If you thought John Hollinger leaving LeBron James off his list of top 10 current NBA players was foolish, you probably won’t be happy to discover that he also slots Stephen Curry into the “Five Who Are Hanging On” category, slotting Donovan Mitchell of the Cleveland Cavaliers at No. 10 in his rankings above the two-time NBA MVP.
Look, I’m just the messenger here. Take it up with Hollinger, who lays out his rationale below:
📝 “Mitchell over Curry was a non-starter as an argument as recently as two years ago. Entering his age-37 season, however, it’s not so easy to project Curry outperforming Mitchell this year.
“Curry presents some of the same health questions that Mitchell does but perhaps more strongly. Curry has cleared 65 games in only two of the last six seasons and missed the last four games of the Minnesota playoff series with a hamstring injury. The Warriors are also careful with his minutes within games.
“Curry also doesn’t offer the snap-of-a-finger shot-creation ability you see from other guards on this list. What he offsets that with, of course, is that he’s the greatest shooter ever by orders of magnitude, and his mere presence coming off a screen sends defenses scrambling into silliness. That skill shouldn’t be heavily impacted by age, either, and remains his best argument for cracking the 10 names above even if he won’t match them on raw output. Even at 37, he was the hardest omission.”
