When Stephen Curry hit the first three-pointer of his NBA career on October 30, 2009, the sport of basketball was almost unrecognizable when compared with today’s game.

Curry’s Golden State Warriors had two starters in Andris Biedrins and Anthony Randolph who were relatively traditional big men who preferred to operate within the confines of the paint. The 21-year-old rookie Curry attempted just three three-pointers in the game, a 22-point loss to the Phoenix Suns in what was the Warriors’ second outing of the season.

As a team, Golden State attempted a mere 13 three-pointers while their opponents, the run-and-gun Phoenix Suns, took 22. The Orlando Magic wound up leading the league in three-point attempts per game over the season with 27.3. The Warriors and Suns wound up sixth and seventh, respectively, with slightly more than 20 threes a night.

In 39 minutes of action, the young Curry put up 12 points, two three-pointers, two rebounds, four assists, and a steal. Not many expected great things from Curry at that point and it took a few more years before he made his mark on the game, but when he did, there was no turning back.

Fast forward almost 16 years and Curry has now hit 4,000 three-pointers in his career. The 4,000th came in the most Curry way possible, pump-faking his defender into the air before hitting it over two defenders to save a broken play. 

Curry has actually held the league’s all-time three-point record since 2021 which means that each one that he has made since has only put his grand total further away from reach. He has almost 900 more made threes than second place James Harden and is well above other legendary shooters such as Ray Allen and Reggie Miller who held the all-time record at one point in their careers.

What’s telling about the way that the game of basketball has evolved through the years is that it took Curry 12 years to hit his first 3,000 three-pointers, but it has taken just slightly more than three years for him to make the next 1,000–a pace improvement of almost a full year per 1,000 threes. 

To put into context the breakneck pace by which Curry is hitting three-pointers, he is averaging 11.2 three-point shot attempts a contest this season–just two shy of Golden State’s total as a team on the night that he made his first triple back in 2009. Today’s Denver Nuggets are currently taking the least three-pointers per game with 31.8 this season which is already more than what the league-leading Magic attempted back in the aforementioned ‘09-’10 campaign.

The 6’2 Curry has weaponized the three-pointer over his career in such a way that he has changed the complexion of the entire sport and basketball offenses will never be the same. Through the years, Curry’s three-point attempts per game have jumped from 4.8 in his rookie year to 7.9 in his first NBA All-Star campaign in ‘13-’14 to a career-high 12.7 in ‘20-’21. 

Over the course of this career, he has been named the league’s Most Valuable Player in back-to-back seasons, the NBA Finals MVP in 2022, and an 11-time All-Star all while debunking previously sacred beliefs that a team led by a jump-shooting guard could ever find success in the postseason. The latter is what truly set the world on this path as the Warriors’ 2015 NBA title proved that this style of play was indeed conducive to success. 

Curry has hit iconic shot after iconic shot from beyond the arc over his storied career, from his iconic “double bang” buzzer-beater against the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016 to his all-time performance at the semifinals of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

As time passes, someone is bound to overtake Curry and take over as the league’s all-time three-point leader. Curry’s total of 4,000 threes and counting is a lot, but given how low his rate of three-pointers was in his early years compared with what is considered normal nowadays, it is highly likely that a player from this generation of the next one eventually catches up to him. That doesn’t discount what Curry has done though as this three-point revolution has his fingerprints all over it.

It might not take a lot for someone to surpass his record in the future, but one thing that is certain is that Curry’s place in history is secure. He is the man that helped revolutionize the way that the game is played, maximizing the use of the three-pointer like no one had ever done before him. Not many can say that they have made an impact of this magnitude–even the league’s all-time leading scorer LeBron James–and for that, Curry is more than deserving of a place among basketball’s all-time greats.