“Champagne Campaign” – Curry Gives Us 45 More Reasons to 'Vote Steph'
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The human torch, Steph Curry. (photo by Noah Graham)
By Connor Buestad | connorbuestad@gmail.com
It was a familiar scene inside TNT’s Studio J following Thursday’s Warriors win over Damian Lillard and the Portland Trailblazers. Four men, three of which were once NBA superstars, sat around the ultimate NBA water cooler and tried to figure out what they had just witnessed from Steph Curry. It’s something we all go through as followers of the enigma that is number 30.
Sure, this has happened time and time again this year as we all know. I keep telling myself it shouldn’t be a surprise. Steph gets hot early, and never really seems to ever cool off. His silky smooth jump shot so simple and repeatable that it becomes hard to believe when one of his beautifully arching shots actually draws iron. Out of Curry’s 45 points on Thursday, eight of them were 3’s. Most all of said 3’s could be traced back to a creative dibble series that allowed him to slip free of double teams and find a window from which to launch another bomb from. His celebrations were on point two, as they usually are. And the Oracle crowd boiled over once again, this time breaking into well-deserved chants of “M-V-P, M-V-P…”
By the time the first segment of TNT’s postgame show went to its first commercial break, it was clear Shaq had already finished his first glass of Curry Kool-Aid and had ordered another round. Meanwhile, Ernie Johnson, who has been through his fair share of “40 Games in 40 Nights,” was just trying to keep everything in perspective. But over on the other side of the desk sat Isiah Thomas, lifetime cardholder of the Detroit Pistons Bad Boy era teams. “Come playoff time, everything isn’t going to be so free and easy. You know, just run around the court nice and loose and pop shots up,” explained Thomas. “In the playoffs things slow down, there is more pressure on each shot. It’s different.”
Coming from a guy who was tasked with containing the greatest ever, Michael Jordan, Isiah’s smiling sentiment on Curry come playoff time is tough to ignore, even for a Warriors fan wearing a We Believe shirt.
Fortunately, the debate of whether Chef Curry can continue to somehow pull off this high wire act all the way to the NBA Finals is what will make the next six some-odd weeks of basketball so invigorating to watch. Can he keep doing this? Can he keep casting 3’s from the depths of double teams only to splash the net, again? Can he continue to find space where there is none in the playoffs and whip no-look passes to Draymond and Bogut for another easy dunk? Can this furious train just keep on rolling until it meets LeBron, Delly and the Cavs? Is this what we as Warriors fans should now comfortably expect? Or should we listen to Isiah Thomas.
That’s for you to decide I suppose. But for now, there’s no arguing that you should go ahead and enjoy the moment. There are three games left, all on Warriors Ground, and Curry already has made 276 3-pointers on the year. Ray Allen, aka Jesus Shuttlesworth, once hit 269 3-pointers in a season. No man has ever done better than that, except for Steph. Twice.
In 38 games in Oakland this year, the Warriors have won 36 of them. They are on pace to go 41 and 2 at Oracle Arena this year. That is insane. When the Warriors sadly move across the bay to a shiny new arena with all the corporate bells and whistles, there will inevitably be story after story about that wild year in 2015 when the Warriors had their Oakland faithful worked into a frenzy night after night. When a skinny kid from Davidson College won the MVP, not because he was the best player or the best athlete, but because he literally almost never missed a shot.
To Isiah’s credit, you know what he must be thinking. You can almost see him racking his brain and comparing the Steph of 2015 to the Jordan of 1991. This guy Curry can’t be that good, man. Unless he is…
(photo by Ray Chavez)
