How to rank Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant on the NBA’s pantheon of greatest players is an all-time debate, but at least in terms of the tougher assignment, Iman Shumpert knows his pick.
“When I first got in the league, Kobe,” Shumpert said, when posed the question by Shannon Sharpe on a recent episode of the Club Shay Shay podcast.
Sharpe asked Shumpert, who debuted in 2011 and played for 10 seasons, to compare the experience defending Bryant, Curry, Derrick Rose and Kyrie Irving.
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“If Kobe’s not playing for a championship, there’s not as much to deal with. … I would say Kobe when I first came, but out of them, Steph.”
Shumpert built a career out of being a defensive stopper, known for being able to keep any ball handler in front of him. He acknowledged that “Kyrie’s handle is better.”
But Curry, Shumpert noted, doesn’t need to use his handle, at all.
“Steph was one of the only guys that the moment I slid with him and started a little bit figuring out his handle, it was like, pass, run off two or three screens, push me, and now he’s wide open,” Shumpert said.
“Y’all have never seen Steph’s handle. He got a handle. But the moment he feel like, ‘Oh, you can play defense pretty good,’ he’s gonna take it away from you.”
Curry famously runs more miles than any player in the NBA, zipping around off-ball screens in coach Steve Kerr’s motion system. Shumpert had a front-row seat for one of Curry’s earliest coming-out parties, dropping 54 points in a 2013 loss at Madison Square Garden.
Lest he overlook his long-time assist-man and screen-setter, Draymond Green, who he said was responsible for separating his shoulder with one pick in Game 3 of the 2015 NBA finals, when Shumpert was with the Cavaliers.
“You ain’t gonna get through three screens — not if Draymond is the last one. Or the second one, or the first one,” Shumpert said. “I ain’t saying you dirty, Dray, but you the reason my shoulder got separated that first year.”