By The Numbers: Curry and the Warriors’ Crazy Streak

Basketball, when played well, can be beautiful.

And right now the the Golden State Warriors are playing an unprecedented, awe-inspiringly beautiful brand of basketball.

Many gifted journalists will pen pieces using stirring language and descriptive adjectives to try to capture, in written word, just how astonishing the Warriors are to watch.

While there is certainly a time and place for that approach, sometimes it’s just as instructive to simply list numerous numbers and statistics in order to highlight just how dominant this team has been.

Listed below are but a handful of stats and facts illustrating how special a start the Warriors, and the league’s reigning MVP Steph Curry, are off to this season.

Team Stats:

• The Warriors have now won 86 of their last 100 regular season games. Per the Elias Sports Bureau: Only three other teams have won 86 of 100 at any time. They all featured either Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain. The Bulls topped out at 89 wins over 100 games (1995-96), and two teams maxed out at 86-14: the 76ers (1966-67) and Lakers (1971-72).

• Not only have the Warriors set the NBA record for most wins to start a season, they are also the only team in league history to produce winning streaks of at least 16 games in back-to-back seasons. (Golden State won 16 straight from November 13^th to December 14^th last season.)

• Warriors have outscored their opponents by +288 points, the most in NBA history through the season’s first 18 games (via @GSWStats).

• The Philadelphia 76ers last win came on March 25^th last season. Since then, the Warriors have won a total of 43 games (27 regular season contests and 16 playoff games).

• Per NBA.com: Golden State leads the NBA in points per game (114.3), field goal percentage (.487), assists per game (29.6), threes per game (12.4), point differential (+15.6), fast break points (22.6) assist-to-turnover ratio (1.88, 473 assists: 251 turnovers), Offensive Rating (112.1), and Net Rating (16.3).
• Golden State has now made more three-pointers than has its opponent in each of its first 18 games. That’s the longest such streak to start a season in NBA history

• Dating back to the 2014-15 campaign, the Warriors are 49-0 when holding the opposition to fewer than 100 points in the regular season.
• Per Elias: The Warriors 18 straight victory ties longest winning streak to start a regular season by any team in the history of the four oldest major pro sports leagues in North America. (The Patriots won all 16 games in the NFL’s 2007 regular season, and then won their first two playoff games before losing in the Super Bowl.)

• On Friday night, the Warriors made 15 three-pointers in the first half, which is the most three-pointers by one team in one half in NBA history. On Saturday night, they won their 22nd regular season game overall, which is tied for the third longest winning streak in NBA history.

Steph’s stats:

• During the 1985-86 season, Larry Bird led the entire league in made three-pointers. Bird, appearing in all 82 games that season, knocked down an NBA-high 82 three-pointers. The following season (1986-87), Larry Legend once again led the league when he hit 90 three-balls. This season, Steph Curry has already made 90 three-pointers in just 18 games.

• The current record for highest scoring average for a player playing fewer than 35 minutes per game over a full season is 28.1 ppg. Steph Curry is currently averaging 31.9 ppg, despite playing just 34.3 minutes a night.

• Stephen Curry is on pace for 420 treys this year. So 18 games into the year, he’s on pace to beat his old record (286) by 46.9 percent (via @MikeSGallagher). To put that in context: The current record for most assists in a season is 1,164 by John Stockton in 1990-91. In order to beat that record by 46.9 percent, a player would have to dish out a total of 1,710 in one season, which would mean that player would have to average 20.9 assists per game over an 82-game schedule. (To beat the current rebound record held by Wilt Chamberlain by 46.9 percent, a player would have to average 38.5 rebounds per game)

• Curry has hit a three in 111 consecutive games, the longest such streak in NBA history (regular-season and playoffs combined).

• Curry has scored at least 21 points in a single quarter on four separate occasions this season – more than the rest of the NBA combined.

• On Friday night, Curry passed LeBron James for 35^th on the all-time list of made three-pointers. Per ESPN: Curry started the season 50th on the NBA all-time list for made three-pointers, meaning he has climbed 15 spots in 17 games. He has 87 three-point field goals this season, 24 more than any other player through 17 games in NBA history. Curry knocked down nine triples last night. It was the fifth game of Curry’s career in which he made at least nine three-pointers. Elias Sports Bureau research shows that that ties J.R. Smith for the most games with nine or more threes. Kobe Bryant is third with four such games.
• Curry also scored 41 points on Friday. It was his fifth 40-point game of the season. Per Elias: The only other players in NBA history to have their fifth game of 40+ points within their first 17 games of a season are Wilt Chamberlain, who did it three times (five 40-point games in his first five games in both 1961-62 and 1962-63; and five in his first 11 games in 1964-65), Rick Barry in 1966-67 (five in 12 games), George Gervin in 1982-83 (17 games), Michael Jordan in 1986-87 (12 games) and James Harden this season (16 games).

• Steph has yet to play a single game this season where he either misses more than one free-throw or posts a negative plus/minus.

• Curry has scored 555 points on just 358 field goal attempts in 587 minutes this season. To put that in context, Carmelo Anthony has scored 376 points on 315 field goal attempts in 588 minutes this season.

• And Curry’s contributions are not limited solely to three-pointers. Curry is currently top-10 in assists (he has more assists than John Wall) and top three in steals (Curry has more steals than Russell Westbrook).