John McGrath: Curry’s cranky critics should just enjoy the show

Nobody can impede the scoring machine that is Steph Curry, and Oscar Robertson thinks he knows why.

“The coaches today do not understand the game of basketball,” the 77-year-old NBA legend told ESPN radio last week. “They don’t know anything about defense. They don’t know what people are doing on the court. They talk about analytical basketball and stuff like that.”

Robertson’s insistence that Curry benefits from ill-conceived defensive schemes implemented by clueless coaches is shared by others able to recall an era when an outside shooter would have been elbowed into Palookaville after draining a 25-foot jumper.

Yep, those were the days. The days when referees didn’t attach “Do Not Touch” signs on the jerseys of quarterbacks. The days when baseball hitters didn’t flip their bats upon connecting for light-tower homers, because that would have required a subsequent pitch to be thrown in the general direction of their ear. The days when hockey players didn’t rely on face shields to protect their handsome smiles.

Robertson can’t be blamed for believing he and his peers were tougher, meaner, smarter and more valiant than the indifferent defenders allowing Curry all the room he wants. It’s a “My Generation Is Better Than Yours” mentality, and it permeates every facet of American culture.

As somebody who grew up in the 1960s and went to college in the ’70s, for instance, I can assure you the music we listened to was superior to the profane screeds foisted on kids nowadays. Our political figures were pragmatic deal-makers liberated from partisan loyalties. Our streets were safer, our homes were happier, our clothes were. ...

OK, I’ll stop. The clothes we wore were as dorky as our haircuts.

But you get the idea. We practice what President John F. Kennedy described as “generational chauvinism,” and sports, as usual, is at the forefront of the great divide.

A problem with the My Generation Is Better Than Yours syndrome — one of many — is that it denies Curry, a truly transcendent talent, the admiration he’s earned. Has Robertson considered the possibility that no defense can stymie the most accurate long-distance shooter in league history?

Double-team him, triple-team him, go ahead and do that, and he’ll find a man open for an uncontested shot. (The Warriors guard is averaging 6.6 assists, remarkable for somebody whose scoring average is 30.7.)

There are such things as unstoppable forces. When Robertson played, the unstoppable force was Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged 50.4 points during the 1961-62 season. Had Chamberlain solved psychological issues at the free-throw line — free throws were a mind game he never overcame — that scoring average turns into 60.

Was lazy defense to blame for Chamberlain’s emergence as a one-man wrecking crew? Hardly. He stood 7 feet 1. He was strong and agile, and it was no secret his only flaw as the most supreme physical presence ever to step on a basketball court was converting free throws.

So the opposition fouled him, early and often and then some more, with feeling.

“Half the fouls against him were hard fouls,” former Celtics forward Tom Heinsohn would recall. “He took the most brutal pounding of any player ever.”

And yet Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points in one season.

Curry is another kind of dynamic offensive force, as different from Chamberlain as an apple is to an orange. But the Golden State sharpshooter shares a kinship with the late center who set NBA records as the low-post pillar of the original Philadelphia Warriors: As was Chamberlain, Curry is a transformative player changing the sport.

We can debate whether young players emulation of Curry is healthy for basketball. The premise of aiming and firing from the boonies, knowing that three points trumps two points executed from the most practiced half-court set, would have turned John Wooden’s stomach.

But Curry’s not responsible for the long-term health of basketball. He’s just taken advantage of the NBA’s decision to reward long-range marksmanship in 1979.

Nothing short of an implausible rules modification — three points for baskets inside the arc, two points for the jumper outside it — will cease the tidal wave Curry has created.

“He’s shot well because of what’s going in basketball today,” said Robertson. “It’s almost like if you can dunk or make a 3-point shot, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

Steph Curry is not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but he’s in the discussion. And about this there is no doubt: His 3-point shot is creating defensive conundrums not seen since Wilt Chamberlain was in his prime, on top of the world.

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 5:43 PM with the headline "John McGrath: Curry’s cranky critics should just enjoy the show."