Stephen Curry scored 50 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and dished for six assists as the defending champion Golden State Warriors bounced back from a disastrous game six loss at home to win game seven at Sacramento 120-100 and advance to a second round playoff showdown with the L.A. Lakers, who dispatched the Memphis Grizzlies in six games. Curry shot 20-38 from the field (including 7-18 from three point range) while setting the all-time NBA record for most points in a seventh game, surpassing the 48 points Kevin Durant scored two years ago in a loss to Milwaukee. Sam Jones scored 47 points in a game seven win versus Cincinnati in 1963, a mark tied by Dominique Wilkins in a game seven loss to Boston in 1988.
No other Warrior scored more than 17 points, and Warriors not named Curry shot 23-62 (.371) from the field. While Andrew Wiggins (17 points on 5-16 field goal shooting), Klay Thompson (16 points on 4-19 field goal shooting) and most of the Warriors struggled to make shots, the biggest factor in the win other than Curry's greatness was Kevon Looney's ferocious rebounding. Looney grabbed a game-high 21 rebounds, including 11 offensive rebounds. This was his third 20-plus rebound game in the series, a feat accomplished by only two other players in franchise history: Wilt Chamberlain and Nate Thurmond.
The Kings led 58-56 at halftime, but the tide turned in the third quarter as the Warriors outscored the Kings 35-23 while winning the rebounding battle 22-9. Curry scored 14 points and Looney corralled 10 rebounds during those game-changing 12 minutes. During one sequence midway through the third quarter, Jordan Poole missed a three pointer, Gary Payton II controlled the offensive rebound, Andrew Wiggins missed a three pointer, Looney snared the offensive rebound, Wiggins missed a layup, and Looney snatched the offensive rebound and scored. The Warriors looked like a big brother taking the little brother to school in a backyard game. The Kings' Domantas Sabonis, who led the NBA in rebounding this season, finished with eight rebounds--the same number as Curry, who is a 6-3 point guard.
The final rebounding margin was 55-49 in the Warriors' favor, but when the outcome was in doubt the Warriors dominated the glass--and even though the Warriors other than Curry shot poorly, they held the Kings to 36-96 field goal shooting (.375). Sabonis led the Kings with 22 points, while De'Aaron Fox shot 5-19 from the field and only scored 16 points. Malik Monk, who excelled during the Kings' wins, had 14 points on 4-14 field goal shooting.
After the game, Curry acknowledged the importance of defense not just in this game but in general during the Warriors' championship seasons: "The offense is flashy, especially the way we play our high octane offense, but our calling card has usually been our defense." It is true that the Warriors would not win games like this without playing great defense, nor would they have won four titles in the past eight years (2015, 2017, 2018, 2022) without playing great defense, but Curry's game seven performance was stunning. My basketball Pantheon only includes one player under 6-5: Jerry West, who was as dominant defensively as he was offensively, which is rare in general and almost unheard of for a player his size. I have not updated or expanded my Pantheon since I created it, and for many years I have resisted the notion that Curry is a Pantheon-level player. I never base my overall player evaluations on one game, and that is not what I am doing now; this is more a matter of one game prodding me to reevaluate the totality of Curry's work, and consider the possibility that perhaps I have underrated him. I would not take anyone out of the Pantheon to add him, but maybe the Pantheon should be expanded to include him (and a very select group of players from the past 15 years or so). I just watched a brief video about the history of "posterizing" dunks, and Julius Erving--whose aerial feats inspired the very notion of portraying dunks on posters for young fans to admire and emulate--said that when a great new dunker emerges that new phenom does not kick out his predecessors: the great new dunker joins the club. For dunkers, that club includes Wilt Chamberlain, Gus Johnson, Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving, Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, Kobe Bryant, and Vince Carter.
So, I am not kicking anyone out of the Pantheon--and I am not officially changing anything without putting some more thought into this--but I am saying that I think that I have underrated Curry, based on his size, based on him taking a back seat to Kevin Durant during their back to back title runs together, and based on him not being an elite defensive player; the reality is that Curry is not only an exceptional shooter, but he finishes very well in the paint, he is an above average rebounder for his position, and he is an excellent passer. More than that, he can carry his team to a game seven road playoff win. Game seven road win used to be almost unheard of in the NBA, and they are still uncommon. The Warriors were a lousy road team during the regular season (11-30), but they won two road games in this series, and Curry was the leading scorer in both of those road wins.
Again, this is not about one game, or about a small sample size of work devoid of any championships (that is why we are not having this discussion about Jimmy Butler, a very good player who recently had a single game playoff performance comparable to Curry's game seven). Curry has a large body of work in the regular season and in the playoffs, and even though my initial temptation is to say that the Warriors would have lost yesterday without Looney I must also concede that they would have lost without Curry; Curry's scoring, rebounding, and passing were essential in a game during which the other Warriors struggled to score.
Curry is not better than Durant. We saw that clearly when they were on the same team--but perhaps Curry, Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo all deserve to be viewed as Pantheon level players based on their consistent excellence.
Instead of focusing on who Curry isn't (Jordan, Bryant, James), I will try to focus more on who he is, and what he does. I have a tendency to react to hype by going in the opposite direction, and the excessive focus on Curry's "gravity" influenced me to point out the counterarguments (namely, that there are other players who had greater "gravity" even though that term was not used to describe their play). Stephen Curry does not have more "gravity" than Michael Jordan did, but Curry is an incredible basketball player who should be appreciated in his own right.