If you’ve watched any Golden State Warriors games over the last decade, you are likely familiar with this scene. An opposing team is leading, or at least down by a competitive margin, when Stephen Curry – the greatest shooter to grace the hardwood – lands a barrage of 3-pointers to kill all momentum and put the game out of reach.
This phenomenon is widely regarded as a “Curry Flurry.” But does this clever play on words really deal the death blow that it is said to be? Or is this just another narrative created by talking heads?
Defining A Curry Flurry
To measure the effectiveness of a Curry Flurry, we must first create a quantitive definition for it. For this exercise, we are going to look at two different definitions.
First, we will crunch the numbers for all games where Curry had a 3-point “streak.” So, we will look at games where he’s hit two threes in a row, three threes in a row, four threes in a row, etc. If the opposing team scores, the streak does not end. But if a Warriors teammate scores a basket in the middle of the streak, the streak has ended. Also, for it to be a streak, the threes need to be hit in the same quarter. Momentum loses steam when you have a break in the action as you do between quarters.
For the other portion of our analysis, we will look at games where he hits multiple threes in a quarter – regardless of whether Curry hit them without missing any in between or if his teammates scored a basket in the middle of it.
For this study, we pulled out data from this year, last season and the 2022-23 season. So, our data comes from a two-plus year sample. Now that we have this squared away, let’s see what we found.
Analyzing The Data
Believe it or not, there have only been 78 games in the past two-plus years where Curry had what we defined to be a streak. In the 39 games where Curry had a streak of two, the Warriors won 59 percent of their games. When his streak is three (28 games), the Warriors won 67.9 percent of their games. When his streak is four (eight games), it’s 87.5 percent. And when it’s at five (three games), the Warriors were victorious 66.7 percent of the time. In total, Golden State won 65.4 percent of its games where Curry had what we defined as a “streak.”
As one would probably guess, Curry’s streaks were most dangerous when they occurred in the fourth quarter. When Curry had a “streak” in the fourth quarter (24 games), the Warriors won 75 percent of their games.
Of course, not all of Curry’s famous flurries have been uninterrupted. Sometimes, he misses a three in between all the makes or Draymond Green decides to QB keeper his way to a layup. So, we wanted to account for this and run an analysis without the streaks.
When Curry hits two threes in a quarter (90 games), the Warriors’ win percentage was 54.4. When he hit three threes in a quarter (37 games), the Warriors had a win percentage of 64.9. When he hit four (nine games), they had a win percentage of 77.8. When he hit five (three games), they had a win rate of 66.7 percent. And when he hit six threes in one quarter (once), they won. Overall, the team’s won 59.2 percent of the 140 games where he hit multiple threes in at least one quarter.
What This Means
To understand how much a Curry Flurry shifts winning odds in the Warriors’ favor, we need to look at the team’s win percentage when these occurrences don’t transpire.
Over the last two years, there were 133 games where Curry did not record a “streak” in any quarter. In those games, the Warriors had a win percentage of 57.9. So, a Curry “streak” increased their chances of winning by 7.5 percent.
As for hitting multiple threes in a quarter, there were 101 games where this did not happen. In those games, the Warriors had a win percentage of 55.4. So, when Curry hit multiple threes in a quarter — regardless of whether it was a “streak” — the team’s win percentage increased by 3.8 percent.
It seems like a Curry “streak” has significantly greater impact than just hitting multiple threes in a quarter, as the team goes from 47-win pace to nearing 54-win pace.
However, while it clearly boosts the Warriors, a Curry Flurry doesn’t appear to be the insurmountable avalanche it’s sometimes billed as.
The analysis was conducted using play-by-play data from the 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 NBA seasons, sourced from nba.com/stats. The data was collected on Nov. 18, 2024, and is current as of that date. All data was pulled by Fran Huzjan (@FHuzjan on Twitter).
