© Kyle Terada | 2018 Jun 8
Draymond Green’s UNINTERRUPTED interview sure has provided a lot of content in this content-starved time. We’ve already covered Green’s “elephant in the room” comments that he lobbied towards former teammate Kevin Durant, a comment the reportedly media-obsessed Durant has undoubtedly seen at this point.
The next nugget comes via LeBron James’ longtime business partner Maverick Carter, who took a shot at Stephen Curry’s defensive ability, while making an analogy to Michael Jordan’s Bulls.
“There’s no way to validate this but it’s definitely probably true — he (Michael Jordan) did his job at a level better than anybody else in the world has ever done their job,” Carter said. “But the truth is — even that guy needs his other people, and most importantly that second person.
“If I’m the best at doing my thing, I need the other people to clear the way so I can do my thing. So Scottie (Pippen) took care of everything else. They brought up those stats. Scottie was second in rebounds, second in points, first in steals, blah blah blah.
“It’s just like the Warriors — the world knows Steph (Curry) can’t fucking play defense. I’m 38 — haven’t played a decent game of basketball in 18 years — Steph would have trouble guarding me.”
Carter then couched his comments by praising Curry’s other abilities, including his off-ball defensive skills.
“But Steph is the greatest shooter in the world. When that motherfucker gets rolling you can’t stop him — he can hit any shot from anywhere on the court.
“And he’s actually really good off the ball on defense — he’s a good steal artist. But he needs Klay (Thompson) and Draymond to kind of cover everything else so he can do his thing.”
Listen, no one is arguing that Curry is a world beater when it comes to one-on-one defending — although there are multiple examples to the contrary — but the notion that he “fucking sucks” is a little over the top. Curry actually ranked 13th among NBA point guards in defensive real plus-minus in 2018-19.
It’s possible that Curry’s offensive excellence makes his average defense seem worse by comparison.