GOTTA BULL-IEVE!
Knicks aim to knock off Warriors, just like they shocked record-setting Bulls in ’96
Reigning MVP Stephen Curry (r.) and defending champion Golden State may be having season for the ages at 43-4, but that doesn’t mean Carmelo Anthony and resurgent Knicks can’t drum up a little Garden magic tonight like Patrick Ewing & Co. did 20 years ago.
PHILADELPHIA — The headliner of the NBA’s “rock star tour,” as one of its participants described it Friday night, is a short point guard with a privileged background who defies most of what
you k now about physics and probabilities.
The majority of MVPs and transcendent stars of the NBA’s past have been athletic freaks or giant men who can soar or bully their way into big nights. That’s not Stephen Curry. He’s a circus show who shoots like there’s a magnetic stream from the ball to the rim.
“Like Michael Jordan has a whole other thing, this guy is his own thing,” Kevin Garnett recently claimed, appropriately.
The perfect star for social media is making his only Garden appearance of the season on Sunday night to exploit all angles against the Knicks, equipped with a cache of viral highlights that serve as his vehicle to unique popularity.
One day he’s firing in impossible shots from 30 feet, the next he’s splitting defenders and throwing up an alley-oop to a teammate previously out of the frame. They’re all captured in five-second clips for Twitter and Facebook consumption.
In a span of about 1½ years, Curry and the Golden State Warriors snatched crowns from LeBron James, Kevin Durant and the Spurs.
“Yeah, No. 30,” teammate Shaun Livingston says of the experience. “Greatest shooter ever to play. From there, a winner.”
“My rookie year (in 2012-13) I saw he was already coming into his own,” Draymond Green adds. “And then my second year he got that swagger where, ‘I know I’m better than you.’ And once he got that ...”
Green trails off because we know where this goes. NBA championship. MVP award. League’ s leading scorer. Twenty-four straight victories. No. 1 in jersey sales. On pace for the most wins in history (75).
“It’s been like a rock star tour,” Green says.
Steve Kerr attempts a comparison before acknowledging it’s inadequate.
“The two guys I’d maybe compare him the most to are Mark Price and Steve Nash in terms of the combination of ball-handling and passing and shooting range and creativity. But Steph has taken it to a new level,” the Warriors coach says. “Mark and Steve were pioneers in a lot of ways. Mark was the first guy that I’ve ever seen who split the doubleteam at the top of the circle and then shoot a runner in the lane. Nobody else used to do that. Now everybody does it. Steve also sort of revolutionized the NBA, along with Mike D’Antoni in Phoenix. They changed the way the league looks and operates. And I think Steph grew up watching those guys and his game evolved as a result of what those guys have done and others. But he’s taken it to a new level in terms of just the range, the ballhanding and creativity. It’s pretty special.”
It also has created some disdain within the NBA.
lll If there’s a fine line between confident and obnoxious, Golden State’s circus includes a tightrope with its presumptuous celebrations. Curry isn’t excluded from the act, having reveled in one of his 3-pointers while it was still in the air.
At the same time, it’s difficult to ask a player not to get swept up in the dominance, the chase for an NBA-record 73 wins. Not everybody can manage impersonal like Tim Duncan or Kawhi Leonard. The Warriors are more Cam Newton than Barry Sanders.
They’ve annoyed and trampled the Clippers for two seasons. They’ve irked the Thunder — particularly the irritable Russell Westbrook — while pushing that former “next team” out of many title conversations. They’ve aggravated LeBron James and beat the Cavaliers so soundly this
month that they fired their coach.
“Guys are trying to knock you off and if you build enemies along the way you just do,” Green says. “But we’re trying to win games and if that’s what builds enemies then hey, we’re just going to have a lot of enemies.”
Curry has been at the center of this gust, learning along the way the burden of superstardom. Two of his recent comments, while harmless in his eyes, were interpreted as disrespectful. The first was that he hopes the locker room in Cleveland, where the Warriors clinched the NBA title last June, “still smells a little bit like champagne,” which reportedly riled up Cavs players. The latest was about the Carolina Panthers — Curry’s hometown team — winning the Feb. 7 Super Bowl and the Warriors beating the Thunder on the same weekend.
“It will be a good 48 hours, a win and a win,” Curry said.
It prompted an eye roll and a no comment from Westbrook.
“It’s more comical for me. Any comment you make will get amplified,” Curry says. “It is what it is. People who know me and what I’m about know I’m not the guy up there talking a big game. It’s more what I do on the floor. Having fun with the Panthers in the Super Bowl, obviously we want to get a win on Saturday and obviously I want them to win on Sunday. If that means whatever, I’m comfortable with that because we’re going to out and play hard that night against a good OKC team when that time comes around. But it’s been a different ex per ience for sure.
“I’m never going to try to guard what I say. I’m just going to be myself. I respect every player in this league, every single team in this league. And that’ll never change.”
Regarding his game, though, Curr y has been la rgely untouched by media criticism despite instances of shaky defense. There isn’t much to complain about: After their 108-105 victory Saturday in Philly, the Warriors are 43-4, having won 110 of their last 129 regular-season games and a championship.
They have done it with a fastbreak and 3-point-shooting style that was previously viewed as not being conducive to playoff success.
In a copycat league, the Warriors are unique in their ability to spread the floor with f ive longrange shooters. Green, only 6-5, is the catalyst for this style when he moves to center.
“I don’t think no one has the personnel that we do to play the style that we do,” he says. “I see other teams trying.”
lll Curry, like many of the alltime greats, already owns a Garden Moment — he dropped 54 points on the Knicks in 2013. Asked Friday if there’s anything special about playing in Manhattan, the 27-year-old replies, “100 percent. A lot of history has been made there.”
It’s also worth noting that Curry, the son of former NBA shooting guard Dell Curry, was almost a Knick — and actually would’ve preferred it that way — before the Warriors snagged him with the seventh pick in the 2009 draft. The Knicks were left with Jordan Hill at No. 8. Six years later they returned to the draft lottery, and it worked out a lot better this time around with the choice of Kristaps Porzingis.
But as the NBA’s top team arrives at the Garden on Sunday, it’ll be one of the few times Porzingis isn’t the main attraction. That belongs to Curry and the showboating Warriors.
“There’s not much you can say when they’re coming off a championship season,” Knicks guard A rron A ff lalo says. “Obviously it can catch up to them because they have to prove they can do it again. But they’re on pace. So until somebody dethrones them or quiets them, they’re going to do what they do.”