Stephen Curry and the Warriors changed basketball

Most of the great athletes who became legends did so thanks to their triumphs, the trophies they won and the marks they set during their careers.

But there are some who did much more. They made their mark and changed the game. It happened, for example, with Johan Cruyff and the Dutch team of the 70s, in which he was the standard bearer of total football. Without playing, Pep Guardiola has also played from the bench, with dynamic and colorful teams, which almost always play well and beautifully, and often win.

Stephen Curry, with numbers of Michael Jordan and LeBron James in the NBA final

But nothing similar to what Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors have achieved, who in the last decade have changed the way basketball is played in the NBA, the most important league in the world.

Since the middle of the last century, the sport of the orange ball and its tactics and strategies favored tall players with a good physical build. It was in the area, in the “land of giants”, where the games were defined.

For this reason, in secondary schools, where the difference in height between some basketball players was much more marked, a distant line from which the baskets were worth three points began to be used as a test, which sought to counteract the defenses that were planted below. of the rings.

That rule was implemented in the NBA in 1979, from when the 6.70 meter distance shots had a higher value. From then on, various teams tried to take advantage of them. Nuggets, Warriors and Suns did. They used the triples as resources and even made them the base of their offenses, but they did not complement them with the other great phase of the game, the defense.

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And that was what the Golden State Warriors did recently, under the guidance of coach Steve Kerr, multi-champion in the NBA in the 90s as a player, with the Chicago Bulls and the San Antonio Spurs, who reached the Oakland team and empowered two players who were the cornerstone of his project: Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.

They were skillful and quick players, not so tall, especially Curry, who is 1.88 meters tall. He turned them into assassins from the perimeter, mechanized an offense that allowed them to take advantage of their effectiveness in medium and long distance, and also innovated the defense, with pressure, intensity and speed. Players of smaller size, but greater ease of movement, movement of the ball and correct choice of shots.

They reached five consecutive NBA finals, between 20015 and 2019, with three titles won and the famous “Lineup of Death”, made up of Curry, Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes, later replaced by Kevin Durant.

They founded a new NBA era, because all the teams began to work on their distance shots, more difficult to defend and more productive. Today, 80% of the squads have specialists in 3-point shots and they reduced their attacking actions by 35% using power centers under the basket.

The Warriors won in Boston and tied the NBA final series

That phenomenon of the Warriors needed a figure to represent him, like Magic Johnson to the Lakers of the 80s or Michael Jordan to the Bulls of the 90s. And that was Curry, a skilled player like no other, intelligent and charismatic, who since before being born already had its destiny marked.

He grew up in stadiums and arenas, surrounded by balls, because his father, Dell Curry, was an NBA player between 1986 and 2001, as well as his older brother Seth, now with the Brooklyn Nets. He spent his childhood from city to city because his father, who had previously played in Utah and Cleveland, was in Charlotte, Milwaukee and Toronto.

When he retired, Steph was a teenager and dreamed of being a professional gamer. He played three years with Davidson College and set all possible records until the Golden State Warriors hired him in 2009.

“With a ball in his hands, he can do whatever he wants, he has a huge heart and he loves the game. Before I met him I knew what I could do and as soon as we started working together I told him that we were going to change the game, which in fact happened,” coach Steve Kerr recalled this week in the run-up to Game 4 of the NBA Finals, which The Warriors play against the Boston Celtics, led by Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brown and Marcus Smart.

After 13 seasons in the world’s top basketball league, his stats are impressive. Six finals, three titles so far. Twice Most Valuable Player and two other top scorer of the season. He is the best triplet in history. As of Friday, he had made 3,565 long-distance baskets, several of them to close and win games.

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“When I came into the league, in 1996, if I shot a 3-pointer, the coach would take me out of the game. The order was to play with the posts, but now the importance of the triple is greater thanks to Golden State’s number 30”, admitted Ray Allen, who until last December was the top three-point scorer in history.

The German Dirk Nowitzki, NBA legend, assured that “it is not only what he throws, but the intensity with which he plays, he never gets tired. That seems like a minor fact, but he is a player who carries the weight of the match all the time. And on the court he is impossible to anticipate, because although his strength is the shot, he handles both profiles perfectly and penetrates easily thanks to the fact that he is supremely fast”.

Curry and the Warriors have a complicated mission against the Celtics, whom they face this Monday in the fifth game of the final, but after two forgettable seasons in which they faced many injuries and changes in the organization, they showed that they are back and they have the means to extend their dynasty, which will never be forgotten because it changed the way basketball is played.

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