If Stephen Curry were a commodity on the stock market, he'd have every neurotic, sleep-deprived, caffeine-addicted trader on Wall Street stuck on a spastic, coronary-inducing rollercoaster ride.
Just as he did to every die-hard hoops fan in Oakland—and every casual fan who caught on—during the Golden State Warriors' Cinderella run through the 2013 NBA playoffs.
Curry is the very embodiment of the vast chasm between risk and reward that regularly sends chills down the spines of play-it-safe general managers and sparks fun-but-feverish-but-also-pointless debates between talking heads, stay-at-home bloggers, "esteemed" columnists and outraged commenters alike. His appeal is predicated primarily on the three-point shot, which is "high risk" by its very nature: it's more difficult to make than most shots because it's farther from the basket, and misses often lead to quick run-outs for fast-breaking opponents.
To be sure, Curry's a far more reliable three-point shooter than most—on the whole, anyway. He's hit 44.6 percent of his regular-season three-point attempts as a pro (second all-time, behind only Steve Kerr) and set a new single-season record for made threes (272) while nailing 45.3 percent of his attempts (third in the NBA) in 2012-13.