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On Monday morning, when it was still unclear whether Stephen Curry would even play for the Golden State Warriors that night, news began to circulate at the team’s shoot around that Curry would be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for a second straight season. An official announcement from the league was coming.
Draymond Green, one of Curry’s more outspoken team-mates, realised that he had forgotten to congratulate Curry, but Green had an excuse. “Because I felt like I knew since December,” he said. “It didn’t feel like this monumentous occasion.”
Give credit to Green, at least for concocting a neologism — “monumentous” — to describe another of Curry’s achievements, which seemed appropriate enough: A new word for a new type of player who is doing new things every time he takes the court, magic acts that captivate team-mates and dishearten opponents.
Curry has assembled a season-long mix tape of basketball pyrotechnics. On Monday night, in Game 4 of the Warriors’ Western Conference semifinal series against the Portland Trail Blazers, he somehow managed to cram a bit of everything — all the dribbling, all the shooting, all the winning — into a single overtime.
By the end of the game, after he had played for the first time in more than two weeks, after he had scored 40 points, after he had led the Warriors to a 132-125 win, after he had pushed the Trail Blazers to the brink of elimination before Game 5 -- which eventually happened on Saturday, Curry tried to reflect on whether he was actually amazed by what he had done.
“I wouldn’t say amazed,” said Curry, who may have been the only one. “It’s just one of those moments when you’re standing out there and realised what just happened. It’s a pretty good feeling; because this is the playoffs, everything is heightened — the intensity, the ramifications of a win or a loss.”
The newness never stops with Curry, and that might be what makes him so different. He raises the bar, and then he goes out and raises it again. It had been 15 days since Curry sprained his right knee in a first-round playoff game, and coach Steve Kerr hoped to limit him to 25 minutes Monday. In truth, Curry had not played a full game since April 13 — nearly a month ago, before injuries threatened to unravel his postseason. So he came off the bench for Game 4 against Portland.
But all of Kerr’s careful planning evaporated when Shaun Livingston got ejected, and then the game went to overtime, and then —“I don’t think anyone could have predicted the explosion,” Kerr said. “I mean, that was crazy.” Kerr was referring to overtime, as Curry scored 17 points — an NBA record for a single overtime period — and shot 6 of 7 from the field, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range. He wound up playing 37 minutes. Afterward, Green described the game as a “gut punch” for the Trail Blazers, who are now trailing by three games to one in the best-of-seven series.
“Do I think they’re done?” Green said, repeating the question for dramatic effect. “Of course I think they’re done.”
Kerr is not fond of historical comparisons. The game has changed too much, he said recently, for fans, pundits and even former participants to make claims about one great team (the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, for example, for whom Kerr played) being more dominant than another (say, the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors). Why can’t they both be great and leave it at that?
Curry, through his sublime play, has invited many of the comparisons involving him, in large part because people crave context. But context is a challenge when someone does things that no one has ever seen before. Like make 402 3-pointers during the regular season, a 41% increase from the previous record — set by him. Or lead his team to 73 regular-season wins. Or become the first player to be unanimously voted the league’s MVP After a while, it all starts to sound absurd.
But in the wake of Curry’s latest performance, Kerr had no problem reaching through the haze of history to draw a parallel between Curry and another icon, Michael Jordan. It had nothing to do with their unique styles of play, or with their similar abilities to overwhelm defenders. It had to do, simply, with sound — the sound made by opposing crowds, that unmistakable but rare blend of dread and anticipation and excitement and slack-jawed wonder.
But while Curry is a basketball virtuoso, nothing he does happens in total isolation. It was a game full of conversation and team-work, starting with Kerr advising Curry to avoid pressing in the first half, to allow himself time to find his rhythm. Later, when Curry finally made his first 3-pointer, deep in the second half, he looked into the crowd to find his brother, Seth, who offered encouragement. And when Harrison Barnes helped send the game to overtime with a 3-pointer, Curry was not surprised. “Confidence,” he said, “is contagious.”Curry was back and full of surprises — same as always.