ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA — If there’s any pressure on Stephen Curry to deliver the Golden State Warriors a second straight championship, Curry himself just added to it.
“I need to play my best game of the year — if not my career — because of what the stakes are,” Curry told reporters after the Warriors practiced yesterday late morning.
After a Game 6 which included getting taunted by LeBron James after a blocked shot, and ejected for throwing his mouthguard while arguing his sixth personal foul, Steph pointed towards the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ bench and seemed to say, “I’m comin’.”
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Did he throw down the gauntlet?
“That doesn’t mean scoring 50 points, though,” Curry explained. “That means controlling the tempo of the game. When I need to be aggressive — well, I need to be aggressive — but when I need to push the envelope, do it, but do it under control. Do it within the schemes that we’re used to as a team. Focus on details on both ends of the floor. All those things go into having a great game, and I need to do that.”
Ironically, Marreese Speights said he, after explaining how angry Curry had gotten during Game 6, wouldn’t be surprised if Curry did just that: score 50…
I got two predictions for you for Sunday.
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Number 1: All our guys are gonna leave their guts out on the court.
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Number 2: Steph’s gonna go off on Sunday.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out and scores 50.
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With all the things the media’s been saying about him, and everything on Twitter, I know he’s going to respond.
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I know it.
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And then all the other guys are going to fall into place. That’s how it works for us.
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Anytime anything happens with Steph — be it emotionally, or him getting hurt in the Houston series, or him getting ejected on Thursday night — that motivates us to take it to another level. So look out on Sunday.
Curry, who picked up his second personal foul with 11:46 remaining in the second quarter of Game 5, then at the 6:04 mark of the first quarter of Game 6, vowed to stay out of foul trouble.
“That’s the only thing I need to worry about,” said Curry. “The kind of schemes they’re doing to put me in screen and rolls or trying to isolate me against bigger guys hasn’t really hurt us that bad except if I get into foul trouble.”
So that’s “Step One” of Curry’s blueprint for success in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
The other details include “touching the ball, the ball whipping from side to side, setting great screens, making hard cuts and just resisting the urge to be stagnant and to be passive.
“Then on the other end, you can’t give them easy buckets off of turnovers and you can’t give them easy or open shots off of breakdowns because they have talented guys that are going to make plays anyway. So you can’t just gift them stuff on that end of the floor. So that’s basically it.”
Steph said the team’s film session revealed how the Warriors lost their mojo.
“The kind of spark, you just don’t see kind of that rhythm and that flow and just the energy that we play with the offensive end,” said Curry. “You could kind of just see us on the offensive end, especially the mistakes that we made and the things that we just didn’t do when it comes to creating rhythm. It wasn’t anything — it wasn’t a lot that Cleveland did defensively that took us out of who we are as a basketball team and how we play. So you just have to find that.”
Curry is certainly not 100% healthy, but maybe he knows he can go to the well just one more time — that he’s got more left in the tank.
Curry has spent the last day-and-a-half mentally recharging that mojo.
“There is nothing you can do between now and then,” he said, “except wrap your mind around that focus and go out and do it.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via NBAE/Getty)
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