Stephen Curry is too good to struggle this much
The Warriors need Curry to rise to the occasion, just as he has so many times before. But time is running out.
The NBA's MVP isn't supposed to play like this. Not in the postseason, and especially not in the NBA Finals.
No one in their right mind would have imagined that Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter in NBA history and one of the most creative players in the league, would be outplayed by Matthew Dellavedova at the final stretch. But that's the current, sad reality for the Warriors.
For the last three seasons, Curry had taken the most difficult shot in basketball and made it so efficient, deadly and aesthetically pleasing. It’s almost impossible for teams to stop. You can close out spot-up shooters and chase them through multiple screens because they can’t usually create their own shots. The ones who can usually go to the paint build their careers inside the three-point line. There’s years of solutions for those players.
What is incredibly difficult is stopping a player who can create shots for himself and others and shoot threes effectively regardless of how close the defender is and how many dribbles were taken. It’s the “1,000 ways to die” of basketball.
Or it should be, unless the player takes himself out of the game. There's been speculation that Curry hasn't been the same since his fall against the Rockets in the Western Conference Finals. Curry insists he feels fine, but critics are still unsure. It was a hard fall and those tend to leave lasting effects.
Regardless of that, his play in the Finals resembles his early performances against the Memphis Grizzlies. The Grizzlies employed the same tactics that Cleveland have unearthed. They hit Curry hard, rattled him and made him -- and in a larger sense, the Golden State Warriors as a whole -- uncomfortable. That strategy has given the Cavaliers the same 2-1 lead Memphis enjoyed.
But eventually Curry found himself and the Warriors vanquished Memphis by daring them to pick their poison. Too many arms on the centipede. Too many heads on the Hydra. Now, he must do it again.
This one though, is for all the marbles, and Curry has looked every bit as rattled and deflated as you would expect from any ordinary player making his first Finals appearance. He’s getting metaphorically (and literally) punched in the mouth and it’s throwing his whole game off.
In the dying minutes of Game 3, after the Warriors had chipped away at a 20-point Cavaliers lead by effectively blowing it up with a dynamite of threes, Curry ruined their momentum by mindlessly throwing a behind the back pass to Draymond Green that rolled out of bounds. On the next play, he fouled a stumbling, lunging and scrambling Dellavedova as the Australian banked in a runner in the lane while getting the foul call. The Cavaliers' lead was stretched to four again.
Curry walked away shaking his low-hanging head. It was a silly set of mistakes that are beneath his caliber of player, and he knew it.
Credit is due to the Cavaliers for the effectiveness of their defensive approach. They’re building a wall of bodies in front of Curry as he pushes the ball up the court. Their switches have been damn near perfect and they’re driving him away from his favorite positions.
But this isn't new for Curry. He faced and beat the Grizzlies, just as he faced and beat many other great defensive teams. Mike Conley and Tony Allen were closer to him than his own sweat and he survived. He's lit up defensive stalwarts that are more accomplished than Dellavedova.
The Cavaliers are doing a great job, but the MVP helping them a great deal. He has to rise to the occasion before it’s too late.
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