TRANSFORMER’S DUTY
Stephen Curry’s latest challenge is leading Warriors in turning back surging Raptors
TORONTO — The Transformer, like a true comic book hero, takes on a never-ending stream of ultimate challenges, and he faces a doozy in Sunday night’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals. The Transformer must engage and lead his Warriors, who are down 1-0 to a team uplifted by a suddenly basketball-mad country and a sense of destiny. The Transformer is Stephen Curry. That’s not a nickname I’m trying to hang on him; it comes from the comments of Raptors coach Nick Nurse, when I asked him Saturday about Curry.
“I call him a transformational a lot of battles and a lot of challenges, player,” Nurse said. “He’s got kids and we have done well all over the world shooting from with them. So hopefully this is 40 feet away. I think even as more of the same.” you’ve seen the 3-point shot But this challenge might be become so rapidly used in the unique. A higher test. last three or four years, a lot of Curry’s partner in offensive that is because of Golden State crime the past two Finals, Durant, and Steph and Klay (Thompson) is in street clothes, and the and some of the other guys, KD Warriors can’t stall until he returns. (Kevin Durant), the other guys Andre Iguodala, so vital to they have. the fiber of this team in crisis
“Now you’re seeing quickly situations, is playing though a leg the league start to shoot 6 and 8 injury. feet behind the line pretty regularly. Small sample size, but some You didn’t see that maybe see these first two games in Toronto even a couple years ago. So I as potentially the beginning think (Curry) has transformed of the end of the dynasty, the way people view the 3-pointer, the fading out of the aging and the distance of the 3-pointer work-weary Warriors. as well.” The Warriors need Curry to
Transforming the game of raise his game to a Curryesque basketball into a moonball shooting level Sunday, and by doing so, to gallery? Mission accomplished. raise his team. He’ll need help, Transforming the leadlegged especially from Draymond Green and sloppy Warriors of and Thompson, but Curry must Game 1 back into the spunky, be on. speedy and deadly back-to-back He scored 34 points in Game 1, league champions, before it’s too but hoisted only four shots in the late? That’s Curry’s challenge fourth quarter, and only 18 in the now. game, six below his average in
Maybe his greatest challenge. this year’s playoffs. His plusminus Curry said Saturday that chasing of minus-9 was his worst another NBA title is “what wakes of these playoffs, and he had us up in the morning, puts a only four regular-season games smile on our face. We have had a with a worse rating in the stat lot of great experiences and had that measures how the team did
while the player was on the court.
The Raptors opened Game 1 with Kyle Lowry guarding Curry, and Curry enjoyed a quietly efficient 11-point quarter. Then Nurse sent out Fred VanVleet to dog Curry, and VanVleet picked up where he left off last December at Oracle, when the Raptors won by 20 and Curry scored 10, including just four in the 39 possessions when he was guarded by VanVleet.
In Game 1, when Curry was not guarded by VanVleet, he scored 30 points in 47 possessions. When VanVleet was his primary defender, 33 possessions, Curry was 1-for-6 and had four points.
The headline in Saturday’s Toronto Sun tabloid was, “Steph is stifled by VanVleet.”
In the comic book world, that would be a cue for save-the-day heroics by the Transformer. VanVleet, by the way, is a pretty good villain name. He even has evil accomplices, as the Raptors send a ton of blitzes and doubleteams at Curry.
Curry will have to contend not only with VanVleet, but also with a team that might have come into the Finals a bit starstruck by their opponents and awestruck by their ascension, but appear to feel a surge of confidence and a sense of destiny.
“We got a special thing going,” VanVleet said Saturday. “I think that it’s just kind of the aura and the magic in the air.
“You can feel it a little bit. We have a lot to do with that. Our fans have a lot to do with that. Things are just going the right way for us.”
As an example, VanVleet cited a shot he took in Game 1 that swirled around and around the rim, then dropped in.
“So,” VanVleet said, “as many shots as I missed in the last few weeks, that toilet-bowl shot I had is probably due to go in.”
Due. That’s what the Raptors are thinking they are.
The Warriors have defeated teams of destiny before in their five-season run of greatness. Can they do it again?
Sounds like a job for the Transformer.
Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist.