Steph Curry famously questioned whether the moon landing happened on a 2018 podcast, so he’s the perfect subject. The gradient here is lunar phase instead of latitude.

Does Steph Curry shoot worse when the moon is watching?

I looked at Steph’s entire NBA career and split his 1,000+ games by lunar phase, comparing the 340 games played within 48 hours of a full moon against every other game.

Credit for the idea: the Kyrie North Pole guy.

Full moon Steph:
40.1% 3PT / 46.9% FG / 5.9 3PM

Every other night:
43.4% 3PT / 48.2% FG / 6.4 3PM

The difference in 3PT% is statistically significant (p = .021). Even after controlling for season, home/away, and defender distance, playing under a full moon is associated with about 0.5 fewer made threes per game (p = .019).

Steph’s career 3PT% by lunar phase:
New moon: 44.2%
Waxing crescent: 43.6%
First quarter: 43.1%
Waxing gibbous: 42.0%
Full moon: 40.1%
Waning gibbous: 42.4%
Last quarter: 43.3%
Waning crescent: 43.8%

Total: a clean 3.3% drop the closer the moon gets to fully illuminated.

Most importantly, his free throw percentage is almost literally identical: 90.8% in both groups.

So it’s not fatigue, and it’s not his shooting stroke breaking down.

The rim doesn’t move. The three-point line doesn’t move. The only thing that changes is how much of the moon is pointed at him.
He’s just significantly less willing to launch from deep when the thing he’s not sure we landed on is staring directly at him.

tl;dr: The more of the moon you can see, the fewer threes Steph takes. Correlation? I’ll let NASA explain that one.