Steph Curry: The unquantifiable king of basketball

Stephen Curry is human.

It's an obvious disclaimer but one that needs to be made in times like these, when he has reached the critical point of greatness, of dominance and graceful destruction of opponents, on his way to a second consecutive MVP title after the Golden State Warriors broke the record for most wins in a season – now at 73-9 - and fans and media alike are exhausted by superlatives. So, with that exhaustion and cluelessness on how else to describe him, the world reaches for the only option left. Since we've never seen anything, anyone like Curry, then he can't possibly be human.

He could very well be a monster sent to smash apart a post-Michael Jordan NBA, or a modern version of Apollo taking the form of a 6’ 3’’, 190lbs NBA point guard in order to fulfil his godly desire of destroying the hopes and dreams of 29 other basketball franchises; after all he does play for Golden State.

The verdict is still out on all of those possibilities, but from the evidence present, the facts of his flesh, blood, bones and mortality, we can only say that he is human. In fact, not too long ago, he was more human than most.

Curry had a very successful first year in the NBA after being selected seventh overall from the small Davidson College. He finished the 2009-10 season averaging 17.5 points, 5.9 assists and 1.9 steals, finishing second in Rookie of the Year voting, losing the award to Tyreke Evans. He was also named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team. His sophomore year was just as successful. He finished with 18.5, 5.8 and 1.5 in the same categories, and won the NBA Sportsmanship award.

That year, while successful, marked the beginning of what at the time seemed the end of his short career. He sprained his ankle against the San Antonio Spurs on December 8, 2010, and would sprain that same ankle again multiple times during the same season, forcing him to have surgery to repair ligaments on May 2011. Then in January 2012 he sprained it again. That February he strained a tendon in his right foot and after coming back the next month, sprained his right ankle again and was forced to have surgery in April. He played 26 games that season.

His career was in jeopardy. That summer presented a tough decision for the Warriors front office. With Curry's injury history and the knowledge of how consistent injuries have destroyed many careers in the NBA, fans and media alike were suggesting that they get rid of the once-promising point guard. Better to cash in than watch him crumble and lose value. The Warriors took the risky route and extended his contract, a four-year $44 million deal that would quickly become a steal.

So he has been broken and has suffered as much as the rest of us humans. But here begins the cause of the skepticism towards his mortality. After finding Japanese technology – specially designed ankle braces – to relieve his injury woes, Steph Curry and his new partner in crime, Klay Thompson, went on a tear through the NBA and its record books. At the end of the 2012-2013 season, in the final game, he broke Ray Allen's old record for most three-pointers in a season of 269 and set a new one at 272.

The next season, 2013-2014, he broke Jason Richardson's team record for most for career three-pointers and made his first All-Star and All-NBA team after averaging 24 points and 8.5 assists a game. He was only starting to heat up.

The 2014-2015 season saw the firing of Mark Jackson and hiring of rookie coach Steve Kerr, one of the alumni from the Chicago Bulls team that went a record-setting 72-10 in 1995-1996. The record that the Warriors just broke. Kerr unleashed Curry in the best way possible, with a team of versatile and skillful players, and a small-ball, pass-first basketball philosophy that emphasised off-the ball-movement, Curry was given the green-light to shoot. And did he ever.

By the end of the season he had broken his own three-pointers record with 286. He had also led the Warriors to a 67-win season while sitting out 17 fourth quarters, yet still averaging 23.8 points, 7.7 assists and 2 steals. But it was more than just the numbers: the difficulty of his shots, his creativity and the ease of the Warriors victories were startling.

Curry was shooting step-back, off-the-dribble, transition, closely guarded, deep, very deep threes. And he was doing it incredibly efficiently. He had turned what was the most difficult shot in the NBA into what amounted to a layup – which he also makes at a ridiculous amount as well - while also being the focus and creative hub of his team.

The league had no choice but to award him the MVP last season and the Warriors would go on to win the NBA title, their first in 40 years, after beating Lebron James and the Cavaliers in six games. After doing what could only be termed as amazing things, Curry ended this current campaign in the indescribable zone that we are now stuck in.

He had what is arguably the best season by a perimeter player in the National Basketball League. He set a new three-point record at 402(!) made in a season. He averaged 30.1 pts, 6.7 assists and 2.1 steals, which is impressive enough, but he did it while shooting over 50% from the field, 45% from the three-point line and almost 91% for free-throws, making him the seventh player in NBA history to join the 50-40-90 club. More impressively, he is the third, next to Steve Kerr and Steve Nash, to be in the 50-45-90 club.

But unlike his coach and the former two-time MVP Suns guard, Curry did all of this while taking shots like this:

And this:

It's reached the point where team-mates are celebrating while his shot is still in the air, and at the beginning of the season Curry even gave a glimpse of just how confident he is in his own ability:

In the last game of the season, with his team needing to beat the Memphis Grizzlies in order to break that Bulls record, Curry scored 46 points, making 10 threes in just three quarters to put the game beyond doubt. By the end of the first, he had scored 20 points and made six of those three-pointers.

There's never been a player who has done the unreasonable so often and stretched defences to the point of demanding to be double-teamed as soon as he comes past half-court as Curry does. He's practically unguardable.

Which brings us to the current confusion. With the playoffs starting, and the MVP award practically his, all we know about Curry in regards to his ability right now is that he's human. His ceiling seems to rise with every game, the range of his shot grows rapidly by the day, his creativity is almost blasphemous 00 and that's all without him being truly tested this season.

Saying he's not human is lazy - he shares mortal bonds with the rest of us - but that's where the similarities stop. For everything else, he's utterly ridiculous and unquantifiable.