(Editor’s note: Welcome back to The Athletic NBA 75. We’re re-running our top 40 players to count down every day from Sept. 8-Oct. 17, the day before the opening of the 2022-23 NBA season. This piece was first published on Jan. 31, 2022.)
If the psycho has to have a birthday, it was April 28, 2013.
Or maybe the birth happened before and this was his coming of age. Nonetheless, the timeline of this NBA lore starts here. In Oakland. Against Denver. In the first round of the playoffs.
In the third quarter, with a four-point Warriors lead, Jarrett Jack ran a pick-and-pop with Carl Landry. Jack dribbled around a screen to the right wing and bounced a pass back to Landry at the top of the key. Corey Brewer, the Nuggets’ defense-oriented wing, scrambled to cover the open Landry. In doing so, he left Stephen Curry wide open.
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Then suddenly, inconspicuously, the game clock froze. It was stuck on 6 minutes, 27 seconds. As if Brewer’s decision created a warp in the basketball universe. As if time itself wanted to pause and witness what was about to happen.
Landry whipped a pass to Curry, who caught it and gave a pump fake to charging Denver forward Wilson Chandler. With the defender in the air, Curry stepped to his left, like he was avoiding a puddle, to reposition himself in open space of the left corner. Then he jacked up a 3 right in front of the Nuggets’ bench.
“It was the magnitude of the moment,” Curry said. “First playoff series. Unreal atmosphere. We were making a third-quarter run. I don’t know what it was about that moment. Just, I was feeling it. I could feel everybody behind me. I don’t know. It was like the perfect storm. Feeling their presence, the rhythm of the shot. Everything felt perfect. And I did it.”
That he did. With his shot still ascending toward its apex, Curry debuted his signature flex. He turned 180 degrees. When the ball splashed through the net, Curry was facing the suddenly silenced Nuggets bench, his back to the very basket at which he aimed.
Even now, nearly nine years later, he doesn’t know why he did it. Something just moved him. He can’t even remember what was said, just that he heard the voice of JaVale McGee and felt the shadow of the Nuggets’ animosity breathing down his neck. He can’t articulate why this was his retort.
Perhaps that something was the psycho inside, the alter ego that helped produce a storybook career.
The idea of a legend has lost some of its luster in modernity. Not because greatness is less prominent but because little is left to the imagination. Everything is recorded, preserved for consumption, observable. But legends, real legends, are born of scarce witnesses. They survive through storytelling. They grow as time spreads its wingspan between the moment and the oration.
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But feelings are difficult to behold through modern mediums. The emotion of experience doesn’t always translate through highlights, leaving lore with a job to do.
Stephen Curry is No. 15 on The Athletic’s ranking of 75 greatest players ever because his accomplishments are wholly impressive. Three-time NBA champion. Two-time MVP, one of 12 players to win back-to-back MVPs (2015, ’16), including first unanimous selection in ’16, when he led the league in points (30.1), steals (2.1) and free-throw percentage (.908). Only Rick Barry has led the league in all three categories and never in the same season.
The preeminent and premier 3-point shooter, who sets a new record every time he makes one. As of this writing, he has 3,050 made 3s, already 77 ahead of Ray Allen, the previous record holder, and 506 made 3s ahead of the next active player on the all-time list: James Harden. At .907, Curry is the career leader in free-throw percentage, as well. It should be no surprise that he’s among the top 10 in career true shooting percentage at 62.3 percent, sixth-best in league history. He’s also the only one under 6 foot 5.
He’s the catalyst for the resurrection of an NBA franchise to greatness. According to StatMuse, Curry is seventh all-time in plus-minus: plus-5,361 in 808, the fewest amount of games in the top 15. He averages plus-6.6. Duncan, the all-time leader, averaged 6.4; LeBron averages 5.3. Simply, when Curry is on the court, the Warriors are winning. Five consecutive NBA Finals and three titles prove it.
But he holds an even more rare space because he is truly legendary, in the traditional sense. His game has an element best captured by the awe of the storyteller.
“I love Steph so much,” Allen Iverson once said on Complex Sports’ Load Management podcast. “That’s why I made him my point guard. I think he changed the game sort of like I did. Greatest shooter that will ever play the game — that’s what I think. The greatest basketball player I’ve seen with a jumper and handles like that. I’m just a big Steph Curry fan.”
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Wilt Chamberlain left people speechless as a mobile giant. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar astonished with a trick shot that never missed. Michael Jordan, and Dr. J before him, took everyone’s breath away by walking on air, and Magic Johnson mesmerized with passes suggesting he had another set of eyes somewhere on his head. Their special greatness, the hold they had on viewers, extends beyond the data explaining their worth.
Curry is of their ilk. A mere mortal in stature who slays giants from a distance. And the trademark of his greatness, the autograph authenticating his legend, is his look-away 3. Nothing trumpets his unique brilliance like being so sure a long-distance shot is going in that he doesn’t even see it go in. He stamps his mastery of basketball’s most pivotal act by declaring the absence of doubt when he shoots.
“He’s incredibly arrogant on the floor and humble off the court,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “I think that’s a really powerful combination.”
This is the psycho’s work. Not the meek fella who shocks people with his down-to-earthiness. Not the joyous kid who bubbles to the surface when he plays. Not the appreciative second-generation player anchored by his respect for the privilege and the fraternity.
When Curry jacks a 3-pointer and turns his back on the result, it’s a wink from the maniac who lives inside his humble spirit.
“I know my favorite ones,” Curry said. “I did it on Khris Middleton at home.”
“I did it against Phoenix at home.”
“Against Minnesota in China. Preseason.”
Then there was that time in the 2016 Western Conference finals. He didn’t just look away, but he turned his attention to then-Oklahoma City big man Serge Ibaka.
“Oh, in the playoffs,” Curry said. “That was a nice one.”
Make no mistake about it. Curry has reached such elevation, forced his way among the greats of all time because he’s a merciless and relentless competitor. More than that, he is a savage who takes pleasure in destruction.
Such a personality was crafted out of necessity. Being smaller and overlooked all of his basketball life created the drive that got him here. Because of his slightness, because of the low expectations, his validation had to be that much more emphatic. Something Curry learned very early on was to vanquish doubt. He couldn’t just put up a good case for himself. He had to make questioning him a ridiculous notion.
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He didn’t want to be a good 3-point shooter, he wanted to be the greatest. He didn’t want to be just a shooter, he wanted to be a monster. He didn’t want to win, he wanted to collect rings. And he doesn’t want to just make plays, he wants to dance on graves.
The greatest ones have such a streak in them. That deep conviction that fuels their work ethic, that makes them want the biggest stage. Take it from one of the all-time psychos in Kobe Bryant.
“I see a calmness about him,” Bryant once said about Curry. “I see a calmness about him. And I think it’s something that a lot of players don’t understand. So I think it’s very hard for the fans to understand what I’m saying. Because most players don’t get it. But there’s a serious calmness about him, which is extremely deadly. Because he’s not up. He’s not down. He’s not contemplating what just happened before or worrying about what’s to come next. He’s just there.
“And when a player has the skills, when he’s trained himself to have the skills to be able to shoot, dribble left, right, etc., and then you mix that with his calmness and poise, and you have a serious, serious problem on your hands.”
Initially, it was hard to spot beyond the infectious smile, the positive vibes and the familial persona that have come to be his brand. But his teammates, his opponents know it’s there. His ardent followers love it about him.
It takes some maniac tendencies to shoot from 30 feet with such supreme confidence. It takes the supremest of confidence to lead a revolution against an entire construct, against tradition, against preconceived notions about a 6-foot-3 point guard with a baby face and his father’s craft.
To become a legend, a real legend requires first being audacious.
In 20 years, Curry will be talked about with excitement reserved for the most legendary. Like the elders of today talk about Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell, and how their children revere Larry Bird and Charles Barkley. The technologically literate future will have all the advanced metrics at their disposal to see.
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But they won’t convey the insanity of how Curry in his prime shot it from so far and so accurately. How he was so terrifying that the geometry of the game changed, a generation started to follow him like disciples, and defenses devoted all their resources toward stopping him.
They will tell of the psycho who just stepped back further, shot it more often, made even more 3s. And, as the legend will go, he didn’t even have to look.
Career stats#: G: 808, Pts.: 24.3, Reb.: 4.6, Ast.: 6.5, FG%: 47.3, FT%: 90.7, Win Shares: 118.3, PER: 23.9
#Through Jan. 30, 2022
The Athletic NBA 75 Panel points: 879 | Hollinger GOAT Points*: 226.8
Achievements: NBA MVP (’15, ’16), Seven-time All-NBA, Seven-time All-Star, NBA champ (’15, ’17, ’18), Scoring champ (’16, ’21), Steals champ (’16), Free throw champ (’11, ’15, ’16, ’18), NBA 75th Anniversary team (’21)
*Through Jan. 30, 2022
Related reading
Thompson: The art and the science: How Stephen Curry became the NBA’s 3-point king
(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photo: Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images)
