There has been a lot of talk about how James Harden and Ben Simmons are going to impact their respective new teams. Lost in the mix is Seth Curry. He was having a terrific season for the Sixers, averaging 15 points and four assists per game on great efficiency. He and Zach LaVine, who has almost identical shooting numbers, are probably the only players who have a legitimate chance to hit the haloed 50/40/90 club this season. He is way more than just a throw-in player in this deal.
Seth will always be known as the Stephen Baldwin of the Curry family. But it might surprise you to learn that Seth is the best of the bunch when it comes to canning easy looks. If you need a Curry to catch-and-shoot an easy open 3, you should pick Seth.
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The vision for this trade was easy to see. Curry would theoretically fill that Joe Harris role, coming off pindowns and handoffs to get open 3s. But there are some key differences between the two players.
Harris certainly isn’t the most talented player on the Nets, but he may be their glue guy. It’s no coincidence that they were 10-4 with him this season and 20-23 once his ankle injury took him out. If you could hand-select a role player to be off-ball with Brooklyn’s three stars, Harris would be a top choice. He’s a good ball-mover, a great cutter, and has a little more offensive creation juice than he’s given credit for.
Curry was also tasked with creating offense in Philadelphia, but in a different way. His defining play is the Iverson cut, which he brought from his time with the Mavs. When Curry used the Iverson cut with Joel Embiid, it was one of the most unguardable actions in the league.
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I was very interested to see whether Steve Nash would change his offense to fit Curry, or whether he would make Curry fit into what the Nets were already doing. In his debut on Monday, we got the answer. After a timeout in the third quarter, Nash and the Nets designed three consecutive Iverson cuts for Curry, resulting in three buckets for him.
Here's a short explainer on the Iverson cut, which was Seth Curry's favorite play in Dallas and Philadelphia. We saw Steve Nash run it three straight times after a timeout in Curry's first Nets game.
— Steph Noh (@StephNoh) February 15, 2022
Sound on: pic.twitter.com/QMhwTHwYe2
MORE: Who won the Simmons-Harden trade?
Curry was terrific in that Nets debut, scoring 23 points on 18 shots to go along with seven rebounds and five assists. Of course, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were missing, and he will probably have less of an on-ball role when those two are on the floor. Still, it only took one game to see how potentially valuable Curry could be offensively.
Defensively, Curry is going to present issues that the Nets are going to have to figure out. Harris is a much better defender than he’s generally given credit for, and Curry won’t be able to replace him there. At 6-6, Harris has good size to work into the Nets’ heavy switching scheme and had some surprisingly impactful plays.
Curry does not hold up well on switches. At 6-2 and 185 pounds, he’s too small to do anything on bigger players. They act like he’s not even there.
Curry was a passable defender for the Sixers because of the scheme they employed, which minimized the amount of time he switched. He’s a good positional defender who knows where he’s supposed to be and makes up for his lack of quick reflexes by pulling in early to make rotations easier. The Sixers would have him fight over screens, where he didn’t get killed.
I was interested to see how Nash used Curry on defense in his debut. As Nash did on offense, he tailored the defensive scheme to fit Curry instead of making Curry fit what the Nets were already doing. Curry was pulling in early defensively, as he did with the Sixers, and he was mostly not switching.
This seems like a great match for the Nets. In Nash, Curry has a coach who is going to work with his strengths and hide his weaknesses. Curry also brings elite shooting and spacing that the Nets badly need. He’s going to open up an entire side of the floor when Durant and Irving want to try to score out of isolations.
Curry is being slept on in the Simmons-Harden trade. He is the type of role player who the Nets have been lacking since Harris was taken out of the lineup, and he has a chance to have a massive impact on the team. He was already a pretty good player with the Mavericks and Sixers. He now has a chance to show what he can do on the biggest stage.
