There’s Something About Curry

Steph Curry is probably the best player in basketball right now; Kevin Durant and Lebron James might be better rebounders, more versatile defenders, and have more traditional scoring opportunities…but neither one of them can affect a game quite like Steph Curry.  That fascinates me: two players who are at the peak of their abilities, who are physical specimens and monsters in the game – no, not Monstars – have been overtaken by what looks like a skinny little kid flinging up shots with what seems, at least on the surface, like reckless abandon, who then laughs with glee as they somehow go in.  There is something absolutely magnetic about watching Curry play basketball that forces you to watch him every second he’s on the floor – even when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands – because something incredible and at times even unbelievable could happen at any moment. 

                You might think that this is because he has already done so many incredible things on the floor, that we have been Pavlovian-ly trained to expect wondrous things to just sort of…happen when he touches the ball; that the attraction of watching him play basketball is simply a natural, logical conclusion that, as he has amazed us previously, so too will he amaze us once again.  You would be wrong.  It has happened already, when he was playing for small, unheralded Davidson University – because none of the blue-chip programs would take him – when the entire country fell in love with him; and before you insist that this occurred because of his stellar play during the NCAA tournament, I should remind you that he was already a mainstay in the highlight reels on all of the nightly sports review – “worldwide leaders” or otherwise.  There was already something positively electric about watching Steph Curry play basketball, even then: it was not as refined then, certainly, it had not become the surreal hurricane of confident expectation – the state in which one sits perched upon the edge of one’s own seat, the anticipation nearly seeping out of every pore to drip down onto the end-table and spoil one’s nachos – but it was already there.  My younger brother watched him play one non-tournament college basketball game and declared to me: “That kid is going to be a hell of a basketball player in the NBA.”  It was not then a foregone conclusion that Steph Curry would even be drafted into the NBA, let alone become a foundational player for a franchise; the Minnesota twins drafted two other point guards in front of him, one of whom - Johnny Flynn - has been a fantastic bust, the other of whom - Ricky Rubio - is a good point guard, but is not even the best player on his own team. Absolutely no one predicted that Curry would become a white-hot inferno of delicious appeal and consistent amazement.  He was too skinny, the pundits assured us, he had poor shot selection, couldn’t play defense, was too short, they all said; not maliciously, certainly, but with the sort of melancholy with which the professional evaluators of basketball talent are wont to dash the lifelong hopes of young college students.

They were wrong, of course; not even the experts are really any good at deciphering talent, because basketball is probably the most difficult sport to forecast.  During Curry’s first season in the NBA, my younger brother and I watched a Warriors games, during which he turned to me and once again proclaimed: “Steph Curry is going to be the best basketball player in the NBA.” 

 All right, fine, that’s not entirely accurate; what he said was “In four years Steph Curry might be the best point guard in the NBA;” but my version sounds better.  Here’s the best part about that prediction: Curry didn’t really even have that great of a game when my brother made it; he just saw something that attracted him to Curry’s abilities, which made him feel totally confident in making that prediction.  I, of course, disagreed with him...because I am an idiot, and I was drinking all the expert Kool-Aid which assured us that he would never be more than a remixed Keven Martin.  

I was wrong; that’s not a sentence I enjoy typing, especially in regards to basketball.  Steph Curry is not only the best player in basketball, he’s also the most insanely, completely, ubiquitously loved player in basketball.  Everyone enjoys watching Steph Curry play basketball; even Clippers fans have nothing but nice things to say about him.  Cavaliers fans might curse Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala, Kelly Olynek and Kyrie Irving’s Dodgy Kneecap, but they never go so far as to disparage the Baby Faced Assassin: because even the people whose championship dreams have been dashed to pieces upon the bay of Golden State, still love the rock upon which their 2015 season died.  Lebron James was never this beloved, neither was Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan; no one since Michael Jordan has been this universally loved. 

It’s not Curry’s perfect form on his jump-shot – so pure and consistent that a volcanic eruption could not alter its inevitable course – which allows him to hit some of the most ridiculous below-the-rim shots we’ve ever seen; or the quickness of his release, which Sports Science insists is the quickest in the NBA at 0.4 seconds from hip-to-tip.  It’s more than just his superlative ball-handling ability; and it is superlative, by the way.  Do you remember last year when there was a debate among some – not me – about whether Steph or Kyrie was the better ball-handler?  It was never a debate in my mind: Curry was quite visibly the better of the twain; which was in no way disparaging to Mr. Irving, but it did mean that he was only the second or third best ball-handler in the world, because Chris Paul really does need to be in that particular discussion somewhere.  Whether he’s 1, 2 or 3 I really don’t know; I just know that he’s in there, and Steph is ahead of Kyrie. 

It’s not necessarily that Curry looks better while dribbling, because that's a pretty subjective method by which to rank one's ability, and besides which in some ways he might not: Kyrie certainly has just as visibly appealing of a dribbling style.  It looks flashy, fancy, fascinating, some-other-adjective-that-starts-with-F, and it is incredibly effective: he uses it equally well to create space for jumps shots and incredible layups…but Curry is just better at creating the space.  His dribbles might not look any better, but they just are, because he creates so much more space with each dribble; and he creates all of that space because he covers more ground with every move.  That is the secret to effective ball-handling: a crossover that travels a greater distance from one side to the other will always be more effective than one with a smaller range of motion, even if the speed at which the ball moves is exactly the same.  The idea is to get your defender moving in the wrong direction, to shift his weight in such a way that he leaves a direct line open for you to attack, and it is so much harder to create that action when your own feet aren’t moving.  Steph Curry is the best at creating that space: that’s why he can get his shot up off of any dribble, at any time, from anywhere on the court.

But it’s even more than all of that: the appeal which draws Curry to us, and in turn us to him, is a nebulous thing which defies rational constructs and the simple, fundamental precision which makes him such a terrifying basketball player.  Kobe Bryant was the best basketball player of his generation, whose dedication to the precise intricacies of basketball excellence allowed him to excel at every facet of the game; but he was also hated by half of the world for his apparent arrogance, legal/societal issues, and also the fact that he played on the Lakers, whom we all hated as a matter of course.  Wake up, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, hate the Lakers, ho-hum...  Tim Duncan, the only player who can reasonably be argued was a greater player in their generation than Kobe, also excelled at the fundamentals – hence his famous gamer-tag The Big Fundamental – but he was overlooked and ignored, because his excellence seemed so boring to some.  But no one – literally no one – hates Steph: because he is the living embodiment of Basketball Charisma in our generation.

The best way to describe this is through the medium of the NBA All-Star Weekend Slam Dunk contest.  Every few years, a contestant comes along who just sort of…well, blows the doors of the gym off like he was dropping a nuclear bomb through the net, rather than a leather-covered chunk of rubber which has been pumped full of air.  Think about Zach Lavine last year, and Blake Griffin before him.  Remember when Dwight Howard won the contest with that cape?  He won a slam dunk contest with a shot that was technically a lay-up!  But it didn’t matter, because for some un-quantifiable reason, when he “dunked” that ball, it just…mattered more than when anyone else did it.  It felt almost important, significant in some way outside of the context in which it occurred – which, for the record, was tens-of-thousands of slightly tipsy folks paying money to watch a very large man drop a child’s toy through a metal ring – and so every single dunk attempt raised the anticipation of every individual spectator, who both transferred and received a small percentage of that magnetism to and from those standing on either side of him.  It’s the same phenomenon by which a group of intelligent, compassionate, and rational people can become the chaotic vortex of anger and hate which we generally call a “mob,” except now directed towards a positive end.

It turns out that charisma and emotion are contagious, and certain people are more communicable than others.  Steph Curry transmits more of it than anyone since Michael Jordan; before him, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the twin pillars of excitement, and they were preceded by the superlative Dr. J, Julius Irving.  It’s the same phenomenon which turned Pete Maravich into the Pistol, and is the reason why Adidas still sells shorts which have been stitched  with his name, and why I still watch Youtube videos in terrible quality of a man who had retired before I was even born: because for some reason, Pistol Pete playing basketball transmitted more joy to those watching it than anyone not already named in this paragraph.  

Steph Curry is the best player in the NBA right now, but he’s so much more: he is the living conduit through which all of the joy of a perfectly swished jump shot, is transmitted to those of us watching it.  He is everyone’s favorite player, even if you don’t really like his team; he is the Baby-Faced Assassin, the new generation’s NBA John Wayne.  He is the Living Embodiment of the Literal Definition of Awesome...and he’s just getting started.