As Kobe Bryant fades, Stephen Curry rises
Lakers teammate Robert Horry summed up the league’s reaction after Kobe dropped 56 on Memphis in 2002, saying, “Words can’t describe what that cat did tonight.”
There are times when Curry’s dribbling virtuosity — behind the back, between the legs, standard crossover, both hands — must be viewed in slow motion, multiple times, to be comprehended.
Add Curry’s quick release, deadly accuracy and the ability to create his shot at any spot on the floor, and … yes, that’s a revolution.
In that sense, the Warriors’ long-range onslaught is nothing new, but it took an NBA championship, with Curry leading the way, to overwhelm the skeptics.
People now wonder if there’s any room left in the NBA for post-up centers, mid-range shooters, big-man frontcourts or anything that characterized the league in Jordan’s time.
Bryant, radically self-obsessed to the point of having precious few friends, has been a fierce-minded loner since the age of 8, when his father’s career took him from Europe to Philadelphia and Kobe was, in his words, “a little Italian kid.”
If you ever heard of an NBA player working especially hard to recover from injury, chances are that Kobe worked twice as hard — but his determination has cost the Lakers dearly.
[...] it’s been nothing but bad news: long recovery, knee injury, recovery, shoulder surgery and recovery, not to mention the franchise-suffocating burden of his two-year, $48.5 million contract.
[...] why would any elite free agent go anywhere near this team with a sadly depleted roster and Bryant — whenever he could get on the court — demanding the ball for yet another contested three-point shot in isolation?
To watch Kobe now is to witness free throws clanking off the front rim and the dreadful procession of three-point shots only rarely hitting the mark (22 percent).
People can catch a final glimpse, and if they’ve been around, they’ll remember how savagely he dunked on people, how he owned the mid-range game, how his textbook fundamentals gave him such a decisive edge, how he closed games with the fury of an electrical storm, and how he knew he was the best, openly savoring every conquest.