Sports

What will Steph’s record mean?


Hot Steph!

Hot Steph!
Illustration: Getty Images

This site has certainly already had a healthy debate on Steph Curry. I try not to get too involved, mostly out of fear of catching a stray chair shot. I’ll just say I find Curry and the Warriors endlessly entertaining, and I’m not so deep into the basketball weeds that I have to think any more about it than that.

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Still, the buzz around his soon-to-be three-point record (he needs just two more threes to break Ray Allen’s record of 2,973) feels a lot like when ESPN was pushing whatever touchdown or yardage record Manning or Brees or Brady were on the verge of eclipsing each Monday night that week. Did we really care? These aren’t numbers burned into our brain. It’s not “61” or “755,” The fact that I can’t even remember Barry Bonds’ totals says something about those records now, anyway.

Basketball records aren’t the same. The game doesn’t spend nearly the time up the ass of its own history like baseball, which isn’t a bad thing. Hitting the most threes is cool, and Curry will set the number at something that will be very hard to catch. It’s something just north of a footnote. It wasn’t that long ago that Ray Allen set this number, and it wasn’t that long ago that Reggie Miller set his total. This isn’t something we’ve spent decades waiting for. It hasn’t marinated.

A three is a lot like a home run, in that it’s a collection of more points at once and more quickly. So I guess there’s a connection. Curry’s chase is emblematic of how the game has changed too, much like whatever it was Brees and Brady were breaking. Or it could be the three-pointer hasn’t been around all that long in the grand scheme of things (it’s been around since 1979). It’s just not that important.

But hey, everyone needs ratings and clicks. That’s what records really stand for these days. I’m with Draymond, I’ll be glad when it’s over.

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