Golden State of mind: Steph Curry is basketball poetry

It’s like watching a baby smile – that stunning, overwhelming purity. Or perhaps it’s like watching the parent smile back in response. I don’t know, but there’s something special about watching Stephen Curry play basketball.

Curry is less a basketball player and more a poet, painter and musician. The court is his script, canvas and saxophone. He is not bound by strategy or zones or structures. He is a structure unto himself – a genius maestro whose gravitational pull overshadows everything else on the court.

Curry is a stream of consciousness basketball writer – he makes his story up as he goes, and as fulfilling as the endings often are, the chapters leading up to the conclusion are even more enjoyable.

Monday night in Oakland, la poésie de Steph was on full display. The hesitation dribbles in iambic pentameter that break the time-space continuum, the unfair mastery of movement and anticipation, and that smooth stroke.

I wasn’t sure if I was watching Stephen Curry in Oracle Arena or Miles Davis in a Chicago jazz club.

Stephen Curry is the jazz instructor of the Golden State Warriors. Unlike J.K. Simmons, he is a benevolent teacher, and his music is as contagious as it is infectious. I have seen Barcelona FC, Real Madrid and the San Antonio Spurs all play in person – none were as impressive as Golden State on Monday.

All the great sporting teams share one, undeniable commonality – the sense of inevitability; the feeling that the opposition’s sole purpose is to act as the backdrop to the great team’s performance. Oklahoma City, who possesses two of the five best basketball players on the planet, was that backdrop in Oakland.

On offence the Warriors move the ball with Spursian quickness, precision and selflessness. They are a pinball machine with a purpose. The best word to describe Golden State on offence is ‘gravity’. Curry and his splash brother, Klay Thompson, command so much attention on the perimeter. Such is their shooting prowess that the opposition goes through a nightly nervous breakdown worrying about them.

This crippling, constant concern is what drives the Warriors offence. Having those two forces of gravity on the outside means that the Warriors have the best spacing in the league, the rest of the floor is wide open for them. With maestros like Curry to exploit and manipulate that space, OKC were left totally helpless.

As marvellous as they were on offence, the Warriors were even more impressive on defence. It’s one thing to be a jazz musician, it’s another to be able to play steady bass guitar too. The Warriors combine those two instruments better than anyone. On defence Golden State are disciplined, consistent and unwavering. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who often take the appearance of gods on the court, were made to look like cats in a graveyard by the Warriors’ persistent D.

Every great band needs a great crowd behind them, and the ‘Roracle’ fans conspire to create the best atmosphere in the NBA. The arena is so loud. The first thing you notice when you enter the arena is how unusually small it seems and how low the ceiling is. This, combined with the acoustics, creates the feeling of being in a literal cauldron. And every time Steph Curry rainbows a three, the cauldron boils over, and it is marvellous.

Basketball fans are hit and miss – certain fan-bases seem to just know what to do and others don’t. The Brooklyn Nets fans, for instance, do not. They need a highlight reel dunk just to acknowledge that an NBA game is transpiring in front of them. The Warriors fans, along with Knicks and Mavericks fans, are the most refreshingly astute I’ve been around. They understand basketball and they recognise the little things. There is clapping for strong transition defence, hustling for loose balls, and selfless passing. People in my section gave Draymond Green a standing ovation for getting an offensive rebound.

There were more highlight plays on Monday night than seemed reasonable. Andre Igoudala wound back the clock a half-decade with a tomahawk transition dunk and a banked four-point play. Draymond Green was leading fast breaks and tossing alley-oops to Klay Thompson. Klay split a double team and then ended Kevin Durant’s life with a ferocious poster slam.

Steph Curry’s first quarter performance was like watching Louis C.K. in a New York comedy club – total ownership of the crowd. Louis did it with gags about sexual escapades and Steph did it with feathery layups high off glass. Semantics.

As many highlights as there were, I’ll remember one in particular over the others – Steph’s fourth quarter encore and brief solo performance, and one especially high note he belted out.

With the game virtually over and the score 91-72 with eight minutes remaining, Steph dribbled the ball around the left wing. He was too far out to shoot; he was closer to half-court than the three point arc. Then he shot it anyway. 31 feet. I’ll remember his impossibly quick release and the heavenly arc on the ball and its trajectory, but most of all I’ll remember that I, and everyone around me, knew that it was going in the moment he let it out of his hands.

And it did. And that is greatness.

Swish.