On Tuesday night, it finally happened. Stephen Curry made his 2,974th three-pointer to become the NBA’s all-time three-point record holder. The early season approach reached a fever pitch last Wednesday when Curry was 16 threes away from breaking Ray Allen’s record. LeBron James himself captured NBA watchers’ mindset was heading into that game against Portland.
LeBron praising Steph: “The fact that the other night we were really tracking to see if he would make 16 threes in a game, it just lets you know how freaking amazing this guy is. If there’s 1 guy in NBA history that can make 16 threes, it’s Steph Curry.”pic.twitter.com/NnCJbVtXtk
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) December 11, 2021
How Many Threes are Possible?
Is making 16 threes in a game possible? I guess. But it sure isn’t probable. And yet Curry has warped expectations so much that we, even for a second, entertained the thought. That’s what greatness does. It forces us to imagine new limits and glue ourselves to the tv.
Well, not only did Curry not break the record against the Blazers, he made six threes, he didn’t break the record in the next game or the following game. The basketball world went from trying to convince ourselves that 16 threes in a game was possible, to watching the greatest shooter of all time go 14-46 from deep.
Not only was Steph missing shots he usually makes, but his shot profile was starting to get pretty extreme, even for his three-point chicking ways. For the season, Curry has a three-point rate of .661. Three-point rate is three-point field goal attempts divided by total field goal attempts. In the three-game stretch building up to the record-breaking night, Curry’s three-point rate was a whopping .779. Especially in that game against Portland, you could see both Curry and his teammates chasing a truly historic night, one which saw Steph take 17 of his 19 shots from deep.
Psychological Manifestations
It was pretty obvious the record was on his mind, and who could blame him or his teammates. It would be one of the many crowning achievements in Curry’s fabulous career. To watch the psychological effect of a moment take over such a great player is a testament to how powerful the mind is. We are so used to hearing players say things like “I wasn’t thinking about the moment” or “Every game is just another game to me.” The admittance of the mind affecting the body is akin to heresy for an athlete.
And yet we know the mind is something that we can’t actually corral. As the cliche goes, “it has a mind of its own.” What we typically watch is athletes’ ability to overcome the mind’s attempt to get them to focus on the magnitude of the moment. Hell, there is a whole psychological discipline devoted to helping people use their cognitive abilities to narrow their focus as the stakes rise.
The Flow State
Researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did foundational research on the flow state, the feeling where people believe they are totally involved in a process, or on automatic pilot. Listen to enough athletes or dive into sports psychology and you will hear people say something to the effect of “I was in the flow” or “find the flow state.” To succeed as the pressure rises, whether internally or externally, is finding this automatic pilot where you can fall back on your habits and instincts to read and react to the moment.
Now check out these quotes from the Warriors following their win on Monday against the Indiana Pacers, via The Athletic’s Anthony Slater’s game review.
While we don’t hear from Steph, both Draymond Green and Kevon Looney, who have been with Curry for 5+ years, acknowledge both he and the team were feeling the pressure. In other words, no one was really able to find the flow state to play smooth basketball. Rare moments of honesty confirmed what was obvious to the eye. The extra passes, the forced bombs, the waiting for Steph to spring open a beat too long was the physical manifestation of the mind taking over the body. And not in a good way.
An Athlete’s Internal Battle
It was a good reminder that these athletes are still human. We have seen a great increase in conversations surrounding athlete mental health, a huge positive change, but there is much less discussion surrounding the mind and performance. Partially because part of being great is these players’ ability to control the mind to still perform in a way that a commoner cannot. The other part is because athletes still don’t let us into this side of their world.
This is done for a myriad of reasons, no doubt stemming from the idea that it can give your opponent the opportunity to increase pressure, as well as trick the mind to quiet down. But make no mistake, sports psychology and mental performance have made a rise for the precise reason that athletes do need to work on finding flow and staying in the moment.
Because athletes are human, albeit supremely talented athletic humans, they will continue to work on quieting the voice in their head telling them how big a moment is. Sometimes they will be able to, other times they won’t. And their constant battle is one factor that contributes to the joy and unpredictability of sport. Now let’s see if Curry and the Warriors can rediscover their flow state.
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