“Your mind…blow it, blow it.”
-David Bowie, “The Gospel According to Tony Day”

Steph Curry

Steph Curry can also fly, apparently.

As of this writing, the last day of the All-Star break, My Golden State Warriors have the best record in the league at 42-9. They have been so good, so consistently, that at times it’s become a little bit boring. After they methodically squeezed the life out of the at-one-time-considered-a-threat Houston Rockets a couple weeks back, sweeping the season series in decisive fashion, columnist Ray Ratto’s summary was:

Warriors add another sculpture to their Tedium Through Excellence exhibit.

This is a whole different world from what Warriors fans are used to, and while we’ve had a couple years to get used to the team not sucking anymore, my little monkey brain has not quite caught up to where things are now. In the days before the All-Star game I would see promos prominently featuring players in the familiar blue and gold and it would take me by surprise, even though Steph Curry was #1 in the overall voting, beating out even LeBron James.

After taking a little while to get going, the Curry marketing machine is running at full speed now. During All-Star weekend he had several ads in heavy rotation, including a really grandiose one narrated by Jamie Foxx, who calls Curry “the baby-faced assassin” (which I think was more or less stolen from this blog, two years ago). But those of us who pay attention to such things knew he had arrived last year when the following couplet appeared in Drake’s “0 to 100/The Catch Up”:

I been Steph Curry with the shot
Been cookin’ with the sauce, chef, curry with the pot, boy

Which in turn led to an adorable video of Steph in the kitchen with his wife, who claimed to be “the real Chef Curry.” It’s almost enough to gag a person, but I for one can’t get enough of it. For many years my all-time favorite Warrior was Latrell Sprewell, who turned out to be a truly awful human being (the coach-choking incident was just the tip of the iceberg).

Steph Curry has rescued me from that, in addition to rescuing the team from mediocrity. And pretty much every game he does something that blows my mind – not just the shooting, but passing, ball-handling, and this year, even dunking. His numbers are impressive (23.6 points and 7.9 assists per game), but his impact on the game extends far beyond that because of the gravitational force he exerts on defenses, pulling everything towards him and opening things up for his teammates. Opposing players are just plain terrified of him, baby face or no. It kind of reminds me of these guys:

http://youtu.be/lS9odVqyC2g

And that’s probably enough giddy happy talk for now. There are still 31 games to get through before the playoffs, which is where the real season begins, as all us fans of Legitimate Contenders know. Tomorrow night old (in every sense) nemeses the Spurs come to Oakland, and winning that one might not mean so much in the scheme of things, but it would sure be nice.