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Ebony
This is an iHeart podcast.
Jason
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Ebony
Welcome to Pretty Private with ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm ebony and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Manny
Why are TSA rules so confusing?
Jason
You got a hoodie on. Take it all.
Manny
I'm Manny. I'm Noah.
Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
This is Devin.
Manny
And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called no Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same, Go off on me. I deserve it, you know, Lock him up. Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jason
No Such Thing.
WebMD Host
From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues. Through in depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow.
Jason
It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other.
WebMD Host
Listen to WebMD Health discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jason
The Volume. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great start to your week. We are continuing our player rankings today with number six, Steph Curry. I'm very excited to dive into Steph Curry today. I think he's actually becoming a little underrated again. It's kind of a weird thing that has followed Steph Curry around in his career as weird things happened. Like he didn't receive any Finals MVP votes in 2015, or many people thought Kevin Durant was better than him, or people thought that he was going to fail right after Kevin Durant left the team. And for whatever reason, it took the 2022 championship for people to properly respect Steph Curry. But in his old age, Stephen similar to what we were talking about with LeBron, I think Steph's entering into a phase where he's being underrated by many folks who follow the NBA right now. So I'm excited to talk about Steph at number six in today's list. You guys know the joke before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on twitter_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast fee. Wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Make sure you guys follow us. There's and then last but not least, if you guys want to get mailbag questions into our mailbags, drop them under our full episodes in the YouTube comments. Right. Mailbag with a colon. And then drop your question in. There can be about this player rankings list. It can be about literally anything. Drop them in there and we'll get to them on Fridays throughout the remainder of the year. All right, let's talk some basketball. So Stefan, number six actually ended up being my toughest pick for the superstar tier. There were some other tough ones, obviously when we get up into that trio that's like Shay, Gilders, Alexander, Giannis and Luka. That was a really tough one for me. The group we just passed like that Donovan Mitchell, KD, AD, LeBron, Jalen Brunson, like that group, that was a really tough group for me to rank. But this spot, or more accurately the five spot between Anthony Edwards and Steph Curry, that was the toughest decision I had to make. I you know, when I start this list, I always do it like a week or two prior and then I force myself to sleep on it a bunch of times and I keep re approaching it with a fresh mind and with a fresh set eyes and I changed it a lot. There were several things that moved around, but this was the one that I moved around just about every time I looked at it. There were several versions of this list where I had Steph at 5 and Ant at 6. But I ended up landing with Ant at 5 and Steph at 6. And it really came down to the totality of the criteria for me. If both players were healthy for a playoff series tomorrow, I would take Steph. It's a small margin, but I would take Steph. I think the OKC series last year for Ant, as well as the Dallas series the year before, both the last two Western Conference finals, I think they exposed Ant as a guy who has some issues with high level half court shot creation against the truly elite defenses in this league. And we're obviously going to get into more detail about that on Wednesday. I still think Steph's ability to break defenses just simply by running around and drawing two to the ball is still one of the most valuable pieces of advantage creation in the entire NBA. In fact, I think Steph right now going into this next season is still the third best offensive engine in the entire NBA behind Nicole Jokic and Luka Doncic. Ant has closed the gap in a lot of ways. As much as he struggled against Oklahoma City, which was obviously one of the great defenses in modern NBA history, he was pretty good against Golden State. And they weren't as good as OKC defensively, but that was a very good warriors defense. They were the number one defense in the league after the All Star break. And a. You know, you guys remember especially games three and four, when you desperately needed one game to extend that series so that Steph could potentially come back. Ant was the guy driving the nail in the coffin. And the second piece of it, I think Steph is similar to what we were talking about with Lebron, underrated in terms of his availability. You actually start to dig into most of the guys on this tier. Kevin Durant, Donovan, Mitchell, Anthony Davis, Victor Wembanyama, Giannis and Tenacompo. These guys all missed more games. Luka Doncic, like, these guys all missed more games than Steph Curry did over the last couple of years. So, like, I think similar to what we were talking about, LeBron, I think. I think these guys are actually underrated in terms of their availability. But Ant, to put it very simply, Ant is the safest bet in the entire NBA this year to actually make it through an entire regular season in playoff run. Simple stat to demonstrate this. Steph missed 16 games last year, which is not that big of a deal. I mean, the four playoff games obviously were bad. But Steph missed 16 playoff games or 16 games total last year. Ant has missed nine games total in the last three years. He's played 79 games in each of the last three seasons. So again, this is the one where I flip flop the most. But to me, Ants overall availability closed the gap and gave him a slight edge here. And by the way, if your take is but Jason Steph is a better playoff player than Ant, like I would agree with you. That's just not how this list works though. So Steph comes in at number six this year. Let's go over his last season really quick. And this is where a lot of people are going to lose their shit because we have a lot of box score watchers out there. Because Steph didn't have a very statistically impressive season. But I still view him as one of the very best offensive engines in the NBA, which we're going to talk about in more detail later. And to end the season, this is where it gets a little bit lost in those statistics. Steph over the final 28 games of the year was producing at a substantially higher level than he did the first 2/3 of the year. But again, we'll talk about that in a little bit. I want to start with the large sample first. So he played 70 games second consecutive season with over 70 games played. Again, he's been more reliable in terms of his regular season availability than most of the players in the superstar tier. The only real counterpoint here is the Timberwolf series when he pulled his hamstring. That's certainly worth mentioning if you're unavailable in a playoff game. That's certainly a down mark. He averaged 25 points, 4 rebounds and 6 assists per games this per game this season. 1.1 steals per game. That was his highest steals mark since 2022. Kind of a resurgence for Steph on the defensive end this year for a better warriors defense in that post All Star break stretch. When Jimmy Butler was on the roster, Steph averaged 1.4 steals per game as he became a very useful part of the number one ranked defense in the NBA after the All Star break. Here's the thing with Steph on the defensive end. I want to spend just a couple minutes talking about defense and we'll spend the rest of the show talking about offense. He obviously has some limitations on the ball. He's smaller, right? But I think a lot of this is overblown by most folks. When you actually look at All Star guards shot creating guards like skill guards in the NBA almost all of them get targeted. There are a handful of exceptions like you're not going to try to attack ant one on one, right? Then he's technically a skill guard who's initiating offense. But most of the all star guards in the NBA are also smaller, are also guys that have a lot of offensive workload and don't devote all their energy to the defensive end of the floor. That's kind of inherent to that position group. And I actually think Steph does better than most all star guards as an on ball defender. When you try to attack him on an island, he's surprisingly strong. He's surprisingly big. He's like 6:3, he moves his feet very well laterally and he's a super smart defender that knows how to anticipate what direction you're going to. He knows how to funnel as part of their defensive scheme. I think Steph's a good on ball defender for his position group. He's obviously not going to be the same level of impact as the bigger, better athletes in the league. But again, compared to small to compared to skill guards, I think he does really well. Where I think Steph has actually managed to become a quality defender for his position group is as an off ball defender. He's very good at reading plays as they develop, getting out in front of them and breaking them up with his hands. Most of his steals come from playing passing lanes or from tagging rollers. We covered this in film sessions last year, but he's really good at like kind of sitting behind the roller and making him look like he's open and then shooting the gap at the last second and poking the ball away, which is igniting fast breaks going the other way. So again, like all skill guards in the NBA come with certain limitations, but I think Steph does better there than most guys do. His percentages last year, 45% from the field, 40% from 3 and 93% from the line. That came down to 57% in effective field goal percentage and 62% in true shooting. Now let's talk about his late season search. I preached for two years that the warriors desperately needed a upgrade in terms of their star talent. Right. I have complimented the warriors front office for the work they've done on the back end of their roster. I think them being able to like reasonably find 15 dudes who could play last year, 1415 dudes who could play, I think is a testament to the two things. One, the way that Steph can invert spacing and make shooting less important. But two, which we'll talk about more in a minute. But the second piece of it is the warriors front office has tracked down a lot of these like veteran minimum two way, like end of the roster type of guys who are like pretty high basketball iq, pretty athletic and quick laterally, who all can like step in and play rotation minutes. So to their credit, the front office has been good. I mean the Kaminga situation I blame on Joe Lakob. I don't think that's a front office issue. I think that's a Joe Lakob issue. And really them mismanaging that is why they haven't had the star talent. But there's been a gaping hole in terms of like that high level offensive player that can play alongside Steph ever since Kevin Durant left and Klay Thompson was. Klay Thompson was able to carry that load and Jordan Poole was able to carry that load in that championship run in 2022. Andrew Wiggins as well. But as Wiggins declined, as Jordan Poole declined and was traded and as Klay Thompson declined them, mismanaging the Kaminga situation made it so that they weren't able to replace that specific role. But in that, as a result of that, for the majority of last season, in the previous season, I don't think Steph had a great deal of belief in what they were doing. We talk about this all the time, but like as a competitor, it's very important to believe in your ability to achieve the ultimate goal. There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears that goes into reaching that peak of basketball performance. And like, it's hard to put yourself through that if you don't think there's going to be a payoff at the end. The warriors roster before the Jimmy trade had no shot, but they bring in Jimmy all of a sudden. Both Steph and Draymond, it like lit a fire underneath them. It moved him firmly into that group of second tier contenders that had a legitimate puncher's chance to win the title and both of them locked in. Draymond was amazing down the stretch as he anchored the number one defense in the league in that span. And then Steph went up a level again to start the year. Before Jimmy Butler joined the team, Steph averaged just 22 point, 22.7 points per game on 59% true shooting over those final 28 games. After Jimmy joined the team, Steph's Production skyrocketed to 27.3 points per game on 66% true shooting 66%. The warriors went 22 and 6 over those 28 games with Steph on the floor and they beat the 2 seed in the Western Conference first round on the road. Now, that insane workload ended up wearing Steph down and he ended up breaking down in that Timberwolves series. But during that stretch, Steph was able to reach a level that matched the top tier superstars in the league. Again, that's the criteria for this tier of players from Ant, that group from five all the way down to 14. Whether it's Ant and Wemby for youthful inconsistency or it's Kawhi and Joel Embiid age related or LeBron, Steph KD age related, you know, Jalen Brunson, a little bit of shot variance and his lack of size and ability to impact the game defensively, whatever it is, those groups, that group, all of them have inconsistency, but they have to in order to be in that tier for me, they have to be able to reach that top tier level for stretches. And Steph, I thought, reached that over the, the, the final third of the season, essentially. All right, some quick play type data and then we'll dive more into the idea of Steph as an offensive engine. He ran 899 pick and rolls last year, including passes. He got 1.05 points per possession in them. That was in the 77th percentile. Ranked 13th out of the 26 players to log at least 700 and 50 pick and rolls. Now that may not seem like a super impressive statistic, but again, when you're talking about pick and roll including passes, I think that's pretty incredible considering the level of offensive talent that he was surrounded with. Again, for a large chunk of the year it was like Andrew Wiggins, not the best version of him either. And you know, Brandon Pajemski and Moses Moody and inconsistent Jonathan Kaminga and a lot of young, flawed role players in the lineup. Like it was not, you know, Buddy Heald was out there with his inconsistent shooting. Like it was not the best set of offensive talent that he was playing with. And he was still producing at a high level offensively when he was on the floor with those guys. Now, similar to LeBron, he's not the same one on one player he was in years past. When he shot out of ISO last year, he got to 0.87 points per possession, which was below average. Now again, I think it's just more matchup oriented. If you give Steph an upright wing, someone like of Dylan Brooks or Jabari Smith Jr. Like we saw in the Rocket series, I think he can shake those guys and get good looks one on one. But the smaller, quicker guards, Steph's having a lot harder time getting separated from those guys than he used to. That is obviously reflecting in the one on one numbers. So Jason, if Steph's production and play type data is generally mediocre compared to his peers, why do you have him all the way up at number six? For similar reasons to why I had Tyrese Halliburton in the top 10, despite Tyrese had even less impressive statistical production than Steph. Really comes down to this simple idea that I want to dive into here. There's something special about folks who come through without being asked. Like your coworker surprising you with your favorite coffee just just because. Or your friend handing you the ox cord the moment you get in the car. No debate, no fight, just positive vibes. That kind of love. It just hits different and that's exactly the energy AT&T is on with their new guarantee. If there's ever a network interruption, AT&T will proactively credit you for a full day of service. No calls, no emails, no jumping through hoops. It's just handled. It's like the universe saying I got you. Except this time it's not the stars aligning, it's your network. And let's be real, that connection is everything. Whether you're holding down the group chat, checking in on your parents, scrolling TikTok, your network's got to come through. And if there's a problem, AT&T is on the case. No stress, no drama, just real backup when it counts credit for fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more or wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers. Restrictions and exclusions apply. See att.com guarantee for full details. AT&T connecting changes everything.
Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about exploring human potential. I was going to schools to try to teach kids these skills and I get eye rolling from teachers. Or I get students who would be like, it's easier to punch someone in the face. When you think about emotion regulation. Like you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it. If it's going to be beneficial to you because it's easy to say, like, go blank yourself, right? It's easy. It's easy to just drink the extra beer. It's easy to ignore to suppress seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just, like, walk the other way. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denial is easier. Drinking is easier. Yelling. Screaming is easy. Complex problem solving. Meditating, you know, takes effort.
Jason
Listen to the psychology podcast on the.
Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Manny
Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this.
Ebony
Attention, passengers. The pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane.
Manny
Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying, like, okay, pull this. Until this. Pull that. Turn this.
Jason
It's. It's just.
Manny
I can do my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah.
Jason
This is Devin.
Manny
And on our new show, no Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.
Jason
Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise.
Manny
And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the Runway. I'm looking at this thing.
Jason
See?
Manny
Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ebony
Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stories. Stories are set free. I'm Ebony, and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all. Childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more. And found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Jason
The threat of Steph Curry as a shooter coming off of an on or off ball screen is still so substantial that it breaks defenses and creates countless advantages for his teammates to benefit from. Let's start with the simple fact that the fear of Steph in these situations is legitimate. These coaches are scared for a reason. These players are scared for a reason. Here are three basic stats that demonstrate this fact. First, you simply cannot leave Steph open an unguarded catch and shoot threes. Last year he shot 52%, made more than half of them. That's more than 1.5 points per shot. You cannot leave him open. Secondly, you have to play up on his shot when he's dribbling. He was the best pull up jump shooter in the NBA last year. He was the only player in the entire NBA last year to attempt at least 500 shots off the dribble and to get over 1.1 points per attempt on them. Thirteen players attempted that many. The other 12 were below 1.1 points per attempt. So when he's dribbling, you gotta be up on the shot. And then lastly, when it comes to off ball screens or dribble handoffs, anything that has Stephen running into the ball, you simply have to have someone meet him on the other side. If you let him come off free and clear and shoot, it's going to go poorly for you on both dribble handoffs and off screen possessions. Last year, Steph shot 44% from three on off screen plays. In particular, he was by far the best player in the league. He made 109 shots coming off of off ball screens. That was 21 more than Devin Booker in second place. And he was far and away the most efficient. There were 18 players that logged at least 100 possessions shooting off of off ball screens. Steph was the only player to log over a 1.2 offensive rating. He was at 1.22. Second place was Jokic at 1.175 points better than the second best player in the field per 100 shots. Again, if you let Steph come off of an off ball screen and shoot, it was a 122 offensive rating. So yeah, Steph's overall scoring numbers weren't as impressive over the last couple of years. Why? Because he was surrounded by extremely limited offensive talent, which forced him to take a lot of really difficult shots and to do it against some pretty absurd defensive coverages. But the problem for defenses persists. If you leave Steph open, he's going to hit more than half of his threes. If you give Steph space when he's dribbling, he's the best pull up shooter in the NBA. And if you let him come clean off of a dribble handoff or a wide pin down, he's literally going to hit 44% of his threes. So what does that mean? It means that NBA coaches don't give a shit about what his basketball reference page says. It means NBA players who have to guard him don't give a shit what his his basketball reference page says. They know how good Steph Curry is and they always account for him. When he catches at the three point line, they panic, chase him off the line. When he's dribbling, they play up on the shot aggressively. Those two things allow him to generate a ton of dribble penetration. As those defenders go past him, they make mistakes on switches because they never want to leave him open, which leaves countless openings on the other side when the other guy is wide open. And then every time he comes off of an on or off ball screen of any type, there's always the big or whoever it is meeting him on the other side because they cannot allow him to come off free and clear because he's going to hit 44% of those threes. And so as a result they generate countless 4 on 3 advantages on the back end. So yeah, Steph didn't reach the same individual ceiling he did in years past statistically, but he was still one of the very best advantage creators in the entire NBA last year. And the proof is in the numbers. According to Cleaning the Glass, which just filters out garbage time, the warriors with Steph Curry on the floor last year logged a 120 offensive rating. That group Pajemski, Wiggins, Moody, Jimmy Butler for a third of the year, Buddy healed one 20 offensive rating. They were 13 points per 100 possessions worse on offense when Steph stepped off the floor. So to put it very simply, just the threat of Steph's shooting, even when he's not producing at a super high level individually, is enough to make a mediocre group of offensive players an elite offense in the NBA. Again, just for perspective, the Cavs had the number one offense in the NBA last year at a 121 offensive rating. Steph on the Floor according to cleaning the glass 120. By the way, we talked about this in the intro, but the failure to understand this very simple concept is what led to Steph being so underrated for most of his prime. You want to know why Steph didn't win Finals MVP or even receive a single vote in 2015? You want to know why everyone thought KD was better than him when they were together? You want to know why Damien Lillard and so many others thought the warriors were just going to fall apart after KD left? You want to know why it took the 2022 title for people to properly respect Steph? And you want to know why so many people are going to hate this ranking and view him as less than what he is to this day? It was this concept, this idea of Steph running off of screens, running off of on and off ball screens, and the threat of his shooting creating all of these openings and people being unable to see it. People literally watched Steph draw two to the ball over and over again at the end of the 2015 finals. But because Andre Guadala was the beneficiary with wide open corner threes and cutting dunks, he won Finals mvp. That's how much it broke people's brains. It became a buzzword, right? Gravity. So much so that I think it almost became something that people made fun of warriors fans for. But it is the reality of what it's like to play basketball on the same team as Steph Curry. Time and time again, year after year, people saw the warriors play basketball and they couldn't see what he was doing to make things work for their offense. Even in the KD years. In 2017, when Steph was on the floor and KD was off, they had a 119 offensive rating, which was incredible for that era when KD was on the floor and Steph was off 109 offensive rating, a 10 point difference. There's a nine point difference in 2018. Look, I. I think Steph fans get carried away when they start trying to stack him up against LeBron and trying to say that he's better than LeBron, but they aren't far off in their assessment of him. I think he's the fifth best perimeter player of all time. I think he's the second best offensive engine I've ever seen behind Nicola Jokic. And frankly, I just don't understand why so many people have struggled to see it over the years. Steph always also provides you with a great deal of team building flexibility. Without Steph on the floor this year, I should say if you take Steph's threes out of the equation, the warriors shot.953 for 2,691 from three that was 35%, which is already not very good under any circumstances. Before you factor in that, most of those threes were essentially conceded by the defense as they overplayed Steph and tried to force guys like Draymond and Brandon Pajemski to shoot knock down threes, right? How do you get away with having that level of shooting and still post a 120 offensive rating. When Steph's on the floor, it's because of his ability to invert spacing. Him constantly pulling bigs out to the perimeter as they had to show on screenshots, created four on threes without rim protectors. That allowed Golden State's management to focus on loading up on smart athletes that can defend. Rather than needing shooters now, to be clear, if they want to reach championship ceiling, I think they're going to need to add more shooting. That's why I'm stoked about them potentially adding Al Horford. It's why it'd be great if they could get some shooting talent back in a Jonathan Kaminga sign in trade. But the amount of shooting they need is less than most teams need because of this unique dynamic that Steph creates. Again, we talked about it earlier, but like he created a role on offense that Draymond can thrive in. There are many teams in this league that Draymond could immediately make better on defense, but there aren't too many teams in this league that he could be a functioning part of offensively. Not the case in Golden State. He's been wonderful there because of that inverted spacing dynamic we're talking about now. One last caveat with Steph before we kind of get into closing things up today. There is a big difference between Steph when he's being an offensive engine versus when he's being an offensive engine that is also hanging 27 points per game on 66% true shooting. The warriors offense last year, even just looking from before Jimmy joined the team to after Jimmy joined the team when Steph went up a level, the warriors offense was four points better per 100 possessions in that stretch after Feb. 8 than it was the entire season before that. So as we look at next season, one of the biggest swing factors for Stephen the Warriors in terms of the level of success they will reach and how much of a chance they have to compete for the title is going to come down to. What version of Steph are we getting? Are we getting 22 point per game, 59% true shooting Steph, or are we getting 27 point per game, 65% true shooting Steph? That's going to be a big swing factor. The threat of Steph shooting is enough to make any offense good, but it will take the threat of step shooting and him managing to hit high volume and efficiency numbers as an individual for them to hoist the trophy this year if that's their ultimate goal. Just something to keep an eye on. I just view Steph as a player that is far more valuable than his box score production would lead you to believe. Just the sheer threat of his shooting ability turned an incredibly limited offensive roster last year into a 120 offensive rating unit when he was on the floor. According to Cleaning the Glass, he's still one of the very best offensive engines in the entire NBA. Like I mentioned earlier, I'd rank him third behind Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic. And he demonstrated last year down the stretch that he can still hit that superstar volume and efficiency as a score. You combine that with him being one of the better defenders among skill guards in the league, an incredibly stable leadership presence, I think he's one of the best leaders in the NBA. He's more experienced than many of the players in this tier. I have Steph holding down the number six spot in this year's player rankings. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We will be back on Wednesday with a deep dive into Anthony Edwards. I will see you guys then.
Ebony
Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebony, the podcast where silence is broken and stolen stories are set free. I'm Ebony, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect podcast network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Manny
Why are TSA rules so confusing?
Jason
You got a hoodie on. Take it all.
Manny
I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin, and we're best friends and journalists. New podcast called no Such Thing where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do now if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it, you know?
Jason
Lock him up.
Manny
Listen to no Such thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jason
No Such Thing. I'm Dan. He's Ty. Hello. And we're the Solid Verbal College Football Podcast.
Manny
Tune in for previews, recaps, bits you won't hear anywhere else, and all the emotional support you need as a college football fan.
Jason
Join us all season long as we ride the rollercoaster of this ridiculous sport.
Manny
Listen to the Solid Verbal College Football podcasts on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.
Jason
Or wherever you get your podcasts. We don't just love college football, Ty. We live it. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone. And there is help out there.
Jacob or Ashley Schick
The Good Stuff Podcast Season two takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join hosts Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission.
Ebony
One Tribe saved my life twice.
Jason
Welcome to season two of the Good Stuff.
Jacob or Ashley Schick
Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ebony
This is an iHeart podcast.
Podcast: The Herd with Colin Cowherd / Hoops Tonight
Host: Jason (The Volume)
Date: September 4, 2025
Episode Focus: Jason explains why Steph Curry is ranked #6 on his NBA player rankings for the 2025 season, tracing Curry’s continuing impact on the Golden State Warriors, his evolving reputation, detailed stats, and the rationale behind his placement relative to other top NBA talents.
Jason continues his annual NBA player ranking series, dedicating this episode to Steph Curry’s placement at #6 for the 2025 season. He explores Curry's durability, on-court impact, leadership, and how the narrative around Curry continues to fluctuate—arguing Curry may be entering another phase of being underrated. Jason unpacks not just stats, but how Curry’s gravity and skill set transform the Warriors and influence the league, culminating in a thorough defense of Curry's elite status even as he ages.
[02:11]
[09:03]
[10:57]
[12:20]
[21:32]
[29:46]
[27:19]
On the illusion of Curry’s declining impact:
"I just view Steph as a player that is far more valuable than his box score production would lead you to believe. Just the sheer threat of his shooting ability turned an incredibly limited offensive roster last year into a 120 offensive rating unit when he was on the floor." [31:45]
On Curry’s availability:
"These guys all missed more games than Steph Curry did over the last couple of years…these guys are actually underrated in terms of their availability." [05:37]
On the public’s historical misunderstanding:
"People literally watched Steph draw two to the ball over and over again at the end of the 2015 Finals. But because Andre Iguodala was the beneficiary with wide open corner threes and cutting dunks, he won Finals MVP. That’s how much it broke people’s brains." [27:37]
On Curry’s transcendent offensive impact:
"Just the threat of Steph's shooting, even when he’s not producing at a super high level individually, is enough to make a mediocre group of offensive players an elite offense in the NBA." [25:07]
| Attribute | Curry 2024–25 Notes | |-----------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | Scoring/Stats | 25 PPG, 4 RPG, 6 APG, 45/40/93 shooting splits | | Defensive Value | Smart, anticipatory, impactful as off-ball defender | | Offensive ‘Gravity’ | Singlehandedly creates advantages, inverts spacing, forces elite defenses to bend | | Durability | More available than most superstar peers in recent years | | Leadership/Experience | Among NBA’s best; enables flexible roster construction | | Playoff Ceiling | Can still reach superstar level when best supported |
Jason ranks Steph Curry #6 for the 2025 NBA season, contending that even as Curry ages and his raw box score stats slightly dip, his unparalleled shooting, offensive gravity, leadership, and consistency keep him firmly in the league’s elite. The episode offers a strong, nuanced case for why Curry remains one of basketball’s most valuable—and perhaps, still undervalued—superstars.