Do not get caught in any cage: Steph Kerry is in his own historical category - Walla! sport

2021-12-20T13:30:28.065Z

More a role model for Melbourne, above the tragic dimension of Federer and Messi: After becoming the pinnacle of the NBA threes, what is Steph Kerry's historic status? Not sure this is a question that needs to be asked

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Do not get caught in any cage: Steph Kerry is in a historical category of his own

More a role model for Melbourne, more pure than Durant, over the tragic dimension of Federer and Messi: After becoming the pinnacle of the NBA threes, everyone wants to place Steph Kerry in relation to the greats of the industry, but that only diminishes him - he plays differently, conducts differently, makes a mark Other.

Beat on a phenomenon that will not return, and one illusion

The greatest sniper of all time: Stephen Kerry has become the pinnacle of NBA threes

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One thing is undisputed: few have influenced the game as much as he has.

Kerry (Photo: GettyImages, Jim McIsaac)

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For me, Steph Kerry has always been the one who manages to evade comparisons, the discussion of his place in the all-time rankings. Something in which he managed to transcend this discussion, to hover over it, to exist in a world parallel to it. We live in the age of unicorns, the greatest actors of the period are one-time natural phenomena like Kevin Durant and Yannis Antocompo, but something in Steph's one-time is different and makes it, at least in my eyes, a category in itself. I will devote most of the article to trying to explain it, but there is one comparative statement that I am willing to stand behind.

Steph Kerry is one of the most important players in the history of the game of basketball. In terms of his influence on the game and the culture around him, he is in the limited first row, above quite a few players who in terms of quality are likely to be ranked higher than him. He's one of the few that the NBA needs to divide before and after they get to the league, which has led to a change that makes it difficult for anyone who wakes up today from a ten-year slumber to digest what games look like today.

Of course, Steph is not the only reason for the threesome revolution that changed the face of the league. Mike D’Antoni and Steve Nash’s Phoenix brought the Run & Gun to the center of the stage as early as 15 years ago, Daryl Murray performed his crazy scientist experiments in the Development League long before Kerry became what he is. The threesome revolution goes hand in hand with the data revolution that has taken place across all major American sports in recent decades, Murray was the pioneer following the NBA League filled with intricate statistics-loving executives who fell in love with the three-by-two complex formula.

But every revolution needs a face, and the threesome revolution has received the most sweeping face one could ask for.

Kerry made the threesome not only the most correct shot, but also the sexiest shot.

The moments when he was warming up invented the concept of League Pass alert, the event that one must stop everything else to see.

Is the reason why every kid who learns to dribble wants to score threes from any range, is the reason why the youngsters who come to the league today throw threes at an unprecedented pace.

While children, and their parents, can not really imagine that when they grow up they will become Yannis, Durant or even LeBron, it is much easier to imagine them becoming the next Steph Kerry.

LeBron is the big star of the current generation, the best-known name, the basketball player with the greatest cultural influence since Michael Jordan, but Steph is the standout role model of the era, the one everyone fantasizes about being like.

Only one of them fantasizes about any beginning basketball player.

Kerry vs. LeBron (Photo: Reuters)

What is interesting is that in relation to the role model, to this day it is not possible to point to an actor who is really similar to him, to a star who really mentions him.

First of all, because of the extraordinary talent.

Everyone today throws a lot of threes, quite a few players can score eight or ten threes in a given day, but no one does it like Steph.

None of the new kids in the neighborhood have been tickling the amounts of his threes in the last eight years, because no one is able to get close to the levels of difficulty in which he scores threes over 40 percent.

There is not and has not been another player who needs so little time and space to come up for a shot from any range from the moment he passes the half.

The defenses are especially prepared for him and it does not help, he is only getting better.

This year he is already making the whole concept of difficulty levels meaningless, he consistently hits absurd shots, from a dribble or after a quick move.

This feeling that he is one of us, like us, playing in the Giants' League, is an illusion.

Wanting to be like Steph Kerry is about as realistic as wanting to be like Yannis Antocompo.

But it's not just the unique talent. No one is like Steph Kerry because he's a different kind of superstar, one who thinks differently and refuses to play everyone's game. Whoever realized this first is Steve Kerr, who built around Kerry and Clay Thompson a brilliant playing method that uses their shooting ability to create shot situations, especially under the basket, for all of the team players. It is impossible to separate Steph Kerry from Golden State, team success is part of his story. This is the team that shattered the myth of “you can’t take a championship with threes,” which served as one of the most important catalysts in the threesome revolution and in turning Steph into her face. And group success stems not only from individual ability, but from the way he and Kerr harnessed it to group success.

There has never been a superstar who has influenced the game like Steph Kerry even when he is far from the ball. The Warriors' method is based on his (and Clay's) movement without a ball between blocks in a way that sows panic on defense, until the mistake that often ends in a play-up comes. Steph was completely committed to the method, had it not been for his dedication to Golden State as we have known it since 2014. He does not stop moving, knowing that most of the time he will not get the ball, but his movement will drive processes that end in another player's easy basket.

Kerry is not content with getting blocks, many times he is the one who blocks himself, the ball carrier or far from the ball.

Despite its size, this is a great blocker, and not just because the defense is focused on the blocker more than the blocked one.

He devotes himself to this gray action, inserting and sacrificing his body several times each game to create for the players around him small benefits.

Add to that the multiplicity of cases where rivals send a very high double-team to Kerry, allowing him to eliminate two defensive players in a single pass, getting a player who specializes in easing the players around him, arranging for them comfortable shots and good opening data for an offensive move.

He needs players around him who understand the method, who know how to move and deliver in sync to him and take advantage of the openings he creates for them.

It took Lviv Myers two years to rediscover such players, and once they surround the duo Steph and Raymond Green it's a sure recipe for a great team.

Kerry, Green and a few other right pieces - and you have a team for the championship (Photo: AP, Jeff Chiu)

So everyone wants to be like Steph Kerry, but no one does what he does. The young stars who came to the league after him, and also some of his generation like James Harden and Damian Lillard, throw lots of threes from a dribble, occasionally they make moves reminiscent of Steph's ability to break free for shooting, sometimes they warm up in a way reminiscent of his hit check, but In the last decade since Kerry is a role model no star has yet come to the league who moves without the ball like him, who uses movement and blockages to help others. Not Donovan Mitchell and Devin Booker, not Trey Young and Luka Doncic, not Lamello Bull and Anthony Edwards - some know how to move without a ball, but neither of them has made it an engine of attack. Eventually they want the ball in their hand to create throwing situations for themselves or others. Like all other superstars, not like Steph Kerry.

Not only in the professional field Steph looks different from everyone else. After so many years as one of the most important and iconic athletes in the world, he manages to convince that all he is interested in is enjoying basketball. He is constantly smiling, dancing, celebrating excessively, sweeping his teammates and Golden State crowd in the joy of his life. This contributes to the illusion that everything comes to him easily, while in practice he works very hard and trains non-stop to reach the heights he is at. It's important to him to win, no doubt he really wants to win degrees, but nothing comes at the expense of pure fun.

Over the years there have been frictions at Golden State, including fierce quarrels between Drymond Green and Steve Kerr and Kevin Durant, a big team needs emotional actors like Drey, but Steph has stayed out of the drama, somehow he always seems to live in comedy. Therefore, even when it does not hurt the money of big games, even at the time of losing the championship in the 2016 final, even in the last two years saturated with injuries in which the lineage seemed to fall apart, the feeling around Steph is not of tragedy. There is always a layer above all that allows him to convey that everything is fine, that all he really wants is to keep playing and having fun.

Athletes of his caliber tend to feel and be experienced as tragic figures.

LeBron is preoccupied with his historic status and seeing that it sits on his shoulders, Yannis needed the championship to take a giant monkey off his back.

Even the audience favorites that can be compared to Steph, like Messi and Federer, often look like tragic figures and it is clear that the historical class occupies them.

Kerry gives the feeling that he manages to be above it, above the immense pressure that is supposed to come with the class, that he has managed to find the king way in which he takes quite seriously the desire to be the best in his field but does not completely take to heart when that does not happen.

Most superstars fail to truly disengage from the stress involved in their status.

Federer (Photo: GettyImages, Clive Brunskill)

This is probably the main reason for my difficulty in placing Steph in a historical context.

It's also difficult because it's not entirely clear how to compare a player who is based on threes and can not be imagined without them, to players some of whom played in an age when there was no line three at all and others in an age where they were hardly addressed.

But mostly it's hard because he's so different, in style and attitude, from all the other really great players, which allows him to be the most important player even on a team where he's not the best player (like in the days of Kevin Durant at Golden State).

If he really needs to be placed then I guess he has been stuck in the top 15 of all time and has a good chance of eventually becoming a top 10 player and maybe even the greatest coordinator ever.

But perhaps it is best to leave it in a separate category.

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Source: walla

All sports articles on 2021-12-20

Do not get caught in any cage: Steph Kerry is in his own historical category - Walla! sport

Do not get caught in any cage: Steph Kerry is in a historical category of his own

More on Walla!

The greatest sniper of all time: Stephen Kerry has become the pinnacle of NBA threes

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