Curry I think is a better pure shooter........ DL is better at everything else! I'll take Dame all day!
I'm gonna go with Curry. I have a very hard time picking an unproven player over one that has done this for a few seasons. Also Curry didn't have any injury problems until his third season. Dame being a Blazer I'm going to presume injury prone until proven healthy.
How do you prove a negative (that is, proving something that doesn't happen, like not getting injuries... only after they go through their career with no major injuries can you say they're not injury prone)? Also, if you pick Curry, doesn't that mean he's a Blazer, and thus injury prone?
Curry had ankle problems his rookie season and his second season and his third season and he has already had ankle problems in training camp and preseason.
If you compare both of them at age 22 they're very similar. But there's something screwy there with Curry's games played... I just worry that Lillard will be like Damon: an older player who wins ROY and then declines. Call me paranoid if you must. (And we can't whine about the injury curse when we're talking about Golden State. Any curse we have, they have worse.)
By default, it compares cumulative seasons, not single seasons. Here's the single-season results: http://bkref.com/tiny/GFWLa Hopefully Lillard can learn to be a bit more effective with his shot; it's his FG% that's dragging down his PER. I was at the game where they had to play an active, injured guy for a play against us... that was kinda desperate.
I wonder if some of Curry's better shooting percent was just playing next to Monta Ellis. So often when the Warriors' offense broke down Ellis would be there to get himself an open look. Curry didn't have to take the desperation shots. On the current Blazers team, Lillard is the only guy who can create a shot for himself. Still, though, you hope his shot selection improves over time. As Batum continues to assert more of a Point Forward role, hopefully Lillard can focus a little more on getting more open looks for himself. Just because he can hit threes from 4 feet behind the arc doesn't mean he shouldn't wait for something a little better.
So - according to that Curry is significantly superior in just about every measure at the same age. Of course, he'd had a year to acclimate to the NBA.
Lillard has 5" in height on Stoudamire. Damon was unique because he was so quick, but he started having his own ankle problems and declined. Damon was also allowed to to whatever he wanted during his RoY season, because Toronto was pretty bad. Lillard went from the Big Sky conference to being PG for a team that would be in the playoffs if they started right now, and he's doing it with numbers that are rarely seen in NB A history for a rookie PG.