Numbers Compared: Steph Curry and Devin Booker

With all the talk about all star spots and even the MVP race, I went and compared the stats between book and steph and was pleasantly surprised. Honestly, Book has had a lightly down year in efficiency (outside of his 3 point shooting). His scoring is a little down, his finishing is down, his FT% is down. With all that said Steph and Book have very very similar numbers when normalized for minutes played.

Regular stats

Steph: 26/5.4/6 on 42/39/91.5

Book: 24.5/5.3/4.4 on 45/40/86.

Obviously there is not a huge difference except a decent gap in scoring but when you look at their numbers per 36 possessions it becomes almost a dead tie.

Per36 (same shooting efficiency)

Steph: 27.3/5.6/6.3

Book: 26.9/5.8/4.8

Steph still has more assists but fewer rebounds and any scoring advantage is negligible. I am in no way arguing that Book is in a vacuum better than Steph (curry takes way more hard shots and gets more defensive attention), but I think it is fair to say that this year Steph has not been very good and the gap between he and Book is much smaller than anyone admits. One gets talked about as a shoe-in for the MVP race and top 5 player in the league and one can't get more all star votes than a guy who's played 5 games. In conclusion, if Book increases his interior and mid range finishing (those are way down from years past) it would not at all be wild to say he's been better than Curry this year.