EVEN with the best record, and arguably the best player, in the league, the Warriors are not without their critics.
They beat a shorthanded team to win the championship last year, the haters lament, accurately. They’ve had a soft schedule to start the year, naysayers say, having avoided matchups against the league’s best teams until their Christmas rematch with the Cleveland Cavaliers, which is also true.
But on Christmas the Warriors, who played without starter Harrison Barnes, handled the nearly full strength Cavs by a score of 89-83 and one might think the doubters would be holding their tongues, especially when it comes to Stephen Curry, who is playing an otherworldly brand of basketball this season and was, on Saturday, named The Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year.
None of that impressed former Warriors coach and current ESPN commentator Mark Jackson who, during Friday afternoon’s telecast said of Curry that “to a degree, he’s hurting the game.”
For some context, Jackson explained that he has watched high-school kids and other aspiring players become obsessed with jacking up ridiculously long shots because they want to be like Curry.
It should be noted, however, that Curry’s remarkable skill at shooting the long ball is only one facet of his game. The game against the Cavs was essentially locked up with back-to-back driving layups late in the fourth quarter by the reigning Most Valuable Player (MVP).
Curry doesn’t have the physical stature of what we’ve come to expect from the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) elite. At 6-foot-3 inches tall and 185 pounds, he never had the winning ticket to the genetic lottery like so many of the league’s 7-footers.
For aspiring players who don’t happen to have the height of a small giraffe, it’s no wonder Curry’s style would be one to emulate.
Beyond the wizardry Curry displays on the court—to the point where opponents have begun broadcasting his pregame warm-up routine—his popularity has grown as he has shown how different he is from the prototypical NBA superstar.
Absent from Curry’s repertoire is the ego and hubris of some other league-topping talents who have “taken their talents” away from their home towns in search of championship rings or engaged in melodramatic and petulant trade demands as their contracts expire.
Curry has shown such a down-to-earth everyman attitude on and off the court that his fame has trickled down to his family, with both his wife, Ayesha, and his daughter, Riley, enjoying their own celebrity status.
MCT