Real Magic

I never said, "The superman exists, and he's American." What I said was,"God exists, and he plays basketball in Oakland."

-- Dr. Milton Glass

 No one in basketball has ever shot the rock like Stephen Curry. He's a wizard, possibly, or some AI robot with all kinds of crazy algorithms sent back from the future via Skynet. He is Yul Brenner in a cowboy hat here to replace all of you soft fleshy-covered things. He's the Concorde; he's David Blaine scaring people with his voodoo; he is utterly captivating, the NBA's Doctor Strange to LeBron's Iron Man. He misses a little more than half of the three-pointers that he takes, but that's what makes him a master of hypnotism: you forget all the missed shots when he Houdini's the shit out of an off-balance, high-arcing hip shot from beyond the 3-point line with an outstretched arm in his face.

Stephen Curry never takes a bad shot, because there isn't a shot he can't make.

Most of his 3s look like bad shots, to the infidel. That shot shouldn't work once, let alone repeatedly. And yet they keep going in, over and over and over. In Game 7 of last year's NBA Finals, Shane Battier hit 6 three-pointers and said afterwards, "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good." Battier, a very smart defender, can shoot from three-point range, but usually only if he's left open with his feet set. I'm pretty sure Steph Curry could hit a J from one side of the Han River to the other*. The craziest thing about Steph's shot is that it looks lucky every time he makes it. But when you keep making the same crazy shots, you're not lucky, you're good. Very good.

He's been called the best "pure shooter" in the NBA, but that's actually an insult to his game. Curry shoots dirty, like a martini with extra olive brine mixed with the sweat between the paws of an injured coyote. His shot shouldn't, by all reasonable laws of physics, combined with basketball as we know it in 2014, fall; but it do. Over and over and over.

It do.

Stephen Curry is a super hero.

* You can ad lib this with your city (eg. "I'm pretty sure Steph Curry could hit a J from one side of Lake Ontario to the other, or "Dude shot that shit from King's Landing, past Westeros, and clear over the Wall!"