Christmas brought together the NBA’s two supernovas on the same floor for the first time since June, but the star atop the tree no longer hails from Akron.
When Stephen Curry and LeBron James last battled before the holiday, the Cleveland Cavaliers frontman was a one-man wrecking crew in the NBA Finals and held the indisputable title of ‘best player in the NBA’.
Six months later and there’s still not much of a debate. The league’s top player is pretty clearly in a tier of his own, only it’s not a ‘King’ anymore but a baby-faced assassin.
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Curry has gone from darling MVP to a whole other stratosphere this season, leaping James as the top dog in the process.
It’s amazing to think the switch happened as fast as it did, but it’s been less to do with James’ marginal decline and more due to Curry’s meteoric rise, both on paper and as a concept.
Let’s get the quantifiable stuff out of the way first, which is so overwhelmingly impressive that its effect is almost numbing.
Curry is averaging a league-best 30.8 points to go with 6.3 assists, 5.4 rebounds and 2.2 steals. You could stop there and not need much more of an argument, but it’s just a warm-up.
That elusive and exclusive 50-40-90 club (at least 50 per cent from the field, 40 per on 3-pointers and 90 per cent from the free throw line) that has only six members all-time?
Curry is comfortably on pace to become the seventh player to achieve those shooting heights, despite firing off an eye-popping 10.4 treys per game.
Now here’s where he gets into uncharted territory. Curry’s current 32.13 player efficiency rating (PER) would be the highest single-season PER ever, bettering Wilt Chamberlain’s 31.82 in 1962-63.
Numbers are all well and good and they tangibly make a point, but there’s more to Curry than just the jaw-dropping stats he puts up.
His ability to bend defences and completely alter approaches to the game of basketball is nothing short of revolutionary. The combination of his ball-handling and shooting is something we’ve never seen before.
The concept of Curry is so far-reaching that his former coach and current colour commentator Mark Jackson said during the Warriors-Cavaliers telecast on Christmas that Curry is “hurting” the sport.
Jackson’s point was that Curry is negatively influencing young players because they’re trying to replicate his style without the actual ability to do the things that makes the point guard so unique.
As salty as Jackson is – Golden State became historically great after he was fired – he speaks a sliver of truth.
However, he’s not taking into account the other side which means kids are beginning to understand the value of shooting, giving power to those without elite athleticism and size.
None of this is to take anything away from James, who is by far the most powerful athlete in all of North American sports, if not the world.
But for the first time in the better part of the last decade, someone else wears the crown on the court and it doesn’t look like he’ll be ceding it anytime soon.