Forget the stat sheet. It can’t reveal moments. And moments are all that matter.
Steph Curry has struggled since dislocating his finger. He’s put up decent points on terrible shooting percentages. That’s what the stats show. Watching the games unfold shows something even more troubling. Lapses on defense, missed free throws, open shots rushed or delayed in a rhythm-less way. Steph has looked lost. Like someone who knows something is off, but not exactly what or why.
Then the moment happened. The first really big moment of this series. King Killer Kevin Durant went down.
The Warriors had blown a 20-point lead and were trading buckets, mostly through back and forth isos, a style that favors the Rockets as a team and Durant as an individual. A style that hurts the Warriors and has made them look out of sync this series. Still, Durant has been the only answer for the Rockets, whether he’s risen up to compensate for Golden State’s struggles or caused them is hard to say. What’s not hard to say is that KD has been dominant.
He went down. With the worst bench in the NBA, an ice cold pair of Splash Bros, and Draymond Green flirting with foul trouble, Oracle Arena’s collective heart stopped.
Then Steph was Steph.
The moment came, and he rose to it like a true champion. Battered, injured, tired, embarrassed, questioned, and statistically terrible. None of that mattered. That’s all non-moment stuff. In the moment, he took over, turned the Warriors into a quick, sly, gritty, fast-striking, fun-filled force that just won’t die. You could see the change immediately. Golden State wasn’t just good, they were fun again. They were free again. Steph did that.
Game stats, series stats, pundits and breakdowns don’t matter. If you watched the moment unfold, in all the tense context of the game and series, and you watched Steph step up and own the moment while everyone else waited to see what would happen, you saw greatness.
Stats don’t matter. Moments matter.