Steph-Kyrie Rivalry Heats Up, but Curry Remains Top Chef Until Proven Otherwise
Saturday night's heavyweight bout between the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics was billed as a possible 2018 NBA Finals preview.
What it became, though, was an exhibition of roundball magic orchestrated by oft-dueling All-Star lead guards Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving.
The three-time championship-round combatants simultaneously showcased the best of their crafts, overloading the stat sheet from the Warriors' 109-105 victory with volume and otherworldly efficiency. Curry pumped in a season-high 49 points, human-torching his way to 16-of-24 shooting and 8-of-13 from distance. Irving countered with 37 on a hyper-tidy 13-of-18, including 5-of-6 from outside.
Throw out the game score, and it's tough to tell who was victorious—outside of all the mesmerized observers, of course.
"You got to sit back and enjoy the show," Kevin Durant told reporters. "Once they got it going, you got to get out the way."
And yet, for all the basketball brilliance displayed, it was still Curry standing alone on the mountaintop by night's end.
It's (seemingly) always Curry on the mountaintop.
The two-time champion—and two-time MVP—still has a mind-boggling way of keeping himself one step ahead of his competitors. It's not just the incredible output; it's the fact he posted said numbers against the best defense in basketball and single-handedly slayed those stoppers down the stretch with a whopping (and ridiculous) 13 points packed into the final 1:45.
It was, as so many Curry- and Warriors-related things tend to feel, unfair.
What else was Irving supposed to do? He didn't miss a shot until there were 19-plus minutes in the books. His first-half tally included 19 points, nine shots, only two misfires and some Uncle Drew-style dazzlers.
"He's an amazing player," Curry told reporters. "The way he started the game tonight was pretty crazy. I feel like we were defending him pretty well, he just made some tough shots—a lot of tough shots."
This was peak Irving, flashing highlight handles one minute and Curry range the next.
But it wasn't enough—not to outshine Curry, not to stop the super-charged Warriors. It takes more than individual excellence to do that, evidenced by the fact Irving became both the 16th player to put 30-plus on Golden State this season and the 12th to do so in a losing effort.
"It demands everything from you mentally, physically," Irving said of facing the Dubs, per MassLive.com's Jay King. "You've gotta bring it because you're going against the champs."
The cruel twist, though, is the same level of execution isn't required for Golden State.
Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green shot a combined 14-of-41 (34.1 percent). The Warriors' second-teamers supplied just 16 points, a dozen fewer than their counterparts. Golden State lost the rebounding battle (45-43), got outscored from beyond the arc (42-30) and shot a worse percentage outside (50-37).
Again, none of that mattered. When you employ four in-prime All-Stars, you can afford an off night from one of them—or, in this rare case, three of them.
With a surplus of both top-shelf talent and well-suited role players, the Dubs can take on different forms from night to night, or even quarter to quarter.
The Celtics don't have that luxury. Irving must be spectacular (Boston's net rating plummets from plus-6.9 to minus-0.5 when he sits) just for the Shamrocks to have a chance of toppling the Warriors.
"When the Celtics ripped off a 16-game winning streak early in the season, they benefited from the offensive jolt that rookie forward Jayson Tatum and second-year swingman Jaylen Brown provided," ESPN.com's Chris Forsberg wrote. "As both have struggled at times recently, the Celtics do not have someone to lean on beyond Irving."
Brown bucked that narrative a bit by erupting for 20 points—his highest output in over two weeks—on a crisp 6-of-9 shooting. But Tatum endured a woeful four-point, 2-of-9 performance, Al Horford had as many shots as points (15) and Boston couldn't keep pace once Curry caught fire late.
Hats off to Irving for willing the Celtics to a near-victory, despite seeing increased defensive pressure throughout the contest.
"He's awfully tough," Celtics head coach Brad Stevens told reporters, "and they threw a bunch of different bodies at him, and he just kept going and going and going."
But the Warriors are built to withstand potential knockout blows, especially when their own prolific point guard packs one of the Association's most powerful punches.
Boston has proved it can make Golden State uncomfortable. This marks the third straight season the Warriors have split their series with the Celtics, who boast the versatility, athleticism and smarts to muddle their foe's offensive execution.
And we've all seen the problems Irving can present on the game's biggest stage.
But the margin for error when facing the Warriors is microscopic in a one-game setting. It might prove non-existent for a seven-game series.
Unjust as it sounds, those are the rules in today's NBA. When Chef Curry is cooking at his shimmy-shaking best, the Dubs look like an impossible puzzle to solve—even for a hoops wizard like Irving.
Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from Basketball Reference or NBA.com.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @ZachBuckleyNBA.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
