"Why are you starting with this question?", Steph Kerry scolded the first journalist to address him at the press conference after winning the sixth game of the 2022 final, the same one that gave his Golden State Warriors a fourth championship in eight years - yes, his.
And you may not need to know anything beyond, to understand who Steph is and what made him a once-in-a-lifetime player, and a historic winner.
Why this question? Photo: Getty
Because Kerry, as his coach Steve Kerr once said of him, is a kind of Tim Duncan - a superstar who thinks first of all about the team, which is part of a team, an organization, one evolving organic unit.
But while Duncan entered the league into a successful organization, with another big star (David Robinson) by his side, and knew that no matter how "team" he was in the end he was a big, strong, and talented guy, and if things went wrong you could always put a colored ball in the basket. And he will make something happen.
Kerry does not have any of these privileges.
First, when he was selected in the 2009 draft he joined one of the least meticulous clubs in the entire league.
He has seen owners, and managers, and coaches, and players alternate around him for years, in which he also suffered himself from bothersome injuries that prevented him from breaking out.
And secondly, ie not big, and not particularly strong or athletic.
Things that continued to be true even after he recovered from the injuries, and also in recent years in which he has become very strong.
So Kerry does look like Duncan in many ways - but in one key way he is different from any other superstar in the history of the league: Kerry has no physical element he can lean on, that his team can count on to save the day when other things are not going well.
Thanks.
Similar but different,
He does not have the height and / or athleticism and / or strength of Russell, Wilt, Jabbar, Jay, Jordan, Magic, Larry, Shaq, Kobe, Duncan, Hakim, LeBron, Durant, or any name Another top list of the best players in the entire history of the league.
And he does what he does in the most athletic era in sports history.
So how did he do it, how did he win a fourth championship - just like LeBron James, but without going through teams and without repeatedly trying to build an instant Super Times around himself - being the leader and the biggest and most important star of his team?
How did he become the smallest physical player to ever lead and produce a dynasty in the NBA?
Night Night pic.twitter.com/fIMwW4eeSk
- Stephen Curry (@ StephenCurry30) June 17, 2022
Yes, the shooting.
Obviously.
She is an alien and everything has been said about her.
But beyond the shot, that is - and in that he is more like Jordan than anyone else - he is the cornerstone of an entire organization that has been replaced and built around him, and thanks to him.
Again, from the owners, through the managers, the coaches, to the last of the players.
None of this warrior lineage was there before him.
And he enabled everything and empowered by the power of his enabling and empowering personality.
It's not just Clay Thompson and Raymond Green who were selected after him in the draft and grew alongside him and thanks to him.
It's not just Steve Kerr, who is thankful for his good fortune to coach Kerry at every opportunity he has (similar to what his teacher and rabbi Greg Popovich has done all these years with Duncan).
This is the way Durant came to Kerry's team, and easily integrated into it on the way to two championships.
And this is how a whole new envelope of complementary players has been built around it again in recent years, climbing from last place in the league two years ago, all the way back to the highest peak of them all.
Gary Peyton Jr., Andrew Wiggins, Otto Porter and others, players who have heard over and over again that nothing special will come out of them.
Jordan Paul, who in a role almost identical to Kerry's, has become one of the most exciting players in the league this year.
This is how this huge dynasty was built.
That way she came back from the bottom until another championship.
In this way she created a long line of proud champions who reached their full potential and experienced the Warriors' good years in their careers.
And so, finally, the MVP title of the final also found its natural way into Steph's hand.
Paul and Kerry, an imagination that is hard to miss, Photo: AP
Let him get angry and scold everyone for it by tomorrow, but he needed that award.
And we needed it so that everyone could be silenced, right down to the last of the critics and hitters.
This.
There is no longer any weakness in his resume that he did not delete with a resounding answer.
From everything he recovered, from everything he returned, he silenced everyone, he proved everything.
How do you do that from a height of 188 cm and a weight of 90 kg, data of just another man?
Well, stay put first - just man.
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