Why Stephen Curry (Not LeBron) Is the N.B.A. Player of the Decade

It had to be one or the other. But as great as LeBron James has been, Curry had the edge in one major way: He changed the game.

Stephen Curry shooting as LeBron James tries to defend in Game 1 of the 2018 N.B.A. finals. Curry’s Warriors won the championship, their third of the decade.Credit...Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via Reuters


By Shauntel Lowe
Published Dec. 25, 2019Updated Oct. 19, 2021


The New York Times is reflecting on the past decade in the N.B.A., which has evolved perhaps more than any other major sports league.

The choice for the N.B.A.’s player of the decade came down to just two superstars — Stephen Curry and LeBron James. Which of the two should it be?

After all, if it wasn’t Curry holding a championship trophy in recent years, the expectation was that it would be James instead. Nine of the decade’s N.B.A. finals featured at least one of them, and their teams claimed six of the championships. They won half of the past decade’s Most Valuable Player Awards. If one of them wasn’t on national television on a given night, then the other one was. With the previous generation’s biggest stars fading, they boldly staked their claim to the spotlight.

But when it came to picking the player of the decade, our writers’ decisions were pretty clear.
The Case for LeBron James


James as a member of the Miami Heat in the playoffs of 2012, when he won his first title.Credit...Andrew Innerarity/Reuters


VICTOR MATHER

Senior staff editor and reporter

Let’s see: the most points in the decade, the most field goals, the top rating in most advanced stats, the most Most Valuable Player awards (three), the most finals M.V.P. awards (three). LeBron James even led the decade in minutes played.

Or you could be a contrarian and choose, maybe, the blocks-per-minute leader, JaVale McGee. Probably not the right pick, though.

SCOTT CACCIOLA

Sports reporter

Three N.B.A. championships, including the first for the city of Cleveland. Three more M.V.P.s to go with the one he won last decade. More highlight-reel dunks and chase-down blocks and signature moments than any of his peers (no offense, Steph).

But beyond merely being the most dominant player of the decade, James was the figure around whom the rest of the league orbited. For potential title contenders, his presence — in Miami, in Cleveland, in Los Angeles — figured into every calculation other teams made. Which players could they acquire to help vanquish the King? Which picks could they package to trade for more depth, more star power, more scoring and defense?

Now in his 17th season, and on the cusp of a new decade, James is still going strong, positioning the Lakers for their first deep playoff run since the days of Kobe Bryant. Staggering but true: James’s greatest feat may still be ahead of him.


The Landslide for Stephen Curry

HARVEY ARATON

Hall of Fame sportswriter

Stephen Curry. Heresy, right? Maybe not. Curry’s impact on the way N.B.A. games are played now — from deep and deeper — has been more profound than James’s impact, though the King was unquestionably the decade’s best overall player and biggest newsmaker.

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Just for the record, Curry was a two-time M.V.P., won as many titles (three) as James — all against James’s team — and was the most dynamic talent for a Warriors team that set the record (73) for most games won in a season. He was the most breathtaking long-distance dialer of a far-out decade.

MARC STEIN


MARC STEIN

Hall of Fame sports reporter

This one is impossible. LeBron took his Miami and Cleveland teams to eight consecutive N.B.A. finals and ushered in the player-empowerment era with “The Decision” in 2010 — followed by two more landscape-altering free agencies — when he returned to the Cavaliers in 2014 and then bolted to the Lakers in 2018. Stephen Curry rewrote the boundaries of acceptable shooting distance as the 3-pointer became this sport’s weapon of prominence, and he served as the face of a team that went to five consecutive finals and won three championships.

A tie is the fairest result here, but I grudgingly concede that ties aren’t allowed. So I’m going with Steph, as the starriest force most synonymous with the Team of the Decade, by the narrowest of margins.

The panelists’ verdict: Curry defined the last decade.

Ben Margot/Associated Press


KEVIN DRAPER

Sports business reporter

LeBron James was undoubtedly the best player of the decade, but Stephen Curry defined it. Writing about the 3-point revolution has become stale and trite, but Curry really did change the game. It was not all that long ago that shooting pull-up 3s, or shooting from more than a foot or two behind the arc, was verboten. But Curry and the Warriors redefined what needed to be defended, warping and breaking defensive schemes in the process.

Oh, and he also won three championships, two M.V.P.’s and led the Warriors to the best regular-season ever in 2015-16. Let’s not talk about what happened next.



SHAUNTEL LOWE

N.B.A. editor

It feels weird not to pick LeBron James here, what with him being the best player in the world and all, but Stephen Curry was the defining player of this decade. No one changed basketball the way he did, and no one captivated the world as he did. Suddenly, here was a player for whom there was no such thing as a bad shot. That’s not true for anyone besides Curry. He’s the one.


Stephen Curry won three championships with the Warriors in the 2010s.Credit...Cary Edmondson/USA Today Sports, via Reuters


BENJAMIN HOFFMAN

Senior staff editor

Try to imagine Stephen Curry playing in any other decade.

The record for 3-pointers in a season when Curry joined the N.B.A. in the 2009-10 season was 269 by Ray Allen, and only 21 players had ever topped 200. In the 11 seasons since, Curry has topped Allen’s record five times, setting a potentially unbreakable record of 402 in 2015-16.

But Curry didn’t benefit from this era — he created it. Before him, it was unheard of to ignore the shot clock and hoist 30-footers off the dribble with ease. And even though he has his share of imitators (Damian Lillard, Trae Young, etc.), no one has mastered the art nearly as well.

Curry was at the heart of the decade’s best team, winning three titles in a five-year period of total dominance, and his size and smile helped him become the face of the N.B.A. for a new generation of fans.

Stephen Curry: A master of what he does

The Golden State superstar passed Ray Allen for the top-spot on the career 3-pointer list. And he did it in 511 fewer games.


Golden State’s Stephen Curry broke Ray Allen’s career record for regular-season 3-pointers during the first quarter of a game against the Knicks on Tuesday.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press



By Scott Cacciola
Published Dec. 14, 2021Updated Dec. 21, 2021


It takes about a second and a half from the moment Stephen Curry releases the basketball until it reaches the hoop more than 22 feet away, a flicker of time that somehow feels frozen for an expectant crowd, for his defenders and teammates, for television viewers and front office executives.

“Emotionally, he’ll take you on a journey,” said Bob Myers, the general manager of the Golden State Warriors. “And I’m not sure that exists for other players. It’s something to behold.”

For 13 N.B.A. seasons, Curry has been cluttering box scores for Golden State, and on Tuesday, he became the N.B.A.’s most prolific 3-point shooter when he sailed past Ray Allen’s career record. The record-tying and record-breaking shots came early in the first quarter of a game against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, with Allen in attendance and the crowd buzzing every time Curry touched the ball.




At 33, Curry is assembling one of the best seasons of his career, and he has helped position Golden State atop the Western Conference as the team awaits the return of Klay Thompson.



In the process, Curry continues to refashion the 3-point line as his personal canvas, and with each week that passes, his record-setting total will grow: 2,977 career 3-pointers and counting in 789 games. Allen’s previous record had come in 1,300 games.

But beyond the gluttonous numbers is the artistry of an athlete capable of producing jolts of electricity whenever he lines up a long-distance jumper.

“You can feel the frenetic kind of energy that he generates,” said Bruce Fraser, one of Golden State’s assistants. “And when he really gets going, you can see the ball spinning a little faster coming out of his hands, and the arc of his shot — it’s almost like a meteor shower. It’s a storm in the sky. And I’ve never felt that from anyone else.”

Curry’s latest milestone comes as Golden State continues to stage its renaissance after having stumbled through the wilderness of two listless, injury-riddled seasons — struggles that made a onetime superpower appear mortal after five straight appearances in the N.B.A. finals, including three championship victories over LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers.




Curry has seldom, if ever, been more of a sensation. After he made nine 3-pointers and scored 40 points in a lopsided victory last month, he was serenaded with “M.V.P.” chants — which was no big deal, except that Curry was in Cleveland.

“When 30 got going, he got going,” the Cavaliers’ Darius Garland told reporters, referring to Curry’s uniform number. “Nothing else you can really say.”


“When 30 got going, he got going,” the Cavaliers’ Darius Garland told reporters, referring to Curry’s uniform number. “Nothing else you can really say.”

That is debatable. Over the course of a recent 15-minute telephone interview, Myers compared Curry to art by Rembrandt and Picasso, the Hall of Fame baseball player Ken Griffey Jr., and the Golden Gate Bridge.




Image
Curry was embraced by his father, Dell, shortly after setting the record. Dell was a sharpshooter as well, hitting 1,245 3-pointers in his 16-season career.Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press


Hyperbole from a member of the same organization? Perhaps. Then again, Allen Iverson has described Curry as one of his favorite players, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal routinely use the adjective “Stephortless,” and social media spirals toward chaos whenever Curry goes on one of his molten flurries.

Why? Because Curry does not merely shoot 3-pointers. No, he makes them with three defenders draped all over him like a cheap tablecloth. He beats buzzers and crushes hope. He drains 3s on the run and from the general vicinity of the food court. He smiles and dances and points and preens, turning each field-goal attempt into a telenovela.

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“He’s a master at what he does,” said the Nets’ Kevin Durant, a former teammate.

After Curry broke Allen’s record on Tuesday, the two embraced.



“I pride myself on shooting a high percentage,” Curry said. “I pride myself on that helping us win games. Now, I can pride myself on the longevity of getting to that number Ray set, hopefully pushing it to a number nobody can reach. I never wanted to call myself the greatest shooter until I got that record. I’m comfortable saying that now.”

Fred Kast, who spent 57 years as the Warriors’ official scorer before he retired last season, was the person responsible for documenting all of the 3-pointers that Curry made at home games. Kast, 82, took his job seriously, which meant that he tried hard to block out the emotion of the crowd whenever Curry started doing Curry things.




Image
“You can feel the frenetic kind of energy that he generates,” said Bruce Fraser, a Golden State assistant who helps Curry perfect his craft.Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press


Now, as a fan watching the games from his couch, Kast has a bit of a different perspective. Because he can focus entirely on the action, his appreciation for Curry has only grown.

“You find it surprising when he does what most players do with far more frequency,” Kast said, “which is miss.”

Curry does have off nights. In a recent loss to the San Antonio Spurs, he shot 7 of 28 from the field and 5 of 17 from 3-point range. He showed up at practice the next day looking particularly determined, Fraser said. Curry concluded his workout the same way he always does: by attempting 100 3-pointers.

“He made 93 of them,” said Fraser, who feeds Curry the ball as he moves around the perimeter.

A friend recently asked Fraser how many passes he had thrown to Curry over the past eight seasons (without getting credited with any assists). Had it topped 100,000? At first, that total sounded absurd to Fraser, who joined Golden State before the start of the 2014-15 season, but then he crunched the numbers. As a part of his post-practice work, Curry typically takes between 300 to 500 jumpers. And there are morning shootarounds. And pregame warm-ups. The total, Fraser said, works out to nearly 200,000 passes — each season.



“So I’m at well over a million,” Fraser said.

At the same time, there is an Everyman aspect to Curry, said Rick Welts, who retired as the Golden State’s president after last season. Curry’s size — he is listed at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds, which is almost Lilliputian by N.B.A. standards — makes him more identifiable to fans, Welts said. And while players like LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo cram games with high-flying feats, Curry has elevated the humble jump shot into something special.

“I can’t relate to what it feels like when Giannis dunks a ball,” Welts said. “But I can go out in my driveway right now and at least get a sense of what it feels like when Steph makes that shot.”



Fellow 3-point shooters, past and present, say they take vicarious pleasure in Curry’s pyrotechnics. They know what it feels like to shed a defender, find the 3-point line and let the ball fly.

“It’s an adrenaline rush every time,” said Chelsie Schweers, 32, who set the record for career 3-pointers among Division III women’s players during her career at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. “There’s nothing like draining a step-back jumper. It’s my favorite thing on Earth.”

Schweers, who made 415 3-pointers at Christopher Newport while shooting 46.1 percent from deep, has considered Curry her favorite player since he was emerging as a mid-major college star down the road at Davidson. At 5-foot-7, Schweers said she could relate to Curry since they were both relatively undersized. And they both could shoot.

“He just brings so much joy,” said Schweers, who has spent the past 10 years playing overseas, most recently in Portugal.



In 2004, ahead of his senior year of high school, John Grotberg went on a recruiting visit to Davidson. But after he sustained a knee injury, Grotberg opted to go the Division III route and enrolled at Grinnell College in Iowa. It turned out for the best: Grotberg wound up making more 3-pointers than any men’s player in N.C.A.A. history, and the backcourt at Davidson would have been crowded.

“Steph was a year behind me,” Grotberg said.

Grotberg, 34, went on to play in Europe before he studied medicine at Yale, and is now a physician in St. Louis. Now more than ever, Grotberg said, he appreciates his tangential connection to Curry, citing the 3-point record that he still owns, he said, only because Curry left Davidson a year early for the N.B.A.

Grotberg continues to marvel, along with countless other basketball fans, at how Curry has transformed the game by stretching the court beyond comprehension. For a shooter, it is the stuff of dreams.

“You get into this repetition where your body knows what to do,” Grotberg said, “and all you need to do is find the space to do it.”

Curry has spent the past 13 seasons carving out that space. Now, on a stage of his own creation, he is there alone.

 

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NY TIMES

CAN NBA FORCE A SALE OF THE LA CLIPPERS? POSSIBLY.

N.Y. TIMES

N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver deployed the nuclear option on Tuesday to force the Los Angeles Clippers’ owner, Donald Sterling, out of the league for racist remarks he made in a recorded conversation. Now, will Silver’s actions — banishing Sterling for life from team and league business, and urging the other owners to vote to force him to sell the club — withstand any legal challenges?
Silver’s authority seems clear on the banishment of Sterling. The N.B.A. constitution empowers him to suspend and fine owners who make statements “prejudicial or detrimental” to the best interests of the league.

                         Credit Streeter Lecka/Getty Images        

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But if Silver’s ability to bar Sterling and fine him $2.5 million is not much in question, he might not find it as simple to successfully terminate Sterling’s ownership of the Clippers’ franchise.

“The forced sale is a little bit murkier,” said Gabe Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University Law School. The league requires a three-quarters vote of owners to get rid of an owner, but “the question will be whether highly offensive comments made in a private call is reason enough,” Feldman added.

 

Indeed, the list of causes in the constitution that would prompt the termination of ownership do not specifically include making racist or incendiary remarks.

 

But Silver — who said he is confident that he has the necessary votes to end Sterling’s ownership, although no timetable for such a vote has been set — is broadly interpreting at least one clause in the constitution, which initiates termination if the owner fails to fulfill his or her obligation in “such a way as to affect the Association or its members adversely.”

 

The league commissioner, Adam Silver,           

Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

 

If at least 23 of the 30 owners vote Sterling out, legal experts said that he could sue the league, arguing that the other owners conspired in violation of antitrust law to harm his business or overstepped their constitutional authority by kicking him out.

 

But any such lawsuit would be a gamble for Sterling. According to the N.B.A. constitution, a decision to terminate the ownership of a team is final and binding and the ousted owner waives any court fight.

“When you buy a franchise, you agree to the terms of the league constitution,” said Bradley Shear, a lawyer and professor of sports management at George Washington University. He added, “If you look at the N.B.A. constitution, it leads me to believe that when you start saying the finances of the franchise or league are being impaired, that’s when you have the latitude to require an owner to sell.”

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Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant, said that in a protracted legal fight, the league could penalize the Clippers further by taking away draft choices or voiding contracts.

“The best-case scenario for Donald Sterling,” Ganis said, “is that he extends the process in court and he wins,” meaning he maintains ownership of the team. “But,” Ganis added, “he will still be banned.”

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EPILOGUE

Embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling will sell the team to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and drop his $1 billion lawsuit against the NBA, his lawyer announced June 4. According to the attorney, Sterling "has made an agreement with the NBA to resolve all their differences." In addition, he will sell the team for a record $2 billion in a deal negotiated by his wife, Shelly Sterling. Sterling had sued the NBA last week saying it used information from an "illegal" recording, and that the league had engaged in a breach of contract by fining him $2.5 million for his racist tirade. The sale to Ballmer [is expected to]be signed off on by [the] other NBA owners.

NBA OWNER BANNED FOR LIFE FOR RACIST REMARKS. Can The League Force Him To Sell?

Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers speaking to the media before Game 5 of their opening-round playoff series. Credit Associated Press        

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league for life and fined him $2.5 million for the racist remarks he made in a leaked phone call. Silver said the NBA interviewed Sterling and he admitted to being the voice on the tape. "The views expressed are deeply offensive and harmful, that they came from an NBA owner only heightens the damage and my anger," Silver said. Sterling will not be involved with games or practices, offices and facilities, or any team business matters. Silver said he is pushing the NBA Board of Governors to force Sterling to sell the team, which requires the approval of three-quarters of the board. The vice president of the NBA player's union said players were prepared to boycott all the playoff games if Sterling was not suspended.

The league commissioner, Adam Silver, called remarks by the Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, “deeply offensive and harmful.”

Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times.

Sterling, a Los Angeles real estate mogul, bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12.5 million and the franchise--one of the most profitable in the NBA--is now worth more than $200 million. Since Sterling's purchase, the team has amassed the NBA's worst combined record and gained a reputation as a stingy operation that will trade an exceptional player before paying him a superstar's salary.

[Still]....it was a shock to hear Sterling, in a surreptitious recording obtained by TMZ, pleading with his then-girlfriend not to publicize her associations with black people. Everything about the recording is creepy. We should not be hearing this private dispute between an 80-year-old married man with a documented history of cretinous behavior and his twentysomething girlfriend. And Sterling most certainly should not be telling her that it is fine to sleep with black men as long as she doesn’t post pictures of herself with them on Instagram. (Bloomberg BusinessWeek )

MIKE VACARRO, N.Y. POST
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Coupled with the punishment itself — a lifetime ban, a $2.5 million fine, a banishment from future Board of Governors meetings and, ultimately, the other 29 owners deciding his fate (with the overwhelming assumption that Silver will get the necessary 75 percent to oust him) — it was a very good day for the new Boss, who came across as earnest, honest and serious. It was a good start.
And also the easy part.
Because this is where the road will begin to turn tricky, and ugly, assuming that Sterling isn’t willing to simply plead nolo contendere and walk away quietly. That has never been his style anyway; in the minutes before the Silver hammer struck, FOX TV reporter Jim Gray revealed he’d spoken with Sterling and Sterling had uttered the three words that guarantee this is just the opening salvo:
“Not for sale.”
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[According to Sports Illustrated, the NBA constitution, which is not a public document, “contains language permitting owners to authorize the league to sell a team without an owner’s consent,” but this provision covers financial failures, not moral ones. Bloomberg BusinessWeek ]

...Sterling isn’t the only NBA owner whose private opinions and behaviors made public would cause discomfort at best and outrage at worst. The other 29 know that. Sterling certainly knows that. He is a lawyer who loves litigation, and will surely have little problem fighting the NBA on every beach available between here and the Supreme Court. And it isn’t as if he’s ever been afraid to fight dirty. Rich men have lots of closets in their mansions, after all. Some of them stuffed with skeletons.
And now, with nothing left to lose?



Photograph by Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling

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When I first heard [the tape], I was shocked,” Silver said at one point. “I was hoping somehow that it was fraudulent or that it had been doctored, that possibly it wasn’t indeed Donald Sterling. I’ve known Donald for over 20 years, so I suspected it was his voice, and we set about immediately investigating, and that was my reaction, to … say, ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible.’ ”
And in that answer was the one fissure that is sure to shadow the league into court, the one question a smart lawyer such as Donald Sterling might ask: “You’ve known me 20 years and you never suspected I was a racist before now? What does that say about your powers of perception? Your ability to lead?”
That’s when the job gets a little tougher for Silver, and for the league that is now his league. Silver is smart. He is tough. He will have an answer for that, and will have to hope that his owners are equally tough when their own quirks and peccadillos are questioned by Sterling and the glut of depositions and discoveries that are sure to come.