Before Stephen Curry's rise, it seemed 3,000 career 3-pointers might be out of reach.
In 2005, Reggie Miller retired as the 3-point king with 2,560 triples. Ray Allen deposed him six years later and eventually retired in 2014 with 2,973 long-range makes of his own. But as Allen was adding the final few hundred 3s to his total, Curry was busy reimagining the possibilities for NBA shooting.
And on Dec. 28, 2021 -- exactly two weeks after passing Allen for No. 1 all-time -- Curry ran a give-and-go with Golden State Warriors forward Nemanja Bjelica, rose from the corner and sank his 3,000th career 3.
And on Thursday, three seasons later, Curry reached another previously unimaginable milestone: inaugurating the 4,000 club.
"I feel like I'm living a constant dream," Curry said earlier this month of his march to 4,000 and beyond. "It's cool that there's that joke that I set a new record every time I hit a 3. But I try not to think about [the different benchmarks] too much, because last time I did, I psyched myself out for like a five-game stretch."
Now that Curry has learned his lesson about psyching himself out, he's bound to keep breaking new ground. So let's examine three key questions about Curry's 4,000th 3-pointer:
How did he get here, how high will he keep climbing and which of the followers who have tried to copy his 3-point mastery will join him near the top of the all-time leaderboard?
How has Steph made 4,000 3s?!
Even in a league full of 3-point marksmen and pull-up threats, Curry stands alone.
