Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry has been named the NBA Western Conference Player of the Week for games played Tuesday, October 27, through Sunday, November 1, the NBA announced today. The award is the third career weekly honor for Curry, who was named Player of the Week for games played Nov. 3-9 and March 23-29 last season. The reigning MVP joins Tim Hardaway (5), Chris Mullin (4), Baron Davis (4), David Lee (3) and teammate Klay Thompson (3) as the only players in franchise history to earn at least three career weekly awards.
Curry led the Warriors to a 3-0 start to the season with averages of 39.3 points (first in the NBA), 7.3 assists (tied for sixth), 5.7 rebounds and 2.33 steals (tied for seventh) in 32.9 minutes, hitting 58.8 percent from the field, 48.6 percent from three-point range and 95.5 percent at the line. Curry’s week was highlighted by a 53-point performance on Oct. 31 at New Orleans (one shy of his career-best) that included a career quarter-high of 28 points in the third frame. Curry joined Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry as the only players in club history with at least three 50-point games.
Curry finished the week with 118 points, joining Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Michael Jordan as the only players ever to score that many points through the season’s first three games and the first to do so since Jordan in 1989-90. Curry began the season with a 40-point effort on Oct. 27 vs. New Orleans, helping the Warriors tie a franchise-record with their 19th-straight home win and joining Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only reigning MVPs in league history to score 40 points in the following season’s opening game. He is the first Warrior since Rick Barry in 1966-67 to post a pair of 40-point performances in the season’s first three games.
Golden State won all three of its games last week by double-digits, marking the first time the franchise has posted double-digit victories in each of the season’s first three games. The Warriors have started 3-0 in consecutive seasons for the second time in franchise history, a feat they first accomplished in the 1959-60 & 1960-61 campaigns.
The award marks the 37th time a Warriors player has been named Player of the Week since the NBA began giving out the award in 1979. The Warriors have earned the honor in the season’s opening week in back-to-back campaigns after Klay Thompson won the first of his three awards to tip off the 2014-15 season. Detroit’s Andre Drummond was named Player of the Week in the Eastern Conference.