MUCH MORE THAN A SHOWMAN, CURRY IS AN ALL-TIME SPORTS GIANT
In carrying a deficient team to within two wins of his fourth NBA title, he has expanded his narrative beyond a best-shooter-ever legacy. Now ask: Will he deserve a monument on Mount Hoopsmore?
No further evidence is necessary. The pigeonholing of Stephen Curry, never fair and always shallow, ended on a June night in Boston that thrust him permanently into the temple of basketball’s gods. Nearly by himself, surrounded by teammates limited by health or podcasting or big-moment experience, he rejected the broad confinement of his legacy: as that of a showman, a fan darling, the eternal kid in the driveway, the jumpshooting extremist who extended range to the mid-court logo, the one athlete even the haters can’t hate.
Rather, he is verified definitively now as a badass baller for the ages. Enough with the simplistic categorizing, as Curry seemed to tell the TD Garden rowdies late in the first quarter, when he walked downcourt to the baseline by the Celtics bench and screamed into the stands, flexing his muscle like Conor McGregor. As he explained, “Felt like we just had to let everybody know that we were here tonight. Whether that's their crowd, their team, our team, whoever wants to see that energy and that fire, we feed off of that.” He also could have been addressing a global audience that has insisted on “talking about what Steph ain’t,” in the tweeted words of Dwyane Wade.
“Let’s talk about what he is,” Wade wrote. “A BAD MFer.”
That works. He’s a bad MFer AND a true giant of the sport, at barely 6 feet 2, more than the greatest shooter of all time and the revolutionist who changed how the game was played and strategized the last 10 years. The one hole in the argument that he didn’t belong on the same plateau with the established elite — and this is my order: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan — is about to be plugged. If he follows his legendary performance in Game 4 of the Finals and carries the Golden State Warriors to a fourth title in eight years, Curry will be celebrated for transcending a single championship platform like few others in NBA history … or sports history.
Finally, his genius is defying his baby face. Unlike the aforementioned greats, he is dominating opponents without the blessings of physical force, monstrous size, divine athleticism and reliable help. He doesn’t punish. He doesn’t dunk or glide above the fray. He rules via hypnosis, cunning and high intellect. The Warriors are not better than the Celtics as a whole. They aren’t as big, strong, deep, physical, young, multi-dimensional or committed to defense. Klay Thompson has regressed after two devastating injuries. Draymond Green has become such an internal irritant and liability, he was benched off and on in the final minutes Friday. Without Curry, they wouldn’t have advanced beyond the first postseason round.
With him, as he turns every critical possession into a personal takedown of all comers, the Warriors are two wins from the crown that would elevate Curry toward a place on or near Mount Hoopsmore, where there is room for only four monuments. No? LeBron has had to hopscotch in four different situations to win titles. Magic had Kareem and James Worthy. Kobe and Shaq had each other for three rings. Bird and Russell were accompanied by Hall of Famers. Even Jordan had Scottie Pippen and, later, Dennis Rodman. Curry’s triumph in this series — a solo act that is one part magic show and one part art installation — is commensurate with any renowned underdog in life punching above his weight to conquer the universe.
“FACTS!!!” wrote James, answering Wade. “THEY” will try to do anything in their powers to not acknowledge simply how “DIFFERENT” he is! It’s Rare and rare is not liked & appreciated.”
He is different enough that a fourth title will give him as many as James and O’Neal, though he still looks like he should be handing out towels and water during timeouts. Stop dwelling on optics and start appreciating Curry for what he is: pound for pound, one of the most supreme athletes who has walked the earth. After silencing the crazed New England din with 43 points and seven 3-pointers, along with 10 rebounds, he finally could behold his defining Finals moment — the one his critics said was absent, even if further examination finds many brilliant games.
“I don’t rank my performances,” Curry said. “Just win the game.”
This one belongs at the top because of the wide-ranging implications. Had they lost, the Warriors would have returned home trailing 1-3, a hole from which only 13 of 258 teams have climbed in NBA postseasons. A series ouster would give them three Finals failures, opposed to three championships — two with Kevin Durant. It’s difficult to describe Golden State as a dynasty with so many setbacks. But four titles in eight years qualifies, including bookend titles without Durant, and Curry’s inevitable Finals MVP award also would fill a void. Overcoming his team’s obvious deficiencies, with no apparent cure coming before Game 5 Monday night in San Francisco, it’s unfathomable he has produced his numbers against the league’s best defense: 34.3 points a game on 50 percent shooting, making 25 of 51 from beyond the arc. The Celtics know what’s coming. They’ve swarmed Curry with two and three bodies, and he escapes, in Bay Area parlance, like an Alcatraz prisoner. On one sequence as he took over the game late, he was trapped near the sideline by Marcus Smart — the league’s Defensive Player of the Year — but even when 6-9 leaper Robert Williams came over to harass him, Curry avoided the blitz with several crossovers and floated in a 12-footer. It was one of many Game 4 highlights that should be spliced together and placed in a museum.
“Incredible. Put us on his back. Willed us to win,” said Green, far better these days as a commentator than a player. “Much-needed win. A game we had to have. Came out and showed why he's one of the best players to ever play this game, you know, and why, you know, this organization has been able to ride him to so much success. It's absolutely incredible.”
“Just stunning,” said Steve Kerr, the creator and enabler of Curry Flurries in eight seasons as his coach. “The physicality out there is, you know, pretty dramatic. I mean, Boston’s got obviously, the best defense in the league. Huge and powerful at every position. And for Steph to take that — that kind of pressure all game long and still be able to defend at the other end when they are coming at him shows you, I think, this is the strongest physically he’s ever been in his career, and it’s allowing him to do what he’s doing.”
Strong? It isn’t normally a trait associated with Curry, but he spends as much time in the weight room as any of his teammates. Adding 15 pounds of muscle allows him to get past injuries that have robbed him before. After 240-pound Al Horford landed on Curry’s left leg late in Game 3, it appeared he might have to miss a game two nights later. You kidding? He’ll always bend, but he refuses to break down. He’s 34, piling up body mileage during multiple postseason runs, but he looks like he could play into his 40s — and has mentioned the possibility. The only other players to score 40 or more points in a Finals game after their 34th birthdays: Jordan and James.
And if Curry plays another six or seven years, as long as Kerr and Bob Myers are running the Warriors and Joe Lacob is the owner, why wouldn’t he continue to contend for titles after Thompson and Green are gone? Why wouldn’t he keep putting up astronomical point totals? For now, he focuses on No. 4, amid hosannas reserved for the sport’s aristocracy.
“The heart on that man is incredible,” Thompson said. “You know, the things he does we kind of take for granted from time to time, but to go out there and put us on his back like that, I mean, we’ve got to help him out on Monday. Wow.”
When the show involves only one man, both teams can lapse into lulls, joining the rest of us among the mesmerized. “Everybody was just kind of standing around and looking,” Boston’s Derrick White said.
“You got to be aware, especially at the end. That’s the one guy you can’t allow to beat you,” Smart said. “He made a lot of tough shots tonight on us. When you get a guy like that, some rhythm early on, those shots, the basketball hoop starts to look a little bit bigger for him.”
Already having regained control of a series that his team has tried to lose, Curry now sees a basket bigger than the bay outside Chase Center. Does anyone see him losing now? He rescued the Warriors with leadership, saying of his first-quarter pose and primal scream: “You can want it so bad, you kind of get in your own way a little bit, and everybody feels a little bit of pressure, and it can go the opposite way. I wanted to try to leverage that in a positive direction for us to start the game.”
Now, like all the greats, he must close what he started. Assuming he does, no tribute will be large enough, even for a man considered small in his profession. Think of it this way: Stephen Curry has marginalized size in a sport with a hoop 10 feet off the ground.
Go ahead. Keep talking about what he “ain’t.” Do so at your own peril and shame, while the rest of us are thanking the heavens for the gift.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.