MIAMI — Michael or LeBron? LeBron or Michael ... or Steph?
Not yet. But the audacious idea of it — Steph Curry climbing to join the Michael Jordan-LeBron James debate for greatest NBA player ever — seems a lot closer to plausible than it did only a few days ago.
I know, it still feels shades of premature to blasphemous, right? Jordan defied gravity. James is a freight train. Curry is just a 6-2 blade who finds openings beyond the arc and makes the net dance. Physically he just doesn’t seem to belong.
But in every other way, he’s climbing, inching toward his sport’s pantheon.
He has found a lane, no, created a lane, to get him there.
Curry just carried Golden State to its fourth championship in eight years, minted Thursday night in Boston. Now Vegas, never slow to begin accepting bets, already has set the Warriors as the favorite to win it all again next year. How many more titles before Curry elevates to the best-ever convo? He’s only 34. Plenty left.
He already has revolutionized the sport as its greatest 3-point shooter ever, changing the way basketball looks and its strategy so profoundly that teams that do not master the long-ball are left to look like horse-drawn carriages in the Indy 500.
This NBA Finals was a watershed accomplishment for Curry, the kind of legacy-affirming jewel that invites greatest-ever talk perhaps not to commence, but into the realm of possibility. It’s why Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, “To me, this is his crowning achievement in what’s already been an incredible career.”
Why? Finals MVP.
He didn’t need it to affirm his stature, but the perception was that he did. It was the hole in his resume, after Andre Iguodala was Finals MVP for the Warriors in 2015 and Kevin Durant was in 2017 and ‘18.
For Curry, the weight of what wasn’t there lifted Thursday night.
“This one hits different for sure,” Curry admitted. “It’s special.”
It is why he dissolved into tears, sitting on the court, moments after Game 6 ended.
It is why later, in the raucous champions’ locker room, he shouted to nobody in particular and to everybody, “What they gonna say now!?
Before this season, ESPN hoops analysts Kendrick Perkins and Domonique Foxworth predicted that Curry, with Kevin Durant gone, would not win another championship.
Curry took note, and called out both “talking heads” after Thursday night‘s triumph.
This was the first of the four Golden State titles that was all his. The team was on his back to the end, when Thursday night he scored 34 points with six 3s and had seven rebounds, seven assists and two steals.
He did that against the Celtics defense that ended Miami’s season and was the best in years.
He did as Boston’s best player, Jayson Tatum, disappeared yet again.
Curry also was special defensively in this Finals, so tough to appreciate when all those 3s are falling. He held Celtics he was covering to a 31% contested field-goal percentage, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
Durant was long gone this time. Splash Brother Klay Thompson was heroically back after two years’ injured but not who he used to be. Draymond Green was a soap opera in sneakers, out there for his defense. Iguodala is a bit player now.
It was Curry, carrying.
“Without him, none of this happens,” Kerr said. “He makes everyone in the locker room want to fight for him. I’m happy for everybody, but I’m thrilled for Steph.”
Kerr also said this about Curry: “He puts the fear of God in defenses like nobody I’ve ever seen.” He said that in 2017, years before the career 3-point record was Curry’s.
If greatest-ever talk is still premature for Curry, all-time top 10 surely is in play. So is greatest point guard ever. Is he second now to only Magic Johnson?
We judge athletes, set legacies and measure history in part by the company they keep.
Consider: Curry is one of seven men to have won four championships and multiple regular season MVPs. The others are Michael, LeBron, Magic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tim Duncan and Bill Russell.
He is only the fifth man to win multiple NBA MVPs, a Finals MVP and a scoring title, joining Michael, LeBron, Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain.
Seth Curry of the Brooklyn Nets called his older brother after the latest title was won and told him, “There is nothing else you can possibly do in this game.”
He was wrong, of course.
Steph Curry has a good chunk of his prime still left to drain more 3s, win more championships and continue climbing to that hallowed place where, just maybe, the ‘Michael or LeBron’ debate might have company.
