Steph Curry is 34 years old. The "baby-faced assassin," who first became famous as the skinny kid in the over-sized Davidson College jersey torching big-name schools in the NCAA tournament, has been doing it to NBA teams for 13 seasons.
He’s jacked now — a decade-plus of relentless conditioning will do that for a guy — and his jersey fits fine.
Still, the idea of Curry being grizzled, or being closer to the end of his dominance than the beginning, is jarring. Yet the math is definitive on that point. Curry’s deep-shooting, free-flowing game should age well, and the Golden State Warriors have set themselves up well for the future by developing some exciting young talent to supplement their core, but 34 is 34.
And Curry’s running mate, Klay Thompson, is 32 and coming off two missed seasons with a torn ACL and torn Achilles tendon. Draymond Green, the third pillar of the Warriors' triple-title winning triumvirate, is also 32 and missed 30 games this past season with back problems.
It’s about the journey, not the destination, is the mantra of sports psychologists and self-help gurus alike, but in the Warriors' case it would be a mistake to overlook just how special it is that Curry and the Dubs are here again.
That’s certainly the way they’re looking at it.
Teams — even great teams — can get a bit stale, maybe even a little bored. There was even a sense of that when the Warriors lost to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 Finals. It was Golden State’s fifth straight time playing deep into June. Injuries to Kevin Durant and Thompson likely had a lot more to do with them falling short against the Raptors than the accumulated mileage from all those high-pressure games over the years, but this version of the Warriors is more appreciative of what they missed out on than perhaps they’ve ever been.
Why?
“Just the context of the last four years,” said Curry as the two teams met with the media in advance of Game 1 on Thursday night in San Francisco. “From Game 6 of the 2019 Finals to now, everything that we went through as a team. Certain guys individually with injuries. Obviously the pandemic that's happened over the last two-and-a-half years [and] everything that we all went through — this was the ultimate goal.
"Getting back on this stage, the chance to play for another championship. Klay coming off of an unreal rehab journey. [I] broke my hand; Draymond was injured with a bunch of different stuff … so all that stuff is just built into the context of what's happened since Game 6 of the 2019 Finals, and we're back here. So it's pretty special.”
It's also rare.
The Warriors are the first team since the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls to make it to six Finals in eight years. If the Warriors win they’ll join the Bulls (1991-1998), Lakers (1979-1988; 2000-2009) and Spurs (1999-2007) as the only teams of the past 50 years to earn at least four championships in the span of 10 years.
It was only eight years ago that the Warriors were basketball’s newest thing, changing the game, with Curry introducing a new kind of dominance as a two-time MVP who pushed the envelope on what skill and shooting can do.
History comes at you fast.
Now, for the Celtics, the Warriors have been around long enough for Boston to have spawned a near-perfect antidote for the unease Curry and Golden State’s floor-stretching way elicit in a defence.
By lining up a roster of long, agile defenders — almost all of them comfortable to switch on any opposing guard, wing or big — the Celtics reflect a best-practices response to the personnel and tactical decisions the Warriors have forced defences to make over the years.
Boston comes into the NBA Finals with the league’s most stifling defence, which helped trigger their mid-season turnaround from a team that was stumbling along under .500 at the halfway point into a second-half monster and a credible threat against any opponent — Warriors included — to bring home an NBA record 18th banner to Boston.
They’re a young team, relatively. Their two star wings, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are 24 and 25, respectively. Their point guard, Marcus Smart, is 27 and Robert Williams, their emerging centre is, 24. But they’ve been through the wars, with three trips to the Eastern Conference Finals before breaking through against the Miami Heat this year, winning Game 7 on the road.
They have an identity that has been cemented after an electric close to the season where they went 26-6 after being 16-19 in early January.
“What I see in Boston is a great defensive team, super-athletic,” said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr. “A team that has continuity. They have been in the playoffs year after year with the same core. So it's a team that has worked its way to this point in a very natural, organic way.”
The Warriors are no slouches defensively either — they were second in defensive rating in the regular season — but will take the floor Thursday night as the playoffs' best offensive team.
As ever, Curry — who missed the end of the regular season and the first two games of the playoffs with a sprained ankle suffered when Smart rolled up on his leg chasing a loose ball in the last regular-season meeting between the two teams — is the catalyst, even if his playoff averages of 25.9 points and 6.2 assists seem to have come in the flow of the Warriors' highly egalitarian offence.
It’s too early to suggest that this is the Warriors' last chance at a title, but it would be foolish to ignore that it might be.
There’s a reasonable chance that they may have propped their window open for years to come with the emergence of Jordan Poole (22), Andrew Wiggins (27) and the promise shown by rookies Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga, as well as tantalizing second-year big man James Wiseman, taken No. 2 overall in 2020 — all of whom the Warriors unearthed as they camped out in the league's nether regions while Thompson and Curry battled injuries.
But they also know these opportunities are fleeting.
Losing two seasons to injury was proof of that. The Warriors won just 15 games in 2019-20 and lost in the play-in tournament last season. Even at their peak, when putting together an NBA-record 73-9 season and building a 3-1 lead in the Finals, they famously lost Game 7 at home in 2016.
But after two seasons in the muck, Curry and the Warriors have earned themselves another chance at a title, and this one without caveats. They aren’t facing an injury-riddled Cleveland Cavaliers team like they did in the 2015 Finals, and they aren’t bolstered by the can’t-lose superstar depth Kevin Durant provided them that yielded championships in 2017 and 2018.
Now it’s back to Curry and his able assistants, Thompson and Green, with a cast of role players that have adapted a style of play that the Warriors nearly perfected — if not invented — against a Celtics team looking to make their own mark on one of the most storied franchises in all of sports.
It’s a test and an opportunity and a possible coronation of Curry and the Warriors as one of the greatest teams in NBA history.
“It's been an amazing run,” Curry said. “We obviously feel like we still have a lot left in the tank. That's why we're here.”
It’s the kind of Finals match-up that doesn’t come along every year, and for as great as Curry is and remains, athletic peaks are finite things.
He’s the baby-faced vet now; the Warriors trying to regain what they had for so long. You have to watch.
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