs are in for an exciting season. Steph is doing his part, too, demonstrating it's never enough for a player with his winning mentality.
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