Golden State Warriors superstar guard Stephen Curry put on an absolute show to shake off his early season struggles and drop a career-high 62 points in a 137-122 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night.
“Cue the Jordan meme, right?” Curry said following the game, according to ESPN’s Nick Friedell. Curry also addressed the chatter regarding his game and questioning his future with Golden State.
“I take all that personally” Curry said.
“I think that was right up there with the majority of them, with the best of them,” Warriors forward Draymond Green said. “Just because of all the talk that’s been going around. To come out — I could see it from the very first possession. I told [Kevon Looney] early in the game, you keep screening and get in his way, he’s not passing. Something’s going on. He’s shooting the ball. It was great to see, though. He came out looking like a man on a mission. And that was right up there with one of his best performances that I’ve witnessed.”
“When you’re built up to a certain point, people want to tear you down,” Green said, referring to the criticism Curry has received since the start of the new season. “And build you up just to tear you down. Everybody’s always going to try and find a reason to nitpick at something Steph does. Whether it’s, ‘Oh, you haven’t won a Finals MVP,’ or ‘Oh, you haven’t carried a team.’ If I’m not mistaken, he carried the 2015 [team] pretty damn far. And so to be honest, he’s carried every team because he’s been the leader of this group since I’ve been here. So I don’t know why [the chatter] hangs around that way, but whatever. Who cares?”
“I wanted to take him out with 30 seconds left so the 42 people in the stands could give him a standing ovation,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. “These games are eerie. You come into this beautiful building and we’re so used to our fans packing every seat and going crazy and it’s really sad — every game — home or road. I just feel sad for what’s happening with the pandemic and we’re blessed and lucky to play, but I look forward to the day when fans are back in our building.”
For his part, Curry was able to block out the noise and show the world he is still the deadly shooter he has been known to be.
“I don’t get frazzled too easily and am very confident in who I am as a person,” Curry said. “As a basketball player, there’s not going to be anything you can say about me or to me that’s going to affect that. At the end of the day that’s how I got here, and I got a lot of people in my circle that understand what makes me tick, and how much I enjoy this game, and all the different challenges you get to experience having been around 12 years-plus. … I love everything about what this game offers and the competitiveness and the fire. I never run from it.”
“It was just a brilliant performance,” Kerr said. “We’ve seen Steph do so many things here over the years, so many amazing nights at Oracle and now here at Chase. And it’s just a privilege to coach him, it really is. And not just because of his talent, but just because of the way he carries himself, the way he leads, and we are incredibly blessed as an organization to have Steph leading the way. What a performance tonight.”
