© Jerome Miron | 2021 Feb 6
It’s happening right before our eyes, so don’t miss it.
Steph Curry’s minutes are the 2021 sports equivalent of Barry Bonds at-bats.
I first thought of tweeting that on Saturday night, when he was bursting through yours and mine’s Super Bowl weekend for 57 staggering points in Dallas. I was on my way to tweet it, but something happened and I forgot. Probably the siren call of the weekend bourbon.
Wednesday morning, pouring my coffee and getting ready for the show, I heard my home slice Adam (Copes) Copeland declare on the rarified air of “The Leadoff Spot”:
“Steph Curry’s minutes are the 2021 sports equivalent of Barry Bonds at-bats.”
Copes! You magnificent bastard! Great sleep-deprived minds think alike.
It’s true. You can’t miss 2021 Steph. It’s jaw-dropping theatre. He’s somehow taken his already-two-time-MVP game to a new level of drama, the month before his 33rd birthday.
Whether it’s because he feels the need to carry the team in the absence of Klay Thompson, or whether it’s because he’s more rested than at any point in the last seven years because of last year’s injury/pandemic, or whether it’s because he is at that sweet spot in his career where his physical skills are undiminished and his mental game is filled with years and years of experienced data . . . this is the most scintillating Steph we’ve ever seen.
The same way Bonds could do things to pitches unlike any hitter you ever saw?
That’s the same way Steph is scoring the basketball — in a way nobody in the NBA is doing it.
He bursts with youthful speed and increasingly-dexterous handle past any defender. He moves off the ball like a jackrabbit through screens. He exhausts his defenders. He slithers like an Oakland-jersey clad eel through the key to the rim past any long-armed rim protector. He gauges angles off the glass on his drives like a goggles-wearing lab physicist.
And that’s not even mentioning the three-ball. You already knew about that.
His February of 2021 is a tableau of brilliance. In five games this month, he’s scored 38-28-57-32-32 (37.4 peg) and he’s doing it while shooting 57.5% from the field (!) and 50% from three-point land (!).
The other part of Steph 2021 that analogizes to Bonds at-bats: when he’s off the floor resting — and I say this with all due respect to Andrew Wiggins/Kelly Oubre, Jr/Damion Lee/Brad Wanamaker and the crew — it feels like a huge letdown.
I find myself getting angry if the Warriors cross half court and don’t get the ball in his hands right away.
This is what it was like when Ryan Klesko or Pedro Feliz was up instead of Bonds.
Just thank the sports gods Steph doesn’t take the day-game-after-a-night-game off like Bonds might do in baseball on occasion. Brutal.
As for any complaints about Steph needing to play more in the fourth quarter? That’s why I listen to The Sports Leader when I’m in my car. I heard Hall of Famer Chris Mullin tell Papa and Lund that Steph is on the verge of a 50-40-90 (FG%-3 point FG%-FT%) season playing the minutes he’s playing, so the proof is in the MVP-level pudding. The minutes Steve Kerr has mapped out for him have him playing epically fresh basketball. If Steph ain’t broke, don’t fix him.
All you do is enjoy him.
Now, about the Chase Center PA playing Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” every time Steph touches the ball . . .