Saturday night, with 10 minutes and 44 seconds remaining in the third quarter against Oklahoma City, reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry dribbled past his defender and drove hard to the left side of the hoop.
Leaping to curl around Thunder forward Kevin Durant, Curry successfully dished the ball to teammate Harrison Barnes under the basket. But as his left foot hit the hardwood floor, 200 pounds of opponent landed directly on Curry’s planted foot.
Curry fell to the floor. He struggled to rise to his feet, and limped his way off the court and into the locker room.
Living up to his “glass ankle” reputation, Curry appeared to have been faced with his kryptonite once again. With almost half of the game remaining and their scoring machine sitting in the trainer’s room receiving treatment on his ankle, the Warriors feared that Curry may not step on the court in the foreseeable future.
But if you’ve been following sports at all this week, you already know how this story ends. Fast forward to 0.6 seconds remaining in the game, and Curry was dancing right by the spot on the floor where he started his ankle-twisting drive. Curry had just put the Warriors up by three, draining an improbable near half-court heave while the game clock dwindled.
Curry came full circle in the second half of Saturday’s contest—from writhing in pain in the third quarter, to shuffling across the court with 46 points to his name.
One has to wonder what makes Steph Curry so invincible.
The 2K Sports franchise, best known for their state-of-the-art NBA videogames, has admitted their struggle to develop an accurate virtual representation of Curry. His attributes are so impressive and so out of the ordinary that he has effectively surpassed the limits of the technology’s ability to portray him.
Curry is best known for his lethal long-range shot, but he leads the league in shooting percentage from inside the paint at close range.
Perhaps even more impressively, in last Saturday’s win against the Thunder, the Warriors were out-rebounded by 35.
You read that right: The Thunder had 35 MORE REBOUNDS than the Warriors.
But somehow, miraculously, the Warriors managed to pull off a win behind Curry’s heroics.
No team in NBA history has ever lost a rebounding battle as badly as the Warriors did on Saturday and managed to come out victorious.
Curry has three games with 50 or more points this season while only playing 36-minutes or fewer in total… That’s equivalent to just three quarters of an NBA game.
He’s the only player in NBA history to make 10 three-pointers in back-to-back games.
He has the NBA single-season record for three-pointers—and it’s only March.
These kinds of things don’t happen in pro basketball.
Well, I should rephrase that, because now they do.
And not to mention Curry’s excellence off the court: His marketability is through the roof. His jersey remains the NBA best-seller in 47 states—nationwide popularity that Donald Trump could only dream of.
The series of firsts that surround the Warriors and their MVP sharp-shooter will more than likely continue to unfold. The Chicago Bulls’ 72-10 finish in 1996 remains the best regular season ever recorded. Today, the Warriors stand at 54-5, well within striking distance of the record.
That record-setting Chicago team was led by a man by the name of Michael Jordan.
It may be too early in Curry’s career to draw any comparisons between him and Jordan, because for years we have failed to see a serious contender for the title as the best to ever play the game.
But Curry is no stranger to firsts, and at this rate of incline in his career, it would be crazy to count such a title out.