NBA star buys fight with Nasa

Until this moment in his nearly decadelong career, two-time NBA MVP Steph Curry had remained gleefully free of controversy. A few seconds of a podcast, however, may have changed everything.

Curry was a guest on the Winging It podcast, hosted by Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore of the Atlanta Hawks. The Golden State Warriors guard was supposed to talk about basketball, but things veered off script.

At one point, the players were talking about the sounds dinosaurs make, when Curry abruptly changed the subject to his belief that humans have never landed on the Moon.

If he’s serious, Curry joins a group of elite NBA ball handlers who seem to believe the world has been spoon-fed science lies.

The other star in that group is Boston Celtics flat Earther Kyrie Irving, who believes the world we inhabit is shaped more like a basketball court than an actual basketball.

Curry’s conspiracy theory became the biggest faked-Moon-landing story since Buzz Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist in the face in 2002. In the Nasa legend’s defence, Bart Sibrel had called the second human to walk on the Moon ‘‘a coward and a liar’’. Prosecutors dropped assault charges against Aldrin. And, of course, word reached Nasa.

"We’d love for Mr Curry to tour the lunar lab at our Johnson Space Centre in Houston, perhaps the next time the Warriors are in town to play the Rockets,’’ Nasa spokesman Allard Beutel said. ‘‘We have hundreds of pounds of Moon rocks stored there, and the Apollo mission control.

‘‘During his visit, he can see firsthand what we did 50 years ago, as well as what we’re doing now to go back to the Moon in the coming years, but this time to stay.’’

– Washington Post