It was gold, but for Curry it was standard

After Paris, what's next for the alltime top shooter?

By acclamation Steph Curry is the best shooter of a basketball who ever lived. But technically, there’s a problem. He has to win the family title first. He is 12th alltime in NBA 3-point percentage. Ranking eighth is Seth Curry, his little brother.

Steph also has some work to do in his own organization. Steve Kerr, his Golden State and U.S. Olympic coach, is the alltime leader, at 45.4 percent.

Curry’s father Dell led the NBA in 1999, when he shot 47.6 percent for Milwaukee. He was holding down a place for Ray Allen, then a third-year pro for the Bucks, who shot 35.6 from three in that season but only launched 4.2 per game. Dell shot 40.2 from deep overall, and was a 45.7 percent shooter for his 16-year career.  Allen would average 5.7 long attempts during his 19 years, and sank an even 40 percent of them. Neither he nor Papa Curry nor anyone else would envision a day when a shooter, trying to keep his team comfortably ahead in the final minute of the de facto world championship, would fire a 3-pointer over 6-foot-8 Nic Batum and 6-foot-7 Evan Fournier without anyone clutching a pearl or cluck-clucking a tongue. That was the fourth of Curry’s four 3-pointers in the final three minutes, the one that NBC’s Noah Eagle immediately dubbed “the golden dagger,” and Team USA won its fifth consecutive gold medal, 98-87.

When Curry began this menage of trois, the Americans were only leading 82-79. He put them ahead by six. They were at least two possessions ahead of France from that moment on, so Curry was not exactly pulling them out of a burning building. But he was illustrating why he has been such a pivotal figure in the game’s history. Until he stretched the definition of a prudent shot, the smart play would have been a dump-down to Anthony Davis, or maybe a drive by LeBron James. As it was, nobody questioned his judgment. Kevin Durant and Tyrese Halliburton were on the bench, resting their heads against their hands in tribute to Curry’s night-night celebration. Curry would do it himself after his last shot cleared the fingertips of Batum and Fournier, the most famous clearance of the Olympics besides than Mondo Duplantis’ 20-foot, six-inch pole vault. Long before Curry took Paris, that curved line has been his Arc De Triomphe.

Thirty-four years after Toni Kukoc and Yugoslavia bedeviled American college kids at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, Curry and the U.S. took a foreign idea and, in true American tradition, maximized it. But Curry had done roughly the same thing in the semifinals, when the U.S. was in true danger of losing to Serbia. In those two games, Curry was 17 for 27 from the 3-point line and scored 24 and 36 points. For the tournament he was 22 for 46 from deep.

Curry now has a gold medal to go with four NBA championships and two MVP awards, and he is making $51 million per year.

 Fifteen years ago he had just led Davidson to a Final Eight in the NCAA tournament. He was only there because Virginia Tech, where Dell had been a record-breaker, didn’t seriously recruit him. The muscles Steph flexes today weren’t around back then, and the jersey hung on him desperately, as if he might squirm out of it altogether. He certainly didn’t project as a traditional guard, which of course he isn’t. When Curry runs into a template he can’t fill, he crafts his own.

The Warriors’ general manager was Larry Riley, who, until Tim Walz came along, was one of the most consequential sporting graduates of Chadron State, in Nebraska. The best scouts are time travelers. Their eyes see five years ahead. Riley had the No. 7 pick in the draft, and Atlanta was pestering him for a trade. The Hawks wanted Curry, too. But Riley was skeptical that Curry would get past the Timberwolves, who had picks 5 and 6. Minnesota used those picks on Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn, and Riley practically leaped through the phone lines and into commissioner David Stern’s arms.

“I think Stephen Curry is the second-best player in this draft,” Riley said, referring to first-overall pick Blake Griffin, who went to the Clippers. “I would have picked him No 2 and Stephen will set out to prove me wrong, that he should have been No. 1.”

Two years later Riley would draft Klay Thompson to play alongside Curry and the Splash Brothers were born. But it was actually more of a slow-building wave than a splash. Curry was runnerup to Tyreke Evans as the Rookie of the Year, but had to fight through ankle problems so problematic that the Bucks turned down the chance to trade Andrew Bogut for Curry. Riley then dealt Monta Ellis and opened up the point guard position for Curry, and in 2015 the Warriors won the championship.

That was Kerr’s first year as the Warriors’ coach. Other clubs had fallen in love with the “three” but hadn’t yet incorporated it with defense. Because Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green were so attuned to ball movement, other defenses couldn’t get to the nether regions of Golden State’s offense fast enough. Pretty soon Jerry West was calling Curry the best shooter he’d ever seen. That would be like Keith Richards saying Mozart was the best musician he’d ever seen. There have been no contradictory developments.

Is Curry the best ever? That’s highly subjective, and those who played before the invention of the 3-pointer (like West) might protest. What we do know is that Curry had a 50-40-90 season in 2016, in which he shot 50.4 percent from the floor, 45.4 percent from the 3-point line and 90.8 percent from the foul line, where he has exceeded 90 percent in 10 different seasons. Steve Nash was a 50-40-90 man on four occasions, and Durant and Larry Bird did it twice apiece. Malcolm Brogdon, Reggie Miller, Mark Price and Dirk Nowitzki are other members of the club.

Over 51 percent of Curry’s shot have been 3-pointers, and his average shot comes from 18 feet, four inches. From the corner, Curry is a 49.1 percent 3-point shooter, and was a 59.7 corner shooter two seasons ago.

Miller, who had the 3-point volume records until Curry came along, had an average shot of 18 feet, 4 inches as well, but his 3-point percentage was 39.5. Again, the three was an accessory when Miller played, not the suit.

A worthy rival to Curry was Kyle Korver, whose average shot was a 21-footer for his career. For 20 seasons his 3-point percentage was .429. But Korver never averaged more than 6.8 threes in any season. Curry’s career average is 9.2, and he’s been in double-digits each of the past four seasons.

Maybe Drazen Petrovic would have been the No. 1 rocket man had he lived past 28. In 1986 he averaged 37 points in his Euroleague season, including a 112-point game. In the NBA Petrovic shot 43.7 from three and .506 overall. He was sleeping in the passenger seat of a car driven by a girlfriend on the Autobahn, in Bavaria, and they were headed to Petrovic’s home in Croatia. They were clocked at 110 mph when they ran into a truck that had jumped the median. Petrovic was thrown from the car and died of head injuries. In his five NBA seasons he left little doubt that he would be a dominant NBA player; he had already averaged 22 points for New Jersey, and it’s likely he would have savored the league’s growing love affair with the three.

But Curry has no real challengers, and it isn’t just because of shot mechanics or touch or heredity.  There have been more classic shooters. There never has been anybody who hunted those shots as relentlessly, who perfected or maybe even invented the art of “re-location,” passing the ball and then running to another spot to get it back again. Almost every inch of the half-court can serve as his platform. He isn’t just firing from the fifth row (although he can do that, too, especially during warmups). He’s taking his defender on a long, high-speed trek through the underbrush. Even his temporary teammates, like Devin Booker, knew where he was at all times. Booker was in layup range Saturday but fired a pass back out to Curry at 22 feet. The resulting swish made it 93-84.

Somewhere during that spree, France’s Victor Wembanyama drilled a 3-pointer of his own. It was his third of the game and boosted him to a 26-point game. Wembanyama was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year with San Antonio and probably should have been Defensive Player of the Year as well. He is 7-foot-4 and 20 years old. He was disconsolate after the loss, but he also said, “I’m learning, and I’m worried for my opponents the next couple of years.”

One day we’ll look back at the gold medal game and realize that it contained two game-tilting players, separated by 16 years but united by the way they can bend basketball into new shapes. As Curry knows, you don’t get to keep the world even though you’ve conquered it. Besides, there’s a couple of non-believers at home.