I am irate.
Spare me the silver linings. Spare me the greater good of learning experiences. And most of all, spare me the awe over Stephen Curry hitting an incredible shot and doing the “night night” celebration. Because right now, I’m ticked off.
It has been approximately eleven minutes since the Celtics lost to the Golden State Warriors in a gut-wrenching, post-traumatic-stress-inducing barn burner that had me wondering if a twister had teleported me and Toto back to Game 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals. I’m not calm, and I’m not going to be. So everyone batten down the hatches.
I wanted that game so bad, and judging by how tight and clumsy they played down the stretch, I know the Celtics did too. Their body language made me feel like I was reading All Quiet on the Western Front, as shell-shocked soldiers tried desperately to survive.
The fourth quarter was an onslaught, complete with a Steph Curry legacy game, legacy shot, and legacy celebration. For the first time in my life, I rage-quit watching a game, slamming my computer screen shut as soon as the broadcast cameras cut to Curry’s hands pressed together, forming a pillow for his head and a gravestone for my hopes and dreams.
I don’t know what got into me. This was a regular season game with regular season implications, with a short trip to Sacramento on the horizon to continue the road trip. This isn’t a playoff series; it’s a Tuesday night in December. So we should chill, right?
But I hate the Warriors. I’m pretty young, so there’s a relatively short amount of NBA history that I actually remember. Yet somehow, most of it contains the Warriors winning, either over the entire league, over LeBron James specifically, or—more recently—over the Celtics, who I hold near and dear to my heart.
This game was a form of psychological warfare. The Warriors are in the Western Conference, and meetings with them are few and far between, affording me not many chances like tonight to reflect on the existential horror of peak Steph Curry and how uniquely awful it is to face him.
Flashbacks to the 2022 Finals started to haunt me during the fourth quarter, with Al Horford getting burned in drop coverage on a switch and Jayson Tatum doing a disappearing act in the face of an alpha he couldn’t even begin to match.
There was something cosmically off about that fourth quarter. No rational explanation satisfies what went down. Because even if you blame the C’s for settling for threes on what felt like every trip down the floor, most of them were wide open. Moreover, the Celtics missed what seemed like completely free layups, once failing to score after three offensive rebounds and several totally clean looks.
I don’t know what kind of dark magic was going on there, so I’m just going to assume the Celtics were paralyzed in fear. There is something about the Warriors that breaks these guys, and I don’t know if they’ve gotten over the 2022 Finals loss, given how their muscles tightened on every jump-push-and-hook shot down the stretch.
For a fan, no player approaches Curry’s raw presence or can replicate the way he inflicts fear upon opposing fans and players. In his hands, a basketball becomes a weapon of mass destruction, capable of ending a game single-handedly with a lighting strike of threes.
Plenty of modern players have attempted to reproduce a Curry-like offensive persona, such as prime James Harden and Damian Lillard. Those guys held a similar I-literally-don’t-care-about-your-defense shooting ability from beyond the arc, but neither has produced the body of work that Curry has.
He carries that reputation like an anaconda wrapped around his neck. Opponents are terrified to come too close for fear of getting their heads bitten off, and Curry capitalizes every time. Every. Freaking. Time.
Am I supposed to revere this man? Am I supposed to be grateful that I lived in the era where I could see this greatness live? I guess I am if you ask half my friends and pretty much every member of the national NBA media. But I refuse to do the obligatory, “man, even though I’m sad we lost I have to respect Curry for that” media tour because this is about something more emotional than respect.
Even among Celtics fans my age, it’s pretty in vogue to like Curry. He’s completely uncontroversial and has remained loyal to his squad despite endless drama and question marks rotating around him. A lot of my friends say they are fans of Curry, even after the 2022 Finals, as they’re able to separate the player from the team and appreciate him for all the wizardry I described above.
I’ll admit that Curry’s game-killing three at the end of the shot clock with 10 seconds left is a one-of-one moment. He’s the only player on the planet who could have made that shot, as the rest of humanity lacks the composure to strap a three with less than a second left on the shot clock in overtime against the best team in the league.
But I can’t like someone I’m afraid of. In a piece last month about second favorite teams, I wondered how people are able to decide on teams other than their hometown squad to root for, as I’ve always found that task impossible. Curry occupies a similar space in my mind. I accept and understand his greatness, but he has hurt me too many times.
Tuesday night—or I guess Wednesday morning, since this one went right into the witching hour—was another chapter in the “Stephen Curry hurts my feelings” saga. The man frustrates me, showboats at my expense, yet remains a weapon of mass basketball destruction. He was simply greater than anything the Celtics could muster. I think I’ll be able to forgive him one day, but today is not that day
Or maybe it will be today, but it’s only been 53 minutes since the end of the game. I reserve the right to sleep on this one.
