Steph Curry on historically poor shooting night: 'I doubt this will happen again'

It was not a performance befitting of the Maurice Podoloff Trophy.

The league's Most Valuable Player turned in a historically poor shooting performance in Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday, something nobody would have expected of Steph Curry.

Curry kept trying to shoot his way through what began as a cold start, but the "incomprehensible heat," as Guy Fieri would describe it, never came. He finished 5-of-23 from the floor and 2-of-15 from the 3-point line, setting an NBA Finals record with 13 missed triples. 19 points, six rebounds, and five assists is still a fine line, but when it takes 33 possessions - Curry also took eight free-throw attempts and committed six turnovers - it comes at a serious cost.

To call this uncharacteristic of Curry would do a disservice to just how rare a performance this was. Curry had only attempted 15 threes in a game six times before, never hitting fewer than five. His 13 misses from outside are a career-high, regular season or playoffs.

In other words, this was almost surely an outlier.

"I doubt this will happen again," Curry said after the game. "I'm not going to let one game alter my confidence ... Shots I normally make, I knew as soon it left my hand they were off. That doesn't usually happen."

Not only does that feeling rarely happen, those misses rarely happen. This is perhaps the greatest long-range shooter in NBA history, after all. To hear Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James tell it, Curry's struggles had a lot to do with Matthew Dellavedova, who stepped into the starting lineup for injured point guard Kyrie Irving and played an exceptional defensive game.

"It had everything to do with Delly," James said. "He kept a body on Steph, he made Steph work and he was spectacular, man, defensively."

For as confident as James is in Dellavedova's defensive effort, the Golden State Warriors are confident in Curry bouncing right back. He had an off night or two against the Memphis Grizzlies and recovered well, and there's a good chance he regains his otherworldly percentages sometime in this series.

"We know he's going to bounce back with a great night," teammate Klay Thompson said afterward. "With a few great nights."

Curry said there's no mechanical issue at play, and as extreme as his night was, it's nothing head coach Steve Kerr hasn't seen before.

"I've seen it from Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan," Kerr said. "It doesn't matter who you are, you're not immune from a tough night."

It wouldn't be at all surprising for Curry to bring the napalm in Game 3 on Tuesday in Ohio, because that's what he's done for most of the season. Regression doesn't always work quickly, but a 1-of-9 mark on uncontested shots just isn't likely to happen on back-to-back nights for the world's foremost preternatural marksmen.