LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
We think we’ve seen it all, that it can only decline and its performance, cap: and no. Basketball player Stephen Curry always finds a way to add more than perfect. At 35, the Golden State Warriors player, who is neither tall nor strong, still wowed the gallery by scoring 50 points on his own on April 30 against the Sacramento Kings. In February, he was sidelined by injury. Barely recovered, he put the team back on track. And there you have it, the Warriors in the NBA Western Conference semifinals.
Their opponent: the Los Angeles Lakers, the team of LeBron James. We can not dream of a better poster: San Francisco against LA, the eternal Californian rivals. “Steph” against LeBron, two of the biggest stars in the NBA, the players who have “redefined a generation of basketball”according to New York Times. Face to face in the playoffs for the fifth time in their career, and perhaps the last. “As if the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were playing on the same stage”adds the daily.
Coincidence: the two rivals were born – four years apart – in the same Ohio city, Akron, the capital of Goodyear tires. But if LeBron is a force of nature (2.05 meters, 113 kilos), “Steph” has always suffered from a size considered modest in the middle – 1.88 meters, 84 kilos – and fragile ankles (even if they never swelled). In his early days, he was snubbed by the college circuit and underestimated by the big teams. He made up for it with the precision of his shots and the audacity of his sleight of hand. If Earvin Johnson, the genius of the Lakers of the 1990s, was “Magic”, Steph ranks rather among the conjurers. Sometimes he pops the ball like a pancake and turns it over not in the pan but in the basket. “I have supreme confidence in my shootinghe explained. I’ve been doing this since I was 3 years old. »
“A Secular Saint”
Stephen Curry is said to have revolutionized basketball by adapting the game to his physique. He compensated for the handicap of his size by an address judged “supernatural” in the distant throw, the shot which earns 3 points instead of 2 when the player is beyond 7.23 meters from the basket. On December 14, 2021, during a game against the Knicks, at Madison Square Garden, in New York, the “warrior” became the all-time leading 3-point scorer. In December 2020, in training, he chained 105 3-point baskets in 5 minutes. In terms of awards, we must add four NBA championship titles with his team and two distinctions for best player of the year (most valuable player, MVP). In San Francisco Bay, Steph is a superhero. “A Secular Saint”in the words of Ned Resnikoff, a public policy specialist in San Francisco.
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