SAN ANTONIO — A nation of young Stephen Currys is in the making.
A trough of 3-point shooting, crossover dribbling, one-hand passing, stop-on-a-dime-and-knock-down-the-pull-up players.
Both big and small.
And the NBA will do nothing but benefit from it.
Former Warriors coach Mark Jackson is getting blowback from having the guts during the Christmas broadcast of Warriors vs. Cavaliers to say Curry is “hurting” the game. This was his explanation: “And what I mean by that is that I go into these high school gyms, I watch these kids, and the first thing they do is they run to the 3-point line. You are not Steph Curry. Work on the other aspects of the game.”
Understood.
Jackson is right and wrong at the same time.
There is, in fact, more to basketball than the 3-point shot that earns Curry nightly raves and highlights. But it isn’t a bad thing that shooting is en vogue. It’s a great thing. No other league, no other sport rips itself as much as basketball does, which is a shame. When Michael Jordan dominated sports shows, the issue then was all kids were working on were their hops and attacking the rim. Who was working on shooting?
Now, a new generation has fallen in love with the 3-point shot. And so they are working on — you guessed it — shooting. That is an extraordinarily good thing. Next to dribbling, it’s the most fundamental skill in basketball.
Curry is putting well-rounded performances on film. Sure, there are long-range 3-point shots. But there also are pull-up, midrange shots. There are drives to the rim, where he finishes with both his right and left hand. His handles are so tight, the basketball looks attached to his hand. He gets off crisp passes with both his right and his left hand. He can finish with an array of shots in the lane.
About the only thing that will get young players in trouble when they emulate it, is Curry’s shot selection. Many times it’s not ideal, but he makes both bad and good shots, so it works for him. That, however, can be coached out of a less-skilled player’s game.
Young players’ ability to see more than just the 3-pointers is being taken for granted. Some have tunnel vision. The vast majority won’t. They see the tireless ball-handling drills. Everyone saw Curry play under control and set up teammates time and time again for open shots Friday in the 89-83 win over Cleveland.
NBA coaches and older players complain about the lack of skill in the league. AAU generation, they say. Too worried about the flashy highlight, they say.
Curry has made skilled basketball all the rage. Every kid who works on shot-making twice as much as he does plyometric jumping is a win for the NBA. Every kid who comes down the court able to quickly diagnose a defense and make the right decision with the basketball — because they saw Steph Curry do it — is a win for the NBA.
In about 10 years we will start to see the impact of it all. Curry will be every bit as game-transforming a player as Jordan was. Book that. We are celebrating Kobe Bryant this season, the closest player we have seen to being Jordan as there ever was. Bryant idolized and took pages from Jordan’s playbook. We will see a player do the same with Curry.
He will stand before media and explain how, when he was little, he ran around in a Curry jersey, how he worked endlessly on ball handling, how playing basketball at a pro level seemed more attainable to him because it no longer looked like a club open only to athletic monsters.
And, most of all, these young players will have seen how a professional should act — on and off the court. Curry is The Associated Press 2015 male athlete of the year. His jersey is the top seller in the NBA now. He was the driving force behind a 28-1 start for his team, the best start in NBA history.
This was Curry’s year, the year he rose to stardom, the year skills reassumed the driver’s seat in a game built on them.
Envious coaches poked at Curry and his team for being lucky to win last season’s NBA title.
The NBA should be so lucky as to see more end up just like him.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or @dempseypost
