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LeBron James is rightly regarded as the best NBA player of this generation, but he thinks Stephen Curry changed the game when he entered the league.

On the Mind the Game Pod, James explained that Curry “singlehandedly changed the ‘no lead is safe'” narrative in the NBA.

The Los Angeles Lakers superstar even compared the way Curry makes NBA teams feel to the way Patrick Mahomes makes opponents feel in the NFL.

JJ Redick started the conversation by noting when he first came into the league, the most playing time he would get was when his team was ahead by 19 points at the start of the fourth quarter because that was considered garbage time.

Now, though, teams will have their starters on the floor to open the fourth quarter in a 19-point game.

Curry’s willingness to pull up from anywhere on the court meant defenses always had to be on high alert, or risk getting beaten on a 32-foot shot attempt.

There’s also the difficulty of trying to disrupt a Curry shot because he has such a quick release as soon as the ball touches his hands.

During the height of the Golden State Warriors’ run in the 2010s, it wasn’t uncommon for them to erase huge deficits quickly. They erased a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit against the New Orleans Pelicans in Game 3 of their first-round series in the 2015 playoffs.

In a December 2013 game against the Toronto Raptors, Curry scored 14 of the Warriors’ 42 points in the fourth quarter to turn an 88-70 deficit into a 113-102 win.

When Curry first entered the NBA during the 2009-10 season, the average number of three-point attempts per game was 18.1. That average was the same for three consecutive seasons from 2007-08 to 2009-10.

After a slight decrease in attempts per game to 18.0 in 2010-11, it increased in each of the next 11 seasons to a high-water mark of 35.2 in 2021-22.

Curry has averaged at least 9.8 three-point attempts per game in nine consecutive seasons, including the 2023-24 campaign. He also makes them at an astounding 42.6 percent rate for his career.

By comparison, Redick is regarded as one of the best shooters in NBA history. He made 41.5 percent of his attempts behind the arc in his career.