The NBA doesn’t usually show up much on my sports radar until after March Madness, but Stephen Curry has changed that a bit.
I can’t to see what this guy is going to do next. He is setting off fireworks with his shooting night in and night out, while rewriting many records in the process.
After the sharp-shooting Golden State guard buried a 38-foot heat-sinking missile of a three-pointer to give the Warriors a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder last Saturday, a meme of the reigning NBA MVP shooting from outer space to Earth hit the Internet as a reference to his unreal shooting range.
He did it again to OKC Thursday night despite an off shooting night, scoring 33 points in his return from an ankle injury as the Warriors tied Chicago’s NBA record by winning their 44th straight regular-season home game, 121-106 over the Thunder.
A recent Associated Press story summed it up neatly by suggesting Curry is turning 3-point shooting into a longest drive competition, extending his range further and further away from the basket.
But yet many former NBA players refuse to give Curry the credit he deserves. That’s because many are stuck in the past.
Charles Barkley consistently spewing an eye-rolling stream of blah about the state of the NBA, or that jump shooters can’t win a championship, or whatever else irks him; to Michael Jordan’s halfhearted compliments for most superstars of this era; to anybody who played in the late 1990s and 2000s calling today’s NBA and its players soft.
Many of the great players don’t think a 6-foot-nothing, skinny jump shooter belongs in the club with them. Curry isn’t dunking over 7-footers and he’s not soaring to grab rebounds over the most athletic players in the league.
He’s shooting jumpers and shooting them like no one before him. His dominance is about skill, not overwhelming athletic prowess.
These bitter ex-players blame rules changes, especially the no more hand checking, for the reason that Curry flourishes in a league where the athletes are bigger, faster and stronger than they’ve ever been.
“Could you imagine how many points Michael (Jordan) would average if you couldn’t touch him?” Barkley recently said.
Barkley is a quote machine, but he’s dead wrong to try to disparage Curry’s incredible play this season.
Last week, Curry’s 12 three-pointers tied him for the NBA single-game record for most threes. The same night saw him set the all-time record for three-pointers in a single season, with 288, breaking the record he set last year with 286. Scary, considering he has 24 games left in the season.
As one columnist points out, that means if Curry sinks the five three-pointers he’s averaging per game this year, he’ll finish the season with 408 threes, putting his own record way out of reach.
He’s shooting three-pointers at career-high 46.8 percent clip this season.
What’s crazier is he’s sinking deep three-pointers — from 28 feet and half-court — at an absurd 67.3 percent.
He can also blow by defenders off the dribble. He is the ultimate scoring machine even if many of these knuckle heads won’t admit it.
