The Golden State Warriors are NBA champions once again, in large part due to Stephen Curry’s brilliance. The 34-year-old delivered his most memorable performance in the championship round to win his fourth ring as well as his first NBA Finals MVP award.
These achievements add another incredible chapter to the already amazing story that is Stephen Curry’s career.
The diminutive guard hardly seemed bound for incredible greatness in his youth. In fact, he seemed destined for tragedy as his troublesome ankle injuries threatened to cut his career short.
But instead, Curry wrote an entirely different story as he emerged into arguably the most dominant player of his size in NBA history and forever changed the way the game is played with his otherworldly shooting.
Read on as SBOTOP recounts Stephen Curry’s incredible NBA journey to date.
From fragile shooter to superstar
Curry, the son of a former NBA sharpshooter, had a decent pedigree coming out of college. He clearly inherited the shooting gene from his father and added a few moves of his own as he developed into a big-time scorer.
Although, there were concerns that his level of competition in college wasn’t the best. Meanwhile, he also wasn’t the most physically gifted player, and there was a fear that he might not be able to cope with the grind of the NBA.
Curry was drafted No 7 overall by the Golden State Warriors in 2009, and he was able to answer those concerns about his game as he grew into quite a capable scorer in his first couple of years in the league.
However, he underwent surgery on his right ankle twice in less than a year, which once again raised some red flags about his overall durability.
But Curry again proved his doubters wrong as he came back stronger in the next two seasons, where established himself as one of the league’s best scorers and by far its deadliest shooter.
Then in 2014, Steve Kerr arrived and helped transform the Warriors into the dynasty they would become. Thanks to Kerr’s new offensive system, Curry reached legitimate superstardom. He became one of the most unforeseen MVPs in NBA history as the Warriors made an incredible single-season transformation to claim the NBA championship.
Driving force of the Warriors dynasty
After winning the championship in 2015, the Warriors would go on to make the Finals four more times in a row as they established their dynasty. And Curry was central to all that success.
Curry came back better than ever the season after their title-winning campaign. He averaged 30 points as the Warriors set a new NBA record for most regular-season wins with 73, which helped Curry become the NBA’s first-ever unanimous MVP that season.
Unfortunately, though, he was hurt in the postseason and the Warriors collapsed as they let a 3-1 lead slip in the Finals against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
That failure sparked the recruitment of Kevin Durant, who undoubtedly lifted the Warriors to new levels of dominance. But even though Durant was arguably the better player, Curry was still the straw that stirred the Warriors as no one still had any answer for his uncanny shooting.
However, some people somehow held onto the opinion that Curry could not deliver on the big stage because of his less than impressive performances in his first two Finals trips.
But after an injury-hit 2019 Finals ended in defeat and his 2019-20 season was shortened due to injury, Curry came back the following season to lead the league in scoring at 32 PPG, reminding everyone just what a truly special player he was.
Chef Curry still cooking in his mid-30s
Then came the 2021-22 season. Curry again came out on fire but gradually slowed down as the season wore on. While he still showed flashes of his old brilliance – see his spellbinding showing in the All-Star Game – the Warriors’ NBA 2022 odds of winning the title rested on his ability to be the best player on the court for an entire series.
And Curry showed he was indeed capable of reaching that level in the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics. As his old running mates Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were looking like much-diminished versions of themselves, Curry – who is two years older than them – was the one who looked several years younger as he created plenty of NBA 2022 highlights at the expense of the Celtics’ formidable defence.
With his fantastic Finals performance, Curry put to bed the outlandish perception that he was unable to shine on the biggest stage. He shone brighter than he ever had in his postseason career at age 34 to add another unexpected chapter to his remarkable NBA story.
No one knows how Chef Curry’s story will play out from here, but if his career to date is anything to go by, it’s that it’s best not to doubt Curry’s capacity for greatness.
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