Internet Rabbit Holes: More Steph Curry and Other Gym Rats

I was just listening to the sports podcast The Distraction, which mentioned Tommy Craggs, a writer I like and haven’t bumped into in a long while. Which led me to Craggs’s personal website, which led me to a piece he wrote in 2009 about my hero Steph Curry – a lovely little piece that nicely captures what Steph was at that moment. I don’t remember seeing this at the time it was written.

I wrote recently how remarkable and unlikely it was that Steph Curry fell through the cracks of the recruiting system to wind up at Davidson College in the first place. In 2009, the rules and norms of getting into the NCAA Tournament allowed Steph, a celebrated and charismatic player on a 26-win team, to fall through the cracks and not make it to March Madness. This was bad business all around, and proved to be an intolerable situation. It led Davidson to change its athletic conference. It led the NCAA to adopt its current jerry-rigged 68-team format. 

"Basketball hoop" by Steve A Johnson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Tommy Craggs aptly describes Steph Curry's special sauce on the cusp of his 21st birthday, blending the humility of an underdog with the knowing swagger of an NBA's player's son. I remembered that Lebron James made a pilgrimage to see Steph in person and size him up. I forgot about the Loyola game, when Loyola double-teamed Steph for 94 feet and he responded by standing in the corner and letting his teammates play 4 on 3. 

What Craggs doesn’t say is that we’ll be seeing Steph Curry in the NBA next year, because at that moment, nobody was sure that we would. (A Deadspin headline at the time: "Is This The End of Stephen Curry?") I for one was relieved when Steph got drafted in the first round in '09 – I was paying close attention, and I wasn’t sure that was going to happen until close to draft day.

Steph is a magician with the ball – a great pure shooter with a great handle. This is a type of player that often doesn’t achieve superstar stature in the NBA. Craggs names several Steph Curry comps. Pete Maravich was the best of the type, and Pete was an All-Star and a scoring champion, but played mostly on losing teams and never sniffed an NBA Finals.

The story of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, born Chris Jackson, saddens me. His peers speak of Abdul-Rauf with awe, but like Maravich, his teams made only a small dent in the playoffs. His impact was marginal enough that he was vulnerable to getting blackballed for his religion and his politics. Colin Kaepernick could be described in similar terms.

Craggs’s anecdote about Rick Mount at the basketball camp reminded me: At my one basketball camp experience we attended a talk and ball-handling exhibition by Austin Lehmann. He was a former college player, too small for the pros, but for years he scratched out a living putting on clinics like this for kids, often accompanied by his older brother George. Austin Lehmann became an elementary school gym teacher who made the news for sinking (and documenting) 1 million free throws.  

There is a place in basketball for the gym rat, the solitary crank - for kids, be they stubborn or lonely or obsessive, who just like to practice their shooting.