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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Fred VanVleet was in his junior year at Wichita State when Stephen Curry was reaching the pinnacle of the sport.

In 2015, Curry was on the way to winning his first of two consecutive Most Valuable Player awards and leading the Golden State Warriors to their first of three NBA championships over the span of four years and, like a lot of people, VanVleet was watching intently.

He remembers poring over Warriors’ tape with then Shockers assistant coach Greg Heiar. As a small guard himself, VanVleet would study Curry and then try to implement those lessons in his own game.

“He’s made it possible for me to be in the NBA, first and foremost,” the Toronto Raptors guard said, all these years later. “I’m not sure my career would look the same if I wasn’t allowed to take the threes that I’m allowed to take [now].”

“He’s got a special gift in terms of shooting the ball, but it’s more than that as a player. I study all the greats, and Steph is definitely one of those guys that I’ve taken a lot from.”

He’s not alone in that regard, far from it. Curry’s fingerprints are all over the evolution of the game this past decade. Long before he even made a dent in the three-point shooting record – a record he’s now in sole possession of, after passing Ray Allen atop the league’s all-time leaderboard earlier this week – he had already started to leave his mark.

Shots that were once considered ill-advised have become good, efficient looks. A pace that was once deemed too frenetic or out of control is now the benchmark for how most teams want to play. Things that only seemed possible in video games or in the movies are commonplace, and size – or a lack thereof – is no longer a barrier in the way it used to be.

You don’t need to play above the rim to be a star or even lead a highlight pack. Curry made shooting cool again.
 
“He’s not dunking the ball a bunch, he’s doing things that everybody thinks they can do until you get out there and pick the basketball up,” VanVleet said. “He makes it look so easy. That’s the way you would wanna play if you could wake up and wish for somebody’s ability.”

“He’s certainly changed the game just with the form a little bit,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “It’s a little bit of a lower release than people would have done a while back. The depth of his range, the distance he shoots from, off the dribble shooting, those are all amazing things.”

On Saturday, Curry and the Warriors will return to Toronto for the first time since Game 5 of the 2019 Finals – the night Kevin Durant tore his Achilles and a late push from Curry and Klay Thompson delayed the Raptors’ championship celebrations and prevented them from winning it on home court. On account of the pandemic – which caused the NBA to hit pause on the 2019-20 campaign just before Golden State’s annual trip to Canada, and forced the Raptors to relocate to Tampa last season – it’ll be 922 days between visits.

With the postponement of Thursday’s game against the Chicago Bulls, who have 10 players in the health and safety protocols, the Raptors have some extra time to prepare for the Warriors, and they might need it. After taking a couple of years to retool, this young Golden State team is back at the top of the league. With a record of 23-5 and the NBA’s best point differential – outscoring opponents by 11.6 points per game – they’ve steamrolled their way through the first third of this season. With Curry and Draymond Green leading a group of young up-and-comers, they’ve got the perfect mix of youth and veteran savvy. And to think, they expect to get Thompson back from injury later this month or early in the New Year.

Meanwhile, Curry is on the shortlist of early MVP favourites, averaging 26.9 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.1 assists. He’s also shooting 40 per cent on a career-high 13.4 three-point attempts per game. To put that in perspective, a decade ago, some teams weren’t even taking that many threes. At 33 and in his 13th season, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

“[The Warriors] definitely paved the way and changed the landscape of the league and basketball in general, so you gotta give them credit for that,” VanVleet said. “Everything that Steph stands for – family man, businessman, just an unbelievable work ethic and just being humble – he’s just good for the game.”

Famously, VanVleet was the “one” in the “box-and-one” defensive coverage that Nurse threw at Curry during The Finals, and he spent most of the series chasing around the future hall of famer. That, and his shooting heroics, earned him a vote for Finals MVP.

Since then, VanVleet has taken a page or two out of Curry’s book, working to extend his range well beyond the three-point arc. With the 27-year-old’s offensive role continuing to expand, and opposing defences reacting accordingly, his ability to pull-up from distance allows him more space to get his shot off.

While Curry leads the NBA in shot attempts from outside of 25 feet with 249 – and he’s hitting 42 per cent of them – VanVleet has taken 165, the fourth-most in the league, and is shooting 35 per cent from that range.

Kyle Lowry holds the Raptors franchise record for most threes in a season with 238, set in 2017-18, but at his current pace (hitting 3.3 of his 8.5 attempts per game) VanVleet is on pace to break it, something that he and Lowry were joking about the other day.

But, again, some perspective on what Curry is doing: VanVleet is on pace to hit 267 threes this season. Curry is responsible for four of the five best three-point shooting seasons in NBA history, including his league record 402 threes in 2015-16, which he is currently on pace to top this year.

With Thursday’s game postponed, Nurse squeezed in a morning practice session and, appropriately, a late afternoon shooting lab. Naturally, much of their preparation in the coming days will focus on slowing down Curry, which all might be for naught. Saturday’s contest will be the final stop on a five-game road trip for the Warriors, and the second night of a back-to-back after playing in Boston on Friday. There’s a reasonable chance that Steve Kerr opts to rest his vets, namely Curry and Green.

Whether they play or not, the Raptors know they’ll have their hands full. Despite holding Curry to a season-low 12 points on 1-of-6 from long range in last month’s meeting, the Warriors hit 22 of their 45 three-point attempts as a team, en route to a 119-104 win. Jordan Poole and Canadian Andrew Wiggins combined for 55 points on 14-for-19 from deep.

Toronto hopes to have reinforcements, with OG Anunoby (hip pointer), Khem Birch (knee swelling) and Precious Achiuwa (health and safety protocols, and shoulder tendinitis) returning to practice on Thursday and listed as questionable for this weekend’s game.