Kyle Korver may be old and slow as hell, but his game is pure genius

The first time that Kyle Korver blocked Jaylen Brown in Game 4, I contemplated the psychological damage that being blocked by someone like Korver would have on the young player. Brown is smart and the curse of the intelligent is in sometimes over-analyzing situations. Surely Brown would slide into despair after being stopped by a man whose vertical jump can be measured in centimeters.

The second time Korver blocked Brown, I scrunched up my face in confusion. Someone was obviously messing with the simulation we all live in, testing to see what absurd event they could engineer before we figured out none of this is real.

Korver is one of those players who looks and moves so much like someone from the general population that fans can talk themselves into believing they, too, could have made a life in the NBA. It’s the same thought some have with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. There’s nothing outlandishly different about them, at a glance, that prevents the audience from imagining themselves in their place.

Even the fact that Korver is 6’7 is minimized by how he plays. He’s not posting anyone up or taking them off the dribble. Nothing he does truly emphasizes his height. Instead he runs around screens and then shoots as soon as he gets the ball. That’s easier for a regular person to imagine themselves doing than crossing up NBA defenders or even throwing a cross-court assist. Even the worst of us can lie to ourselves that we can be an elite shooter with just some work.

Towards the end of the third quarter of Game 4, Korver’s physical limitations, which are now more pronounced due to his 37 years of age, were on full display. LeBron James had accidentally tipped a ball into the Cavaliers’ backcourt. Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris, and Marcus Smart ran for the loose ball and Korver, being the closest Cavalier to the ball and ahead of the three Celtics, raced down the court to prevent the turnover.

Korver put his head down and pushed his feet as hard as he could against the hardwood, but the three were gaining on him so quickly he almost looked like a drunk fan who had jumped into a professional track meet. So, Korver did what he had to do. He dove at the ball. The ball went off Rozier and the Cavaliers retained possession. After the game, he described the play:

”I felt Rozier just race past me. I felt so incredibly old and slow when I dove after that ball, but the heart was in the right spot.”

The dive was one of those plays that gets praised with all clichés and backhanded compliments reserved for players who make up for their lack of talent by putting their bodies on the line. You know: Grit. Heart. Determination. Hustle. Toughness.

To put it better, it’s the type of play that someone like Matthew Dellavedova is loved for. It became the representative play of the Cavaliers’ renewed energy for the series because even the oldest, slowest, and weakest guy was willing to risk himself for one loose ball.

That play is commendable, and a symbol of what makes Korver so special. More than anything, Korver The Player is a testament to what it takes to perfect a craft, something that only a small percentage of people in the world have ever done. Even players in the NBA.

Korver has put in so much time into a specific skill that his movements are refined to the point of seeming robotic. The antithesis of his slow and painful sprint to stop a Celtics’ fastbreak is how quick and flawless his actions are when he shoots.

He doesn’t have many breathtaking or highlight-worthy moments, but there are few plays that are as technically beautiful and damn near automatic as Korver coming off a screen. He catches the ball, turns, and shoots so fluidly — without looking at the rim and sometimes not even taking a dribble — that it looks less like a learned talent and something as natural as breathing.

Korver scored 14 points off 4-of-7 shooting (2-of-5 from the three) in Game 4, and has been ridiculously efficient throughout the series. In Game 3 he went 4-for-4 from three, and he has shot below 40 percent from the three and 50 percent overall just once against the Celtics. He was even more spectacular against the Raptors — shooting above 50 percent for three of the four games. He struggled at times against the Pacers, but this postseason has been his most efficient from three, at 46.4 percent shooting, since his 2009-2010 season at Utah.

The mindset to being Kyle Korver is one that few could inhabit. A few years ago, there was a tremendous Outside feature on one of his offseason workouts, which included running underwater while carrying an 85-pound boulder for 20 yards. An NBA.com feature in 2015, when Korver was shooting an absurd 53 percent from three, described him during his extensive shooting workouts as “almost to the point of being psychotic.”

More than that loose-ball scramble, the most telling thing about Korver’s true essence — of how hard he works and how special he really is, how far removed from the ordinary — came when he talked about the problems that he’s having with his right foot:

”I really attack the ground with my right foot when I shoot. And basically over time I beat it up so bad that it was in a really bad place. I’m playing with a different pad in my shoe now, doing a lot of different things to try to help it. It’s doing a lot better. But basically mechanically I’m going to have to try to take a look at this thing this summer and try to figure out how to not beat my foot up any more.”

The pain from planting off his right foot represents all of the hours that it has taken Korver to reach the point where he is. It’s the price he chose to pay to reach the highest levels of the sport. His shots may be as elegant as they come, but behind the beauty is pain and perfectionism. He may look relatable at first glance, and even goofy when running after a loose ball, but Korver’s genius is just as rare and as costly as anyone else’s. It’s a talent that makes a 37-year-old an indispensable part of this Cavaliers team far beyond clichés of grit and heart.