Steph Curry
This is what we need in music.
I swore off the NBA. It was an unmitigated time suck, TV crack, once you stated watching the playoffs you couldn’t tune out. I spent months in the nineties watching Michael Jordan, after wasting way too much time viewing the shenanigans of Magic and Bird before that.
But Jordan was the best player of all time. Oh, you can argue for Cousy or Bill Russell, but the truth was when he was gone it was said we’d never see his likes again, someone so talented, who could single-handedly win the game.
And we didn’t. We got big men, dominant forces, veritable freaks, like the lovable Shaq. And incredible players with great movement and intense shooting skills like Kobe. And then the apotheosis, a hybrid of it all, LeBron James, who was big but could play small. The NBA was bigger business than ever. Yet I rarely watched.
But then came Steph Curry.
Like all movements I came to it late. You hear about things long before you check them out. I noticed last year’s NBA championship, eclipsing LeBron’s Cavs, snatching victory from the mouth of defeat.
But then there was that night a few months back. When Curry hit so many three-pointers that it became a viral sensation. People’s minds were blown. But unlike giveaways, Oprah deeding cars on television, Curry had earned the accolades.
WHO WAS THIS GUY?
Yes, Butch asked Sundance this question way back when. Or maybe it was the other way around. All I know is that phrase entered the culture, that’s what art did way back when, it dominated the discourse. Our heroes were those who uttered the words of liberal arts creators, whose rep has been decimated in this STEM/money-dominated world.
And then comes this veritable shrimp from Davidson College to light up the NBA? Aren’t you supposed to be overhyped, leave school after the Final Four, sign a big contract and burn your identity into our consciousness whilst selling us crap all along the way?
Davidson is a liberal arts college of 1900 in North Carolina, far from the vaunted Stanford which the techies attend. But all those Silicon Valley acolytes are paying fealty to Steph Curry and his Warriors today, all because of the three point shot.
STEPH CURRY REINVENTED THE GAME!
He didn’t change the rules, he didn’t bitch and moan that the odds were stacked against him. He just took advantage of the notes that were in evidence. The three point perimeter has been in existence for decades. But rather than lauding those who attempted shots from there we decried their low completion rate, we wanted players to drive to the basket, to get close, that’s what every coach preached.
But not Steve Kerr and his Warriors.
They win from outside.
It’s incredible to watch. The ball arcs in an a parabola and then SWISH! Three points make a difference. A run of them put OKC to bed.
That’s why I started watching. Because the Warriors were down 3-1. Could the team owning the NBA’s regular season record get blown out, in this conference final?
NO! Because once Curry turned it on, the Thunder were doomed.
It was thrilling. It brought me back to sports. I no longer felt that I’d seen it all. This veritable pipsqueak, eating his mouth guard like a two year old playing with his pacifier, was putting the opponents to bed. Along with Klay Thompson and Draymond Green and… It was a team effort.
But the three point shot made the difference.
This is what the Beatles were. Something the same yet wholly different. Something honed off the radar screen that emerged fully-formed to blow our minds. The antithesis of the television competition shows. The usual suspects abhorred it, but the little girls understood.
And then we had the hip-hop breakthrough.
But that was decades ago.
So we’re looking for something different. Something made perfect in plain sight that we’re unaware of. Especially in this internet age when almost nothing gets traction.
And Curry didn’t make it through hype. Sure, he played in the NBA, but virality put him over the top.
You know how hard it is to make it? Almost impossible. When you’re broke in music know that the system isn’t rigged, it just doesn’t need that many players. But we do need winners. And to gain attention they have to be different, they have to reinvent the game.
And the music game hasn’t been reinvented in eons. Metallica still rules metal and Jay Z and Kanye are still the kings of hip-hop and everything on Top Forty sounds the same.
Not that being different is enough. You have to be EXCELLENT!
Every time Steph Curry fires from way downtown you get butterflies. It’s way too much risk, the defender is in his way… But when he sinks ’em, like last night, you gain this happiness that spreads throughout your entire body, you feel life is worth living.
Like I said, I gave up on basketball twenty years ago, kept it at arm’s length, it wasn’t worth the time, there were other things I wanted to accomplish.
But then Steph Curry came along and reinvented it all, when I thought the game was moribund.
I’m waiting for the same thing to happen in music.
P.S. There’s a story in today’s WSJ:
how Curry’s new Under Armour shoe is a dud, it’s too basic, too obvious, it looks like something from the pre-Jordan era, it’s generic. But notice Curry’s not signed to Nike, the behemoth. And his shoe is cheaper than LeBron’s. Today’s basketball kicks are for anything but playing, it’s all about fashion. But that’s not what Curry is selling. I want a pair.
