BOSTON – Stephen Curry demoralizes the Celtics when he decides to improvise. After dribbling to turn past Marcus Smart, who happens to be one of the NBA’s fiercest defenders, Curry turned out to be Robert Williams, a 6-foot-9 center whose sneakers may have been filled with concrete. .
Curry took a hard dribble, leaving Williams behind before rising from the court to dive a running 12-foot swimmer who increased Golden State’s lead in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday night.
It was a scene that seemed familiar, but new, the same, but somehow different. Curry has spent his career filling games with parabolic 3 points and dazzling hoops. But now, 34 years old, after spending the last few seasons wandering the basketball desert with his teammates, he is busy organizing a renaissance.
And it was his performance – 43 points and 10 rebounds with a sore left leg – that made basketball fans explode before game 5 on Monday night in San Francisco. The series is tied, 2-2.
“He wouldn’t let us lose,” said teammate Draymond Green.
Aside from Curry’s relatively short stature – 6 feet 2, he’s an NBA redwood shrub – it can be difficult for ordinary people to connect with. He is a highly trained athlete and the greatest archer ever lived. He won two NBA Most Valuable Player Awards. The architect of a growing entertainment empire, he plays golf with former President Barack Obama in his spare time.
And for five seasons, from 2014 to 2019, Curry sat at the top of the basketball world.
Few people become the best at something and victories can feel elusive. You are stuck in the slowest payment line. You deserve this promotion. You also want to be able to buy a house in this neighborhood. But Curry helped the ordinary masses feel like winners next to him, even supporting his team to lose.
As Curry led Golden State to five consecutive NBA finals, winning three championships, opposing fans will be appearing early for matches just to be able to watch him warm up. At Madison Square Garden, where the lights are low and the court is a stage, the MVP chants were for him. In Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia and Miami, cities with their own All-Stars, the roar and the crowds, oh and ah – they’re trumpeting his arrival.
Along the way, he encouraged his teammates to turn basketball into a high art. They fired accurately. They moved with the grace of the ballet dancers. And in a sport full of over-ego and huge salaries, they liked to switch to the open man.
And then came Kevin Durant, all arms and legs and 25-foot jumpers. After losing to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals, Golden State successfully recruited Durant to enter as a free agent. Was it a cry for help, an acknowledgment that the team has room for improvement? Or did the rich just get richer?
“We’ve been an evil empire for a while,” Rick Wells, the team’s former president, said in a recent interview.
Durant, of course, was scary before joining the Golden State. After being named MVP of the league in 2014, he described his mother, Wanda, as the “true MVP” in emotional speech. The soullessness of the current era has ultimately turned this expression of humility into a meme that will soon be turned against him: Between Durant and Curry at the Golden State, who was the real MVP?
This issue – from social media trolls, TV personalities and sports fans – was a Durant problem, but its sharp edge hurt Curry as well. Golden State had become too good.
Of course, Durant was a force in consecutive championships, the last being in four games of the Cavaliers. There was a sense of joyless inevitability for Golden State: anything but a championship was a failure.
And then the dynasty fell apart. In the 2019 finals, Clay Thompson and Durant suffered serious injuries as the Toronto Raptors staged a disorder to win their first title. The following season, Thompson lost his job after knee surgery. Durant left for the Nets as a free agent. And Curry broke his left arm, missing all but five games when Golden State finished with the worst NBA record.
In a few months, the most dominant team in the league became a renewal project. To make matters worse, Thompson tore his Achilles tendon during training before last season and Golden State failed to re-enter the playoffs.
Nothing was guaranteed this season. Golden State has gone from an indomitable to a vulnerable, battered version of his younger self. But the team was not completely defeated. Thompson’s return in January after a 941-day absence was marked as a triumph and a great medical miracle. He jumped to score in his first game.
The finals were a microcosm from the long journey back to Golden State – a beautiful fight. After splitting the first two games of the series in San Francisco, Golden State lost Game 3 in Boston, and Curry injured his left leg in the final minutes when the Celtics’ Al Horford landed on him in a loose ball fight.
It was then left to Thompson to offer some hope, saying he was “getting the big vibes of 2015”, a reference to the 2015 finals, when Golden State trailed the Cavaliers 2-1 before making a comeback to won everything, the team is the first from the Curry era.
More broadly, Thompson cites Golden State’s post-season experience as positive. When he was younger, he said, there were covers everywhere. Prone to feel anxious when he lags behind in a series, he will probably be overconfident with the lead. He was older now, but wiser.
“You can’t really relax until the last bell of the game is over,” he said. “This is the hardest part for the playoffs – you have to deal with feeling uncomfortable until the mission is over.”
Curry slept well after Game 3, he said, and kept his left foot in an ice bucket whenever possible. The focus was on restoring and repairing his diseased body. (Steph Curry: Just like us.) He only knew one thing for sure: he was going to play in Game 4.
Exactly 75 minutes before the start of Friday, Curry showed up for his pre-match warm-up routine. Dressed in black, except for the lavender sneakers, he started with five beds. He then moved to his left elbow, where he struck a series of blows with his left hand, which is his own, and missed nine in a row to the delight of hundreds of early-arriving Celtics fans.
But over the next 20 minutes, something strange, but not entirely unexpected, happened: the crowd began to murmur with admiration and gratitude as Curry sank 136 of the 190 strikes, including 46 of the 72 threes, some right on the inside of the field. Fans pulled out their cell phones to record the moment for the offspring. The children were shouting for autographs.
“People think his shot is like Ken Griffi Jr.’s hit – it’s so beautiful you think he should never work on it,” said Bob Myers, the team’s general manager, in an interview during the regular season. . “It simply came to our notice then. When you look behind the curtain, you see the work. ”
Curry’s exploits once seemed magical – and they still are. But in recent seasons, as Golden State wandered through a wasteland of injury and insecurity, Curry and his teammates have revealed that success does not happen by accident, that great effort and determination are needed. Of course, they are still savants in basketball, but they are savants who have shown the world their homework.
“You win, you lose, whatever you play, you have to keep coming back to the well to keep sharpening your toolbox and finding ways to develop your game,” Curry said. “It’s the hardest part of what we do.”
After helping the Celtics make a late turnaround that essentially sealed Friday’s victory, Curry and Thompson celebrated by waving their hands in unison. Thompson, who knows Curry better than most, said his teammate has never played a better game in the finals. Curry was asked if he agreed with Thompson’s assessment.
“However, I do not rank my performances,” he said. “Just win the game.”
At this point, he knows what matters.
Add Comment