Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard Seth Curry said there was nothing personal in playing against the NBA team that traded him.
The 76ers, handily defeated his former squad, the Mavericks, 111-97 on Thursday night in a game in which Curry contributed 15 points while converting on all of his three-point attempts.
“I just think they made a bad business decision,” Curry said after the game, via ESPN’s Tim Bontemps.
The Mavericks traded Curry to the 76ers on draft night for Josh Richardson and the 36th overall pick.
In his first season with his new team, Curry is averaging 13 points per game and has converted on 46.8% of his shots behind the arc, which is seventh best in the league.
On the other hand, Josh Richardson has only converted on 30.1% three pointers this season. As a Sixer, Richardson made 34.1% of his three pointers last season, so Curry is giving the Sixers more offensive output this season.
In addition to scoring 15 points, Seth Curry secured a plus-minus rating of +17 in Thursday’s game. Richardson, on the other hand, scored 13 points, misfired on all four of his three pointers and had a plus-minus rating of -24, so Curry does have a point.
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Thursday’s game showed how lopsided the offseason trade between the Sixers and the Mavs was. Coming into this season, the Sixers’ biggest problem was that they didn’t have reliable shooters surrounding their two superstars in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Now with the acquisitions of Curry and Danny Green, the Sixers sit atop the Eastern Conference.
The Mavericks, on the other hand, look similar to the team the Sixers were last season. Their star player, Luka Doncic, was limited to 19 points in Thursday’s action due to the Embiid-Simmons duo double-teaming him. Even though the Mavs were missing their second-best player in Kristaps Porzingis, their success can’t live and die on Doncic and Porzingis.
Even if Curry didn’t say anything after the game, the bad business decision would have been clear to anybody watched the two teams play.