Curry set the tone for All-Star Game
It shouldn’t have been a surprise.
After all, Stephen Curry has turned regular-season NBA basketball games — events that the league seems hellbent on making more and more meaningless year after year — must-see television.
Of course he took the All-Star Game — an inherently frivolous event (and this season, a truly ridiculous one) and made it an enjoyable celebration of basketball greatness.
While Curry didn’t win the game’s MVP award, there was no question that he was the alpha of alphas on the court. He set the tone for the game, and the tone was joy.
It was another reminder of his indelible legacy on the sport.
There were players who didn’t want to be in Atlanta on Sunday. It’s hard to blame them. There were players who plotted ways to do the least amount of work possible — I’m looking at you, LeBron James — and again, that makes sense.
But Curry, instead of plotting ways to get it over with, decided that if he was going to be there, he might as well make it fun.
And Curry’s brand of fun is infectious. It’s a shame Curry has to work so hard when he’s playing with the Warriors that we don’t see that kind of fun.
Maybe I’m overstating it — maybe the All-Star Game would have been a good time no matter what —but I can’t help but think that Curry’s presence took the contest to a new level.
The All-Star Game has always been a bunch of guys trying cool in-game dunks — or in the case of Rudy Gobert, the most uncool dunks imaginable — but these days, it’s also bombs away from beyond the arc.
Yes, in a game with no defense, everyone was chucking. The 3-pointer is in their DNA, now, for better or for worse. Sixty percent of the shots in Sunday’s game were from beyond the arc.
You can blame Curry for that.
The further away we get from the genesis, the more we forget that before Curry, there weren’t players putting up 10 3-point attempts per game.
No offense to George McCloud and Ray Allen — the prodigious 3-point shooters of yesteryear — but they weren’t shooting off the dribble or and making 45 percent, either.
It was Curry who turned the 3-point shot from a novelty into a primary goal, who taught the league the overlooked truth that three is greater than two.