Stephen Curry, the exceptionally gifted point guard from Golden State, made a claim on “The Dan Patrick Show” that he was a better offensive player than LeBron James.
It should be noted that he didn’t come out with a puffed up chest, full of bravado and swagger to make this statement.
Dan Patrick asked Stephen a simple question – “Who is the best offensive player in the NBA – Stephen or LeBron?”
Curry calmly digested the question and answered it without having an air of cockiness but definitely carrying himself with assurance he stated he’s the better offensive player. Instant reaction is to scoff at this claim until you do a little comparative research.
"A better offensive player, me or LeBron? That's the first time I've ever been asked that question. Me," Curry said. “He obviously demands a lot of attention on the floor, but I like to say I can distribute, get my teammates involved and be a playmaker as well.”
A quick rough comparison and you would think Curry is blowing smoke out of everyone’s backside. LeBron scored 27.1 points a game compared to Curry’s 24.0 a game. But what if we break it down beyond that immediate stat? Let’s also take into account assists, turnovers, assist-to-turnover ratio, offensive rebounds, free-throws as well as shooting percentages. Basically if there is an offensive statistic we’re going to look at it from last season.
LeBron played 77 regular season games and Curry played 78 and there is only 1 minute difference in their average playing time so when we compare totals there really isn’t a great disparity for numbers considering that one game and one minute.
Let’s compare their scoring ability first. LeBron was good for an average of 27.1 points a game which definitely beats Stephen Curry’s 24.0 points a game total.
So we’ll say LeBron 1 and Curry 0.
LeBron also was shooting at a rate of 56.7% from the field. Curry, on the other hand, shot 47.1% from the field. Both men fired up more than 1350 shots this season, LeBron with 1353 and Curry with 1383, so even that is comparable.
This is where things start to change a little. Once both men go beyond the arc into 3 point land LeBron isn’t looking so hot.
LeBron fired 306 shots from the land of 3 but only hit 116, or 37.9%.
By comparison Curry launched 615 shots from the 3 point arc and nailed 261 of them for a 42.4% success rate.
LeBron 2. Curry 1.
When it comes to free-throws I wasn’t sure what stat to use – shots made/taken or percentage. Both men made over 300 trips to the line, but to me percentage was the key.
Shaquille O’Neal made a lot of trips to the line every season too but it was also because the odds were better that Shaq would miss which strategically made it more sense to foul him.
So using the percentage number Curry beats out LeBron by shooting 88.5% to LeBron’s 75.0%. We now have a tie at 2-2 based on stats.
When it comes to turnovers there isn’t much of a comparison. In the span of 78 games Curry had a total of 294 turnovers. LeBron in his 77 games had 270 turnovers.
LeBron takes the lead 3-2. But what if we make those turnovers relatable to another offensive stat? The assist-to-turnover ratio tells a different story.
We have a tie again at 3-3.
Offensive rebounds see LeBron take the lead again. LeBron pulled down 81 offensive rebounds compared to Curry’s 46 offensive rebounds.
But then again with LeBron having a 5 inch height advantage and outweighing Curry by 70 pounds any other result would have been even more shocking than Curry’s answer to the question.
So with LeBron leading 4-3 we go into the category of assists. LeBron dished the ball for 489 assists, giving him 6.4 a game which really is a very good number. Curry, however, dished out 666 assists which game him a total of 8.5 assists per game. We again have a tie at 4-4 between the two.
So we need a tie breaker. There has been a long going debate, going back to John Stockton actually, that what if in the scoring tally that players were awarded points similar to that of players in the NHL. For clarity sake we’ll assess each assist 2 points much like a player would get 1 point for assisting a goal, which is only worth 1 in hockey, since it leads to 2 points most times.
Adding LeBron’s 489 assists to his scoring total of 2089 and LeBron gets an additional 978 points added to give him 3067.
How does Curry match up to this? Well his 666 assists add an additional 1332 points to his 1873 giving him 3205 points for the season.
So in theory Curry wasn’t lying that he’s a better offensive player when you look at the numbers. In reality? Well that’s what beers and sports bar debates are for.
