Stephen Curry doesn’t run around the basketball court, he slides. He doesn’t evade rivals, he dances. It is a continuous movement, art built with the legs in a periodic state, which he finds euphoria when he reminds us that what he does is -or seems to be- basketball. That surreal kinetic art is later transformed into an abstract release that unifies form and content. Shoot however, whenever and from wherever. It is a blink of an eye that allows us to understand. The union of imaginary points to then contemplate the masterpiece that is, of course, his distance shot. The end of the road in the form of a snap of the fingers for the fans to wake up from the hypnotic state and return to reality. The general scream is, then, the expected consequence.
Curry is not a point guard or shooting guard. He’s not even a shooter. Curry is an artist of the game, one of the great geniuses who appear very occasionally on earth to destroy the existing parameters. To rewrite imaginary rules. The literature of Jorge Luis Borges, the painting of Vincent Van Gogh, the sculpture of Michelangelo and the shot of Stephen Curry.
There is no correct terminology about genius, but we can define it, broadly speaking, as a combination of creative, original, unique achievements that have had no precedent. When a genius appears in the room, the same thing always happens: they try to imitate him without any success and then they try to conspire against him. Kind of like the conspiracy of fools.
Curry is not tall or strong. It does not belong to the generation of multifunction hybrids that make their physical nature their advantage. Absolutely. Curry is smart, quick and with a will to work that has allowed him to chisel his talent summer after summer. From the glass ankles that seemed to shorten his career to an extended present, marvelously, which makes it the Rosetta Stone of a game based on aim. James Naismith’s dream embracing the arrow that pierces William Tell’s apple.
The fourth game of the NBA Finals allowed him to add one more sword to his legendary career: heroism. Enough about Kevin Durant’s support for success. Curry proved that he can carry the giant weight of a steel match in tow. As a visitor, against everything and everyone. Atlas with the world on his shoulders. He had Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole, two excellent supporting actors, as character partners, but Klay Thompson -effective as always- continues to be a brilliant talent between cottons and Draymond Green in this definition does not hit one: he throws himself into a pool and hits the trampoline.
Curry scored 43 points, his second-best mark in a Finals game, and became the second-oldest player to cross the 40-point and 10-rebound frontier in a championship game. And he did it before a warm, animated and at times hostile audience. So big was the Murderous Altar Boy on Friday night that only one visiting player passed the 40-point line in Boston throughout NBA Finals history: Jerry West in 1969.
But of course, the numbers do not explain everything. Curry’s importance was paramount because he did it when it really mattered. He had 24 points in the second half against the best defensive player in the league, Marcus Smart. Throws through a keyhole, impossible shots one after another to destroy the morale of any team that has the audacity to want to control it. The white and green jerseys chased him with traps but when the genius is like this, there is no other way but to accept it and surrender at his feet.
Steph beat them all, including his own team: he had 43 points against 39 of the rest of the Warriors starters. He thus became the oldest player to beat his own chorus of starters in scoring since Michael Jordan did it in 1998 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz.
Wardell Stephen Curry II came from the future to tell us how things will be in a few years. Ahead of his time, his avant-garde game, of extreme freneticism, of sprint speed, provokes sighs and criticism in equal parts.
Like the 24-second clock or the three-point line once happened, the rulebook is going to change thanks to Curry.
The basketball we once knew has already changed.
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Stephen Curry, the last great basketball genius