Anybody from Cali got access to this article?
Post it in spoilers please
Thompson: Stephen Curry still doesn't have a Finals MVP, but...
CLEVELAND — He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
That empty space on Stephen Curry’s résumé means there is still frontier for the darts from his critics. There is still a slight to hang over his head, something tangible to be used as proof for the ceiling on his greatness. And Kevin Durant doesn’t like that.
Durant won his second NBA Finals MVP, bolstered by one of the most complete performances of his life in Game 3 and a triple-double in the Game 4 clincher — a 108-85 win that completed the sweep of Cleveland. His second Finals MVP serves as proof that being on a better team has only amplified his talents. For Durant, playing for the Warriors has been a magnifying glass providing a clearer view of his greatness. But when that same glass hovers over Curry, it tends to become an unprescribed bifocal making him harder to see.
Perhaps part of Durant doesn’t feel right basking in a glow that seems to blind so many to the value of his brother in superstardom. But, for the second straight year, he felt the need to speak up for Curry.
“Cause I’m tired of that shyt, man,” Durant said. “The trophies and stuff is cool but it don’t matter, man. When you play basketball, you know who is important on the floor. Everybody knows that. Just because (some people are) lazy enough to not watch the games, you want to just use accolades and stats to tell you stories, that’s not fair. We all know what it is when it comes to Stephen Curry. He’s so unique and different. It feels like that is still so new to people, just how unique he is. Man, I’m just grateful to play with somebody like that.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
Curry now has three championships. Those three rings go with his two MVPs, including the historic unanimous one. He has a $200 million contract and hundreds of millions more coming to him off the court. He has 3-point records galore and the unofficial title of greatest shooter ever. But no Finals MVP.
Curry’s entire basketball life has been a war against deficits. His greatest foe has been and still is, probably always will be, what he doesn’t have. Size. Athleticism. Street cred. True point guard skills. The negative space between his accolades dominates the picture and perception of Curry, at least outside of the Bay Area and especially among experts and pundits.
But Curry doesn’t seem to care. His staunchest supporters do. They wanted the Finals MVP if for nothing else than to disarm the critics in the court of basketball opinion, get the indictment against Curry thrown out for lack of evidence.
Curry cares, too. He won’t say it. But he does. Not nearly as much as he cares about the cigar he had tucked under his gray and gold New Era championship snapback. But there is a part of him that would love to shimmy on his critics with the Bill Russell trophy.
As always, though, Curry buries the lesser desires in the haystack of greater values, much in the same way he stashes unsightly turnovers beneath a pile of 3-pointers and crossovers. His specialty is prioritizing the sentiments that are sustainable, the things found in greeting cards and on posters in high school counselors’ offices.
“To know how much I mean to the team and how much the team means to me,” Curry said, explaining what does matter to him in basketball as he stops at restroom in the bowels of Quicken Loans Arena. Beers and champagne have him needing a release, even in a public arena stall. But he finishes his thought first.
“I know I can look in the mirror and be proud of the way I played and the things I have been able to accomplish with the group around me. Nobody can tell me anything about just how proud I am of where we are as a team right now. A lot of noise around us, but I’m very comfortable in my own skin and how I helped this team get to where we are. It gets harder because with the more you accomplish the more people want to throw those arrows at you. But at the end of the day, I’m not here unless I have thick skin and an appreciation for the talents I have and really keeping the perspective about who I’m playing for. That’s what drives me. So, I’m good.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
It’s what he does have that makes such irrelevant for Curry. In the throes of championship celebration — between Moët showers and tokes on Cubans — his teammates and coaches vigorously touted accolades that would push a Finals MVP way down Curry’s list of accomplishments.
“His ability to shoot the ball. His playmaking. His leadership,” Klay Thompson said. “Those three things are unparalleled.”
Andre Iguodala said Curry’s game speaks for itself. He played with Allen Iverson and still says there is no one else like Curry in the history of basketball. Ever.
David West went deeper on Curry’s indelible impact on basketball.
“Dude’s one of the greatest on the planet,” West said, orating as if it were an intense halftime speech. “Y’all ain’t giving him enough credit. He doing more for the game than Wilt Chamberlain did, but y’all steadily riding that man. This man changed the whole way the game is played. The whole way the game is played. He’s done with the 3-point shot what Wilt did with the dunk. C’mon, man. Give the man his love. The man is a game-changer. He’s revolutionized the game. Nothing you can do to take that shyt away. But he’s humble man. Steph is not a selfish guy. He’s not a selfish individual. He’s got a lot of things with him, and behind him, pressure. None of that bothers him. And, again, he’s a game changer.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
What he does have is a legion of supporters raving about how he carries himself. The closest are awed by him.
Nick Young said he heard all about how great a guy Curry was. Matt Barnes raved about Curry to him, among others. Young came to the Warriors practically looking for flaws and blemishes like Curry was a used a car.
“I was like, ‘Can’t nobody be that perfect,'” Young said. “But it’s really like that. When I came here, he welcomed me in. He called me up. He asked me about golf. But I can’t play. I didn’t want to lie to him because I heard they take that stuff serious.”
Assistant coach Mike Brown got the same golf invitation when he came aboard. He was shocked Curry invited him out since he was just an assistant.
Brown got to know a Curry that left him adamantly expressing Curry’s unselfishness even with the stench of alcohol misting off of his soaked gray suit.
“I’m telling you,” he protested, his eyes widened, his right hand slapping his left for emphasis, “it’s real.”
He recalled Game 3 of the Western Conference finals in San Antonio last year. Curry committed a couple of his head-scratching turnovers, so Brown, filling in for ill Steve Kerr, called a time out and laid into Curry. And Curry just nodded his head in agreement. Brown tells the story with amazement as if it just happened, still stunned Curry didn’t fire back at the interim cursing him out.
He said there was only one other person who showed the humility he sees in Curry: David Robinson. They called him the Human Bobblehead because when Gregg Popovich would light into him, Robinson would just bob his head in agreement, taking the tongue-lashing like a rookie with no clout.
“People won’t be able to get it because they’re not in our locker room,” Brown said. “They’re not with us when we go through tough times. They can’t experience his steadiness. People have a sense of it but they don’t fully understand it.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
What he does have is Draymond Green, forever in his corner.
“Our relationship means more to me than anything. That’s my brother,” Green said. “I’ll ride with him through whatever. I’d die for him. I know far beyond all these championships, far beyond my days with the Warriors, his days with the Warriors, my days in the NBA and his, that’s going to be my brother for life. That means more to me than anything.”
“People always ask,” Iguodala said, pausing to gather his thoughts as he walked to the locker room, “what do you enjoy most about this? It’s got nothing to do with the rings. You get a true human being like that who really represents something that’s larger than the worldly things we see every day, you appreciate those type of things. He’ll never be appreciated for that but I see it every day. Time with him, I really cherish that. Just being around him. Like golf. I’m always like ‘I can’t wait to golf with Steph.’ He’s just a humble dude.”
After Durant received his Finals MVP award on stage, he turned around to hug Curry, as he has done several times in these Finals. And he said something just to Curry. It was the kind of man-to-man message that warms the soul enough to melt away the arrows. It was the kind of moment they envisioned two years ago when they agreed to team up on a foundation stronger than personal accolades.
What Durant told Curry underscored why he’s fine without hardware, even if its absence is used as a knock against him. What Durant said to Curry meant more than anything Adam Silver could have handed him.
What did Durant say?
I couldn’t do this without you. We couldn’t do this without you. Your leadership, your voice, your presence on this team allowed us to do all of this.
“MVPs, obviously we all want stuff like that,” Durant said, elaborating on his message to Curry. “We would love stuff like that. To average 27, 8 and 6 — and last year averaged 28-8-9. You don’t have to prove shyt else. You don’t have to win an MVP when you do shyt like that. We’re not winning the basketball game without Steph. We’re not winning the championship. We’re not even close. Awards, that stuff, we know. We know what Steph brings to us. The Bay Area knows. The coaches know. Everybody in the game really knows. The gold ball, the MVP and stuff, it’s cool but it don’t really matter. We know what it is.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP. And no one in the locker room seems to care.
That empty space on Stephen Curry’s résumé means there is still frontier for the darts from his critics. There is still a slight to hang over his head, something tangible to be used as proof for the ceiling on his greatness. And Kevin Durant doesn’t like that.
Durant won his second NBA Finals MVP, bolstered by one of the most complete performances of his life in Game 3 and a triple-double in the Game 4 clincher — a 108-85 win that completed the sweep of Cleveland. His second Finals MVP serves as proof that being on a better team has only amplified his talents. For Durant, playing for the Warriors has been a magnifying glass providing a clearer view of his greatness. But when that same glass hovers over Curry, it tends to become an unprescribed bifocal making him harder to see.
Perhaps part of Durant doesn’t feel right basking in a glow that seems to blind so many to the value of his brother in superstardom. But, for the second straight year, he felt the need to speak up for Curry.
“Cause I’m tired of that shyt, man,” Durant said. “The trophies and stuff is cool but it don’t matter, man. When you play basketball, you know who is important on the floor. Everybody knows that. Just because (some people are) lazy enough to not watch the games, you want to just use accolades and stats to tell you stories, that’s not fair. We all know what it is when it comes to Stephen Curry. He’s so unique and different. It feels like that is still so new to people, just how unique he is. Man, I’m just grateful to play with somebody like that.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
Curry now has three championships. Those three rings go with his two MVPs, including the historic unanimous one. He has a $200 million contract and hundreds of millions more coming to him off the court. He has 3-point records galore and the unofficial title of greatest shooter ever. But no Finals MVP.
Curry’s entire basketball life has been a war against deficits. His greatest foe has been and still is, probably always will be, what he doesn’t have. Size. Athleticism. Street cred. True point guard skills. The negative space between his accolades dominates the picture and perception of Curry, at least outside of the Bay Area and especially among experts and pundits.
But Curry doesn’t seem to care. His staunchest supporters do. They wanted the Finals MVP if for nothing else than to disarm the critics in the court of basketball opinion, get the indictment against Curry thrown out for lack of evidence.
Curry cares, too. He won’t say it. But he does. Not nearly as much as he cares about the cigar he had tucked under his gray and gold New Era championship snapback. But there is a part of him that would love to shimmy on his critics with the Bill Russell trophy.
As always, though, Curry buries the lesser desires in the haystack of greater values, much in the same way he stashes unsightly turnovers beneath a pile of 3-pointers and crossovers. His specialty is prioritizing the sentiments that are sustainable, the things found in greeting cards and on posters in high school counselors’ offices.
“To know how much I mean to the team and how much the team means to me,” Curry said, explaining what does matter to him in basketball as he stops at restroom in the bowels of Quicken Loans Arena. Beers and champagne have him needing a release, even in a public arena stall. But he finishes his thought first.
“I know I can look in the mirror and be proud of the way I played and the things I have been able to accomplish with the group around me. Nobody can tell me anything about just how proud I am of where we are as a team right now. A lot of noise around us, but I’m very comfortable in my own skin and how I helped this team get to where we are. It gets harder because with the more you accomplish the more people want to throw those arrows at you. But at the end of the day, I’m not here unless I have thick skin and an appreciation for the talents I have and really keeping the perspective about who I’m playing for. That’s what drives me. So, I’m good.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
It’s what he does have that makes such irrelevant for Curry. In the throes of championship celebration — between Moët showers and tokes on Cubans — his teammates and coaches vigorously touted accolades that would push a Finals MVP way down Curry’s list of accomplishments.
“His ability to shoot the ball. His playmaking. His leadership,” Klay Thompson said. “Those three things are unparalleled.”
Andre Iguodala said Curry’s game speaks for itself. He played with Allen Iverson and still says there is no one else like Curry in the history of basketball. Ever.
David West went deeper on Curry’s indelible impact on basketball.
“Dude’s one of the greatest on the planet,” West said, orating as if it were an intense halftime speech. “Y’all ain’t giving him enough credit. He doing more for the game than Wilt Chamberlain did, but y’all steadily riding that man. This man changed the whole way the game is played. The whole way the game is played. He’s done with the 3-point shot what Wilt did with the dunk. C’mon, man. Give the man his love. The man is a game-changer. He’s revolutionized the game. Nothing you can do to take that shyt away. But he’s humble man. Steph is not a selfish guy. He’s not a selfish individual. He’s got a lot of things with him, and behind him, pressure. None of that bothers him. And, again, he’s a game changer.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
What he does have is a legion of supporters raving about how he carries himself. The closest are awed by him.
Nick Young said he heard all about how great a guy Curry was. Matt Barnes raved about Curry to him, among others. Young came to the Warriors practically looking for flaws and blemishes like Curry was a used a car.
“I was like, ‘Can’t nobody be that perfect,'” Young said. “But it’s really like that. When I came here, he welcomed me in. He called me up. He asked me about golf. But I can’t play. I didn’t want to lie to him because I heard they take that stuff serious.”
Assistant coach Mike Brown got the same golf invitation when he came aboard. He was shocked Curry invited him out since he was just an assistant.
Brown got to know a Curry that left him adamantly expressing Curry’s unselfishness even with the stench of alcohol misting off of his soaked gray suit.
“I’m telling you,” he protested, his eyes widened, his right hand slapping his left for emphasis, “it’s real.”
He recalled Game 3 of the Western Conference finals in San Antonio last year. Curry committed a couple of his head-scratching turnovers, so Brown, filling in for ill Steve Kerr, called a time out and laid into Curry. And Curry just nodded his head in agreement. Brown tells the story with amazement as if it just happened, still stunned Curry didn’t fire back at the interim cursing him out.
He said there was only one other person who showed the humility he sees in Curry: David Robinson. They called him the Human Bobblehead because when Gregg Popovich would light into him, Robinson would just bob his head in agreement, taking the tongue-lashing like a rookie with no clout.
“People won’t be able to get it because they’re not in our locker room,” Brown said. “They’re not with us when we go through tough times. They can’t experience his steadiness. People have a sense of it but they don’t fully understand it.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP.
What he does have is Draymond Green, forever in his corner.
“Our relationship means more to me than anything. That’s my brother,” Green said. “I’ll ride with him through whatever. I’d die for him. I know far beyond all these championships, far beyond my days with the Warriors, his days with the Warriors, my days in the NBA and his, that’s going to be my brother for life. That means more to me than anything.”
“People always ask,” Iguodala said, pausing to gather his thoughts as he walked to the locker room, “what do you enjoy most about this? It’s got nothing to do with the rings. You get a true human being like that who really represents something that’s larger than the worldly things we see every day, you appreciate those type of things. He’ll never be appreciated for that but I see it every day. Time with him, I really cherish that. Just being around him. Like golf. I’m always like ‘I can’t wait to golf with Steph.’ He’s just a humble dude.”
After Durant received his Finals MVP award on stage, he turned around to hug Curry, as he has done several times in these Finals. And he said something just to Curry. It was the kind of man-to-man message that warms the soul enough to melt away the arrows. It was the kind of moment they envisioned two years ago when they agreed to team up on a foundation stronger than personal accolades.
What Durant told Curry underscored why he’s fine without hardware, even if its absence is used as a knock against him. What Durant said to Curry meant more than anything Adam Silver could have handed him.
What did Durant say?
I couldn’t do this without you. We couldn’t do this without you. Your leadership, your voice, your presence on this team allowed us to do all of this.
“MVPs, obviously we all want stuff like that,” Durant said, elaborating on his message to Curry. “We would love stuff like that. To average 27, 8 and 6 — and last year averaged 28-8-9. You don’t have to prove shyt else. You don’t have to win an MVP when you do shyt like that. We’re not winning the basketball game without Steph. We’re not winning the championship. We’re not even close. Awards, that stuff, we know. We know what Steph brings to us. The Bay Area knows. The coaches know. Everybody in the game really knows. The gold ball, the MVP and stuff, it’s cool but it don’t really matter. We know what it is.”
He still doesn’t have a Finals MVP. And no one in the locker room seems to care.
a steady hand that guides the ship. The Consummate leader 
