The moment you think you’re familiar with Stephen Curry’s greatness, well, that’s usually when he throws a new wrinkle at you.
He did just that in an all-time Finals performance, flaying the Boston Celtics in a 43-point, 10-rebound showing that evened the series at two games apiece.
Curry came into Friday night nursing a supposed foot sprain that he rendered nonexistent. He came out with a shit-talking, East Coast sort of spirit that seemed to take the Boston crowd off guard.
It came early, too.
In that first quarter, after hitting a vintage stepback 3 to put Golden State up 23-18, he let the fans behind the basket hear it.
After all the embarrassing hand-wringing and halfhearted moral jabs — spurred largely by Bay Area media — about Boston fans being a bunch of meanies, and not just earnest, passionate fans bringing an edge to the series of all series, Curry embraced that beautiful toxicity.
He heard all that, and took it to those fans in a way that seemed to fuel him. If East Coast sports fans respect anything, it’s someone who talks trash and backs it up. They’ll keep talking, but there’s a tacit appreciation.
And if you can’t appreciate Curry after a 43-point, 10-rebound, 4-assist performance that will live in the annals of Finals history as one of the greatest single games ever? If you can’t appreciate that, you probably shouldn’t be allowed outdoors to interact with the rest of us normal folk.
What makes this stage of Curry’s career so astonishing is that he even made it to this point, let alone worked himself in the best shape of his life.
After all those early-career ankle woes, Curry rebuilt his body and sustained it in a way that puts Tom Brady’s TB12 shtick to shame. The NFL changed the rules to make things easier for ole Tom. Meanwhile, Curry’s still out there getting hounded, blitzed, scratched up, bumped and whacked for 40-plus minutes a game at age 34.
That’s an age when you’d generally start to wonder about a point guard, especially like Curry, and whether they’d have to evolve and slow the pace of their game down.
Curry has certainly evolved and knows how to alter the pace to buy himself some breathers, but he hasn’t lost a bit of that burst. He can reportedly even slow his own heart rate when he needs to.
The difference is that he’s just built like a pitbull now, muscled up and with legendary stamina, know-how and knack to angle his body to create stress on defenders and navigate difficult situations for 40-plus minutes.
Oh, and he defends. And not in a charitable, “oh, he’s not actually terrible,” sense. Curry is a very solid defender, a bona fide two-way player.
Aside from some of those head-scratching fouls he picks up on unnecessary swipes, he is putting consistent pressure on Boston’s players, contesting dribble drives, passes and shots, which is where that stamina shows up most.
As a rookie, Curry weighed 172 pounds. He’s somewhere around 200 pounds now, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
When asked about Curry’s performance, Steve Kerr pointed towards that physicality.
“Just stunning. The physicality out there is pretty dramatic,” Kerr said. “I mean, Boston’s got obviously, the best defense in the league. Huge and powerful at every position, and for Steph to take 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.”
It’s not just that Curry scored 40-plus points and anchored the Warriors offensively. It’s that he’s doing it with a hurt foot, against the most physically imposing defense in the league while remaining committed on the defensive end.
He’s now averaging 34.3 points (49.8 percent shooting, 49.1 from deep on 6.3 per game), 6.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 2 steals per game in this series. He’s obviously the series MVP right now and will win it if the Warriors win the series.
Curry’s brilliance has me playing Kanye and (a then-Young) Jeezy’s “Amazing.”
You can pick about any line from that 2008 classic that fits what Curry’s doing right now.
“It’s amazing, I’m the reason
Everybody fired up this evening
I’m exhausted, barely breathing…
I’m a monster, I’m a maven…
I’m a problem
That’ll never ever be solved”
Curry’s the most jaw-dropping, stop-what-you’re-doing-and-watch player the league has had since Allen Iverson, and he’s far more accomplished. Like Iverson, he has fundamentally changed the game of basketball and what kids aspire to be when they step on the court.
He’s relentless in every facet and relentlessly entertaining.
He bullies you while smiling and shimmying — occasionally talking trash like he did on Friday — and then goes to give his mom, dad, wife and daughters a hug after the game. It’s a confidence that echoes through every facet of what he does.
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If you listen to “Amazing,” there’s that same explicit and implicit vibe of supreme confidence.
You’ve even got the most literal, too-on-the-nose, “Victorious, yeah we warriors, We make history, strive for victory.”
Curry doesn’t always need to talk for you to know what he’s achieved and that he’ll only keep stacking on top of that legacy.
The repetitiveness to conclude the track — four bars of “amazing” — is all too fitting for Curry:
“So amazing, so amazing, so amazing, it’s amazing
So amazing, so amazing, so amazing, it’s amazing
So amazing, so amazing, so amazing, it’s amazing
So amazing, so amazing, so amazing, it’s amazing”
When you talk about Curry, that’s what it so often comes down to. He’s amazing. He puts you at a loss for words. In every one of these games, there are bars full of people left awestruck, unable to put together a coherent thought, other than “that guy’s amazing.”
But it’s not just that he’s amazing, incredible, outrageous, whatever mindblown adjective you prefer.
It’s that he continues to repeat it. It’s that at age 34, you can make a compelling case he’s the greatest he’s ever been.
He is unquestionably the best player in this Finals series, and just reaffirmed Golden State’s home court advantage. If he continues this pace and gets just a bit of help, he will secure his fourth championship and firmly enter himself into that Top 10 all-time conversation.
None of that should surprise us at this point. Curry’s work ethic is among the greatest the NBA has ever seen, and he was always astonishingly talented.
But the ingenuity in how he rebuilt himself and evolved as a player is unprecedented. It’s why he continues to leave us all screaming stunned expletives at our televisions, and why we’ll all continue to be stunned even when we expect to be.