OAKLAND -- Even after all these years and accolades and championships, the flame ignited by furies of the past rages within Stephen Curry.
It’s not that he’s clinging to anger about the slights of the past. He just won’t allow himself to forget them.
Which is why there have been and will continue to be games like Wednesday night, when he offers yet another atomic rebuttal to all the doubters in his midst when he was that scrawny teen-ager hoping to be noticed by coaches in the NCAA ruling class.
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Staring down the challenge that was John Wall, the Washington Wizards guard who represents that heralded prep status he never achieved, Curry took over the game, reducing Wall to a footnote unseen other than on the humiliation end of a highlight.
“It’s not frustrating,” Wall said. “Within the game of basketball, we’ve seen him do it for so many years now. He’s going to make shots . . . you’ve just got to keep playing and move on from it.”
Wall had no choice but to move on from Curry’s epic performance, leading the Warriors to a 144-122 win over the Wizards. Curry totaled 51 points, 31 in the first half. Playing 32 minutes, none in the fourth quarter, he was 15-of-24 from the floor, including 11-of-16 from deep, and 10-of-10 from the line.
Wall, Kentucky product and No. 1 overall pick in 2010 — one year after Curry went seventh overall to the Warriors — played 27 minutes, finishing with 13 points on 5-of-13 shooting.
Golden State Warriors
Curry is too polite to say it, but he enjoys nothing more than facing and defeating the players who entered college with the kind of national, if not global, praise he never received. Whether it’s Chris Paul or Kyrie Irving or Russell Westbrook or any of the others who entered the NBA on a vessel of hype, Curry puts on his chef’s toque and turns up the heat.
“All those guys are extreme talents that deserve to be highlighted for what they do,” Curry said. “I would like to say we bring out the best in each other when we have these types of battles, even though it’s not one-on-one, back-and-forth, ‘iso’ situations. In terms of the atmosphere and understanding how great your opponent is, it definitely keeps you motivated.”
It was in February 2016 that Curry and Wall staged one of the most spectacular duels in recent NBA history. Playing at the Verizon Center in Washington, Curry poured in 51 points -- adding an impromptu shimmy that later mimicked by President Barack Obama -- in lifting the Warriors to a 134-121 victory.
Wall finished with 42. It wasn’t enough.
On this night, Wall didn’t belong in the same building as Curry, much less on the same court. Curry was in his own exclusive space, a zone for him alone.
“Some of the shooting was just mindboggling,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “Nobody has ever done what he’s doing. Pulling up from, I don’t know, 32 (feet)? Is that documented number? Seemed like some of the ones he missed might have even been from a little further and I wasn’t even mad that he took them.
“You get a guy taking 40 footers and you’re on the sidelines going ‘Yeah, that’s a good shot. Good job’. Explain that. We have never seen this before.”
We’ve seen it before. Wall has seen it before.
“A couple of them early on, he just made some tough shots,” he said. “But it was little bit of us not communicating on our switches. But some of them were just . . . when he’s hot, he’s hot.”
And nothing feels better for Stephen Curry than being too hot to be stopped by those once considered his superiors but now can’t seem to keep up.