NEW YORK — You knew he was going to win this event one of these years.
Stephen Curry, the best pure shooter in the game, drained 13-straight three-pointers on his way to winning the All-Star Saturday night Three-Point Contest. He beat the deepest field in the history of the event to do it.
“I’m very happy right now, I’ve obviously been in it four times, so I wanted to win it and get it done,” Curry said.
Why would someone come back four times to win it?
“I might be crazy.”
Crazy good.
There were two rounds to the event and for Curry to advance out of the first, he had to get hot at the end and hit four of the five money balls to score 23 points. That tied him with Kyrie Irving, one behind Klay Thompson’s 24.
That eliminated some good guys. Portland’s Wes Mathews hit eight of his last nine to put up 22 points. J.J. Redick got hot but had stepped on the line, costing him a few points, and he still finished with 17. Both Kyle Korver and Marco Bellineli had 18 points, and James Harden put up 15 as he was off his game. They were all out.
In the second round, Irving looked a little tired, a little off, put up a 17.
Then Curry lit it up — that guy just thrives on the big stage, and he hit 13 in a row, got the building screaming and put up that amazing 27. It was in the bag then, right?
“Klay Thompson was behind me, no way...” Curry said. “He’s capable of putting up 37 points in a quarter; he can knock down a few threes.”
But Thompson looked human, too, and didn’t come anywhere near Curry.
This was more than just another win for Curry. On his shoes he wrote the name Deah Shaddy Barakat to honor one of the victims of shooter in North Carolina recently.
“Obviously, having North Carolina roots, and once I got to know who Deah was as a person, and the stories everybody was telling me, it only seemed right to honor him and his family,” Curry said after the contest. “And hopefully they know that people are thinking about them, that they are not alone, and hopefully it can give them some kind of peace and comfort knowing that he was a special guy.”
