Here comes LeBron James, the biggest, baddest basketball hero on the planet, carrying the misfit Cavaliers, his sidekick coach and the dreams of Cleveland on his brawny shoulders. We love happy endings. So it’s difficult to deliver this bad news, King James: The story of the NBA Finals is not about you.
This is a tale written in pixie dust and traces the ascension of slender Golden State guard Steph Curry, who has taken our preconceived notion of how a most valuable player is supposed to look and shot it full of holes. The next NBA champs were born on a magical spring night more than two years ago. I know it’s true, because I was there, sitting slack-jawed alongside the Nuggets in Oracle Arena, on April 28, 2013.
That was the night when Curry grew into a bona fide superstar, during a head-spinning six minutes, 22 seconds of the third quarter, when he scored an almost unfathomable 22 points on a gimpy ankle, and not only blew Denver out of the series, but destroyed the psyche of a team coached by George Karl. If Nuggets president Josh Kroenke dares to close his eyes, he can still see Curry blowing by 37-year-old point guard Andre Miller to delicately flip a finger roll for an exquisite basket punctuated by the and-one reward of a foul from a stupefied Denver defender caught flat-footed in the lane.
While Curry is now firmly established as both the most influential artist of the jump shot’s renaissance and the unquestioned leader of the league’s 3-point revolution, barely more than two years ago he was widely considered too frail to be the centerpiece of a legitimate contender. In fact, as recently as April 28, 2013, Hall of Fame guard Magic Johnson felt compelled to give the Warriors point guard two thumbs up, daring anybody in the Twitterverse to a fight with this declaration: “I don’t want anybody in the NBA to say Steph Curry is not an All-Star!”
It was April 28, 2013, when the Nuggets succumbed to the greatness of Curry, losing 115-101 in Game 4, which sent the third-seeded team in the West reeling toward elimination from the playoffs and pried open the eyes of Curry’s doubters that a player selected seventh overall in the 2009 NBA draft had indeed grown up to be one of the most dominant players in the league.
“Well,” said then-Warriors coach Mark Jackson in a huff, “those guys are just coming late to the hospital. That baby has been born already. We’ve been watching it all year long. (Curry) has put this team on his back.”
In the beautiful dump that is the NBA’s oldest arena, where a visiting team can feel the body heat of nearly 20,000 Warriors fans who have been aching for a championship since 1975, it was Denver that awoke on April 28, 2013, as the league’s darling of the team-before-superstar basketball championed by Karl. The Nuggets had won a franchise-record 57 regular-season games.
But, in its quest to find a new way to win a championship, Denver had neglected to ride the wave of pro basketball’s most innovative trend. The Nuggets hit 521 shots from beyond the 3-point arc during the regular season, which ranked them 20th in a 30-team league.
So it was no coincidence on that fateful night of April 28, 2013, that all the players on Denver’s roster struggled to produce six baskets worth three points, on 20 attempts. Curry hit five times from 3-point range during that 6:22 stretch of the third quarter all by himself, and it did not matter whether it was Wilson Chandler or Miller with a hand in his face. That Karl attempted to check Curry with old, slow Miller was a strategy so strange and ill-advised that it could have been reason enough for the coach of the year to be fired after Denver lost the series 4-2.
The little monsters of small ball the Warriors have become? Maybe the evolution was also the result of an accident as much as some grand design. While James is fully capable of playing anything from center to point guard (and do not be surprised when he covers Curry during the NBA Finals), it’s Golden State that reigns as the king of positionless basketball, where skill matters more than size.
In Game 1 of the playoff series between the Nuggets and Golden State, 6-foot-9 forward David Lee, who had averaged 18.5 points during the regular season, tore his hip flexor. The Warriors compensated for the loss by going smaller and more athletic, which gave Harrison Barnes more freedom and allowed a little-used rookie named Draymond Green to blossom. “As it turned out, Lee getting hurt was the best thing that happened to Golden State in that series,” Kroenke said.
Maybe James can beat Golden State by himself. But that’s not the way to bet. In many respects, James represents the culmination of the Michael Jordan era, when basketball players believed they could fly, and the game was ruled by the dunk.
The Warriors have their best shot at a championship in four decades for a reason as simply beautiful as a swished jumper. With economy of language, Karl foretold the revolution on a spring night two years ago, when Curry and the Warriors blew away Denver. “They’re probably twice as good as shooters as we are,” Karl said.
When Curry hugs the golden ball on the Larry O’Brien Trophy, you will know this day has been coming since April 28, 2013.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
