It’s a comparison that’s been made repeatedly over the past six months or so – often to the chagrin of football fans- but increasingly it seems like Steph Curry might just well be the lone equivalent Leo Messi has right now.
The reasons for the irritation of those football fans were understandable: just over two years ago Curry wasn’t even in the discussion for the NBA MVP, while Messi has a decade of dominance under his belt. But with every heist and glimpse of genius the gap shortened, and the similarities began to appear more obvious.
And while Curry may not have been Messi in 2016, he certainly could relate to Messi at the turn of the decade. But as the Warriors first stumbled against OKC and then lost their chance at history books against the Cavs, the comparison began to fall – Messi would have never allowed this to happen (at least in a Barca shirt).
The comparisons were easy to make. Both had low key personalities that made the resemblance quite obvious but it wasn’t even as if the comparison was all that unfair, but it’s what happened over the last two years that really pushed his case.
After all, Messi was once an injury prone savant who was expected to be too small for an increasingly athletic game. As he came through the Barca youth teams football was moving further and further away from his sort of player – an small, frail, old school dribbler, who relied overwhelmingly on his technical expertise.
"There isn't any surgery in my future this summer... There's no excuses for what happened on the floor." Stephen Curry on his knee
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) June 20, 2016
The same could be said of Curry as he came out of college, with some even suggesting that he could not even survive in the big leagues with the frame that he had. But it’s the development of his Golden State Warriors team, and the antagonist they found in the last two rounds that made the comparisons more apt.
Of course the teams the duo ended up at show the difference between the two sports. The last two seasons aside the Warriors could never really be compared to Barcelona. Even in a sport that pushes towards parity they were a franchise which continued to find itself in the bottom half of the standings, nearly always devoid of even featuring in the playoffs.
Barca, meanwhile, in the free market rich-get-richer world of European football, are a handful of teams who’ve dominated the game over the past half century.
But over the last 24 months, led by Curry, the Warriors had become the basketball equivalent of the Catalans. Team assists – perhaps the easiest indicator of ball movement – is a stat they’ve topped for two years in a row, with their numbers in both the seasons being better than any put up by a team in this century.
In a sport dominated by 7-ft giants theirs is a team whose best lineup – the Death Lineup as it was referred to – was one with five undersized players (none with a listed height of over 6 ft 8), all capable of handling and shooting the ball.
Quite simply, they believed their technical brilliance would overshadow whatever physical limitations they had. In the end that wasn’t enough, but a championship followed by 73 wins will make history appreciate them more than the world does now.
The Warriors style derives from decades of development, a style built perfectly for the less physical modern NBA. Their inspirations include everything from Mike D’Antoni’s Phoenix team to any number of Don Nelson led teams over the past few decades to even Lebron James’ Miami Heat sides which were credited with introducing position-less basketball (if their beat writers had any sense they’d have called it Total Basketball, but that’s just nitpicking).
Of course, until Miami and the Spurs no team had ever reached the mountaintop, and even with one title under their belt, the Warriors continued to be plagued by the orthodox notion that jump shooting teams didn’t win championships.
The Warriors, though, could draw inspiration from other sports – you could draw a comparison between every single one of their backdoor cuts which they used to great effect in the Finals to the overlaps Dani Alves and Jordi Alba master in. Or as Steph Curry said in March of this year: “Coach Kerr showed us films of some soccer greats, especially Messi. We watched how they play, the style and what they do every single game, how they score. He drew a lot of similarities to how we play, moving the ball, using each other.”
Much like the first couple of years of Pep’s Barca the only worthy opponents the Warriors have had over the past two years have been history and the record books. Or that was the case until about a fortnight ago when they ran first into the Oklahoma City Thunder and then the Cavs.
The other two were nothing like Warriors. They were teams that was supposed to dominate this era, a collection of superstars like no other – one was a team that could claim to have two of the best five players in the league, the other three of the best fifteen. And as OKC first took a 3-1 lead in their Western Conference Finals matchup another comparison started to bear shape.
The Thunder and the Cavs were loaded with talent (multiple top-5 draft picks compared to GSW’s only one being a past-it Andrew Bogut), but still relied on individual brilliance, speed and pure athleticism.
Whereas the Warriors were a finely tuned aesthetic machine, the Thunder were all fire and brimstone; ball movement on one side, ball hogging on the other. And yet the reason they were dominating the Warriors had very little to do with their offence. The way they neutralized Golden State was by being too fast, too long and too big.
The Thunder, it turns out, were Mourinho’s Madrid. Their game, particularly the fast breaks, are breathtaking in their own way, but somehow feel like something from a bygone era when compared to the Warriors’ tiki taka. And for all their offensive numbers, it was their mastery on defence that separated them from others.
"The competition was amazing in this series. That's what basketball is all about." - @StephenCurry30. #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/NzFpXBkMnF
— NBA (@NBA) June 20, 2016
Eventually the Cavs, never a great defensive team, were to follow suit, including targeting Draymond Green (like OKC did) in a way that would make Mourinho proud. And with Lebron there, they were able to go one step better.
And that was the real difference, peak Messi has never had to be in a match where he wasn’t the best player on the pitch. Messi has never had a Lebron – Messi is Lebron. In the end the comparison fell because unlike football, in basketball one man can dominate the best team.
Earlier, as OKC took a 3-1 lead it seemed as if it was then time to bury the original comparison too – because, after all, whenever Messi was called upon in a Clasico, he responded.
Curry, by comparison, seemed overawed by Westbrook and the OKC Octopus for the majority of the series. Yet somehow (mainly through Klay Thompson turning into a fireball) they managed to come back and force a Game 7. That was where destiny was to be written, and comparisons were to be made or forgotten.
Curry responded by waltzing his way to 36 and back to back finals, even the hardiest soul could admit, he just might be Messi. But then the Cavs went on a similar run to destroy all notions of the Warriors’ invincibility, the Warriors were too banged up to respond again.
For the Warriors, their dreams of invincibility died but history will remember a 73-win team more fondly than it does right now. But the comparisons may never be made again, Lebron made sure of that.
