Stephen Curry has won the NBA's 2023-24 Clutch Player of the Year award, the league announced Thursday night. The award, named after Los Angeles Lakers great Jerry West, is in its second year of existence. Last season, the first ever Clutch Player of the Year award was given to Sacramento Kings point guard De'Aaron Fox. Now, the Warriors superstar is the award's second winner.
Curry's clutch heroics are nothing new. He has long-been among the NBA's most-feared late-game shot creators, and when the award was initially conceived in 2022, we found that Curry would have been the likely winner for the 2015-16 season had the award existed at that point.
This season, however, Curry's clutch excellence demanded recognition in the form of the Jerry West Trophy. He led all scorers with 189 total points and 32 made 3-pointers in clutch situations, which the NBA defines as games within five points with five minutes or fewer remaining on the clock. Though it wasn't quite a buzzer-beater, Curry did hit one of the most incredible clutch shots of the season when he nailed this game-winner over the Phoenix Suns with 0.7 seconds remaining on the clock.
Still, Curry faced stiff competition from Chicago Bulls star DeMar DeRozan. The Bulls forward scored 182 total points in the clutch this season while leading the league in both clutch free-throws made (65) and attempted (74). His Bulls also went 24-16 in the clutch this season compared to 15-29 in all other situations, essentially meaning that Chicago's only path to consistent winning was keeping the game close enough for DeRozan to win it at the end. In the end, though, Curry's edge in the counting stats could not be denied.
Curry got 45 first-place votes, while DeRozan got 34. Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the other finalist for the award, got 11 first-place votes and finished third.
The complete voting results for the 2023-24 Kia NBA Clutch Player of the Year. pic.twitter.com/vAEzGmiZS3
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) April 25, 2024
This was one of the few remaining honors in the NBA that Curry hadn't already won. He entered this season with two MVP awards, two scoring titles, four championships, eight All-NBA selections and 10 All-Star choices. Now he has another trophy to add to his mantle, which may be getting even more crowded when he attempts to win his first Olympic gold medal for Team USA this summer.
