Strange things are going on between the rings. Steph Curry and Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels are guarding each other more than 40 feet from the basket, with no space between them.

The two guys are even wearing the same shirt. It looks like the other eight players on the court are in a different world. This dance in the suburbs is its own game.

There is a man behind McDaniels who has the ball but is not in his line of sight. From what I can tell, he is only supposed to look at the ball if he sees Curry holding it. He will follow Curry wherever he goes.

When this happens, Curry does what he always does. His steps are shaky and his arms are raised, making it look like he’s fighting through rough waves to get away. As his left arm swims toward McDaniels, he runs him into a Draymond Green screen.

And there it is: a free piece of woods, some peace, and his own space. He gets a pass and sends it toward the basket. It’s not really a shot, more of a redirection. He then throws it in from about 28 feet out, and it lands in the net like it was squeezed out of a dropper.

It seems like every Curry basket this season is a win over nature. He has always been the center of attention, but never more so than he is now, on a Warriors team that is already weak and wants to use him less than ever at a time when they need him the most.

The player says, “I want to do this for as long as I can.” “But the clock’s ticking. We all know that.”
McDaniels, Dillon Brooks in Houston, and a young man named Jaylen Wells in Memphis all came at him one after the other. Wells squatted next to Curry before the game started six days before Christmas, making the top of his head touch Curry’s armpits and following him around the whole time. The Wells kid, who was 6 inches bigger, 21 pounds heavier, and 15 years younger than Curry, looked like he might have seen something new, based on the look on his face. Based on Curry’s face, no defense had looked at him like he was food.

They are still there, 16 seasons and 36 years into this and Curry’s time on Earth. One generation seeped into the next, making him fight for every inch. There is no one else like Luka, Kyrie, Tatum, or LeBron who puts up with this much stress. From baseline to baseline, there’s always pressure, and double teams often start at half court, with a bunch of guys trying to make or keep their name. “It wears me out, but I love it,” Curry says. It’s like a game within a game, and you have to find some fun in it to deal with the stress. He’ll sometimes laugh to himself as he sees the second half of that double-team coming at him from half court. They’re always bigger, heavier, and younger. Are we going to do this tonight?
They keep an eye on every twitch and quiver he makes because they know how dangerous it is to be unsure of what to do. If you lose sight of him for a second, you could look bad. He could start going one way and then suddenly turn around and go the other way. His body didn’t show anything, and he dribbled the ball so quickly and easily that it wasn’t even a thought. Or, he could stand just past the 3-point line with the ball and pump-fake, which is the tiniest movement possible, with the effort needed to do it hiding the effort needed to make it. Just then, you’ll jump forward, sure that this is the one time he won’t pump-fake and will instead shoot the ball straight into your outstretched hand. Or he’ll stand there and wait for you to hold your ground, determined not to fall for it again. Then you’ll see him skip the pump-fake and flick the ball into the air, through the faraway hoop, as if he knew what you were thinking.

It’s about a week before Christmas, and Curry is sitting in a folded metal chair outside the Warriors’ locker room at Chase Center. He just got done with a super-long body-workout that he calls “the full car wash.” It took him more than three hours and included weight work, court work, soft-tissue massage, a cold bath, and a hot bath. As if this amount of pampering was someone else’s idea, he goes off the list with a hint of shame. He says, “At this point, you need one of these days every once in a while.”

It’s just one more point on the timeline of development. He spent a lot of time in the weight room after feeling like he was thrown around in the 2016 Finals against the Cavaliers. He went from being a young player who couldn’t fill a tank top to an experienced player who could work as a bouncer on the side. He is now looking forward to a few days off so that he can have what you might call a “active spa day.”

Curry is now in a new phase. When I ask if the season is made up of 82 one-act plays or a long novel with 82 chapters, he says, “Oh, man—I love that. I feel like now it’s 82 one-act plays where it used to be the other. You have to pay so much attention to getting ready for each game.” Each game now has its own identity; they don’t blend into each other.

After losing to the Mavericks two days before, the Warriors will lose badly to Memphis two days after that. In that game, Wells will crouch and keep Curry from making a field goal for the first time in his career when he plays at least 12 minutes. The Warriors are in the middle of a confusing stretch where they will lose 14 of 20 games in every way possible. This will dash any hope that they had after a 12-3 start. Their season is like having a hangover right after drinking.

NBA guard Gary Payton II says, “He doesn’t need much space.” “All he needs is a fingernail.”

This season, the Warriors have been doing everything they can to get the most out of Wardell Stephen Curry II. What’s left of Curry, on the other hand, is often hidden by what’s left around him. You don’t have to worry about any other scorer, not even Klay Thompson, Kevin Durant, or Jordan Poole from the 2022 title run. The rest of the NBA thinks he is by himself. A single act. Either Curry does it or nothing gets done.

The show can’t be saved when the singer has a bad night.

Curry barely moves while sitting in the folding chair for almost 45 minutes. He thinks about each question carefully before giving a well-thought-out answer. He scrunches his mouth in a way that almost closes one eye when he is asked a question that makes him look like he is better than the other people on the team. At some point, the subject of sports death comes up. “It’s tough at times. It’s scary at times. I know there are a lot less days ahead than there were before,” he says. This is very self-aware for someone of his status and wealth.

He says that all of those long playoff runs, four NBA titles, six conference championships, and the constant fights with the younger, taller, heavier defenders have taken a toll on him. “The scales have tipped, for sure,” he adds. “It’s more of a measured approach now. I feel like I can still get to the same peaks, but is that an every-single-night-type thing? Maybe not, but it’s picking and choosing your spots and trying to manage an 82-game schedule and hopefully get to a playoff series where you’re fresh.”

Because of this, the Warriors play games in December and January with April, May, and June in mind, and coach Steve Kerr will not let Curry play more minutes in games that are not important. At this rate (31.1 minutes per game), Curry will have played the fewest minutes in a full regular season. It’s a tough game to play, and there are risks: the Western Conference is so close and evenly matched that one bad week can knock a team out of the playoffs from the No. 5 seed. Without Curry, each game can easily be the difference between making the playoffs and making the play-ins, or between making the play-ins and not making the playoffs at all.

“This is what I’ve done for years,” Kerr says. “I took a lot of heat during the pandemic season because I was sticking to my guns and playing Steph 34 minutes a game, giving him about an eight-minute break in each half. And I used a line that became infamous around here when I said, ‘We’re not chasing wins.’ And people were like, ‘Then what the hell are you doing?’ and the answer was, ‘We’re saving Steph. We’re preserving him for his career.’ I probably shouldn’t have said the quiet part out loud, but I’m fine with admitting a big part of my job is not running Steph into the ground.”

What if there isn’t enough Steph in the end? When does the only way to do things be to chase wins? Curry isn’t a steady enough scorer for teams to take their foot off the gas, and the addition of Dennis Schroder hasn’t changed that yet. One of the most beautiful things about sports is when the Warriors are playing well and Curry is leading the team like an orchestra, knowing the unique sounds of each player and calling on them as needed. That being said, it’s just a long screech when they’re bad, when they leave their feet without a plan, when they throw outlet passes into the third row, or when they do the reverse miracle of turning one mistake into four.

Take the Warriors’ loss to a weak Brooklyn Nets team at home at the start of their losing streak. The Warriors have won a lot of games like this in the Curry era, and it looked like they were going to win this one too when they were up 18 points in the third and fourth quarters. For eight minutes, things went so badly that it looked like they were planned. The Warriors’ bad shooting, stupid passing, and fast pace had a solution sitting calmly on the bench three places to Kerr’s left. But Kerr refused to even think about calling him.

“I’m not going to do it,” Kerr says. “For me, it’s more like this: We want to put ourselves in position to give him a chance in the playoffs. We did that when we won the title in ’22; we caught lightning in a bottle and the matchups worked our way and Steph does what Steph does. We want to give him that chance again. We want that at-bat.”

It’s not mean or selfish for Kerr to do what she does. He would act like Tom Thibodeau and put Curry and Green out there for 40 minutes every game if he were selfish. Curry’s minutes have a soft limit because people work together. “Every day,” says Kerr. “We discuss it every day.” Curry adds, “That’s his job. He saves me from myself a lot. There are times when I’ll push the envelope, and those conversations go one of two ways: either it’s no conversation at all because of his feelings about where we are that night, or there are times when I can sense an opening. When I hear, ‘Tell me how you feel,’ I think we can be a little aggressive here. It’s kind of unspoken. It is frustrating at times when you feel you can play more, but that’s why we’ve been successful. We all feel like we’re Superman every time we go out there.”

The Warriors have been a contender in almost all of Curry’s 16 seasons. Now, though, every game is a vote on how temporary the future is. It’s still possible to fix a world with Curry. There are still options in a world with Curry.

NBA general manager Mike Dunleavy, Jr. says, “It’s a little scary to think about what comes after this.” “Our philosophy comes from understanding we have a generational player who is still at or near the peak of his powers. And given his time horizon, it’s different than if he was 25. If he was 25, there would always be a next year, but now you have to approach it like there may not be a next year.”

Although the idea behind it is good, if this is the end of Curry’s amazing career, have the Warriors done enough to build a team that is good enough for him to give them a chance? “This team has the potential to be a championship team, but we’re not there yet,” he says. “We’re competitive every night, and we’re sure we can stay competitive every night. Now, whether we can do that for four rounds in the playoffs, that remains to be seen.” The team’s occasional dissonance on the court is because the franchise is trying to bring in young players while keeping Curry, Green, Thompson, and Kevon Looney as the core group. They think this will make the transition from the Curry era to whatever comes next smooth. People didn’t want to trade young players for established stars because of the “two timelines” idea, which fell apart when the Warriors picked James Wiseman with the second pick in the 2020 draft. The goal was to rebuild quickly or without making things worse.

“I think the postmortem on some of the two-timeline stuff is not great,” Curry adds. It’s not Wiseman’s fault that he’s had a rough season, but we had a chance when we were at the bottom of the standings and had the No. 2 pick, so we picked Wise. We thought there would be a way to close the gap, but it didn’t work out that way. But hearing people talk about the 2022 championship is still interesting to me, because the “surprise championship” — his hands provide the sarcastic air quotes — “was a crowning achievement for that team and what we’d been through since the 2019 Finals.”

“Did they do enough?””I don’t have to answer that, but this is a team effort, and they know I only want to win.” We want at least one more [title] to fight for until everything is over. Okay, that’s it. That’s all I have left. That’s all of it. I still enjoy hoops, but I enjoy winning even more. If we don’t get it done today, I might be able to answer that question better later. There’s still a lot we don’t know though.

The Warriors should do everything they can to get the most out of a generational player. They might only trade for Schroder, but it’s more likely that they’ll try to get a second scorer who isn’t already on the team, like Booker to Durant, Kyrie to Luka, Lillard to Giannis, or Young Klay to Curry.

The clock keeps going, and the work keeps going. He is still young, but his boyish, smooth face is famous all over the world, and his wealth grows every day. He has his own shoe brand, a bourbon, and talk of an end is hard to understand because he is only old in one place: here.

“It’s very strange,” he says. “I go to the schools where my kids go, and my wife Ayesha and I are the youngest parents there.” Then you get here and young men are calling you “Sir.” It’s really strange. I’m still not sure about that.”

For the sake of the exercise, let’s say you are objectively the best at something. Not arguably the best, that awful phrase, or one of the best. For example, let’s say you are the fastest and most accurate typist in the world. (WAR: Words Above Replacement?) And let’s say typing is a team sport and that other typists’ performance affects yours. They’re over there pecking slowly, spelling words wrong, and constantly backspacing to fix their mistakes, and they’re bringing you down.

That must be really hard. It would be so easy to push them out of the chair and say, “Here.” “I’ll do it”?

When Steph Curry shoots a basketball, he is the best shooter in the world by every statistical measure. He has made the most 3-pointers, 24.2% more than second-place James Harden. He has led the league in 3s an NBA record eight times and has the highest free throw percentage (91%), ever. He is also one of the most creative finishers around the basket and has an amazing ability to change his shot when the situation calls for it. In the last seconds of the Christmas Day loss to the Lakers, he hit a 3 from deep in the right corner while LeBron James was closing in. He did this by changing his release in midair and shooting from his right ear instead of his chin.

NBA forward Trayce Jackson-Davis says, “The things he does on the court are silly. It’s stuff no one has ever thought of before.” It’s his weight, man. It’s crazy.”

Yes, it took years of hard work to get there and years of hard work to stay there, but still: How does he do what he does and not wonder why more people can’t do it? Does he ever want to physically push bad typists out of their places and take over the keyboard?

“There are times,” he says with a little regret, “there are times you see people with bad form or guys who haven’t gotten better at shooting the ball year after year.” He laughs and looks over my head and toward the Chase Center court. Yes, you do ask those things to yourself. You need to know how to work and what to work on most of the time. At this point, you don’t think about it much. But sometimes, yes, you do want to help, give advice, or something like that.

Curry is fine with asking himself those questions and leaving it at that. He doesn’t answer them, though, unless someone asks him to. To do so would be rude and possibly arrogant.

“I think he looks at the rest of us and thinks, ‘Why am I the only one of my kind?'””But it’s a good odd,” Payton says. A very good odd.”

If you saw Curry play for the first time, you wouldn’t call him humble. He is a proud but happy showboat, and seeing him play live in front of his home fans—first in Oakland, now in San Francisco—is like seeing thousands of people watching him with pilgrim’s awe. The place seems to get bigger and smaller like a big lung with every make and miss.

A ridiculous shot against the Nets got him fouled and knocked to the floor, where he stayed for five seconds doing straight-leg crunches or some secret-menu Pilates move while shooting with his index fingers in front of his chest. He does the shoulder shimmy, which usually involves his mouthpiece curving out like a fishhook after an important shot. His signature move, tucking his hands under his tilted head to look like he’s sleeping, has become the “night night” move for game-winning shots. On the surface, it’s a very rude gesture that doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

It’s the magic of Curry that his greatness feels okay and his parties deserve them.

“This mix of modesty and arrogance at the same time? “Players love that,” Kerr says. “How many guys can do the shimmy and the night night and still get away with it?” And those who disagree with him never do anything about it because they admire him so much. After the game, he’s the nicest person ever. His responsibility is clear. He’s so calm. He just takes care of himself so well. He loves his family and does a lot to help others. It’s amazing how many lives he’s changed for the better. Everyone can tell if it’s real. “And because of that, everyone sees him and loves him,” Kerr says, stopping to laugh and throwing up his hands at how ridiculous all of this praise is. “And all I know is this: I don’t know a single person who can say a bad thing about Steph.”

Green recently told a story about an NBA All-Star who wanted to get in touch with Curry during the offseason. The All-Star got Curry’s number and told Green that he wanted to ask Curry a question but didn’t know how to do it. Green asked the All-Star, “What do you mean? Green said that this strange exchange is just one sign that “guys in the league look at Steph as this mythical superhero.”

People who played against Michael Jordan thought that his level of skill was almost cruel. LeBron’s is more punishing, never-ending, and less relatable, even at age 40. Curry is revered in a way that is uncommon among teammates and competitors. He can yell at the referees (“It exhausts me,” he says, “one thousand percent more than any defense”). “Yelling at the refs takes your attention away and wastes energy,” and he sometimes loses it totally (“I’ve thrown a mouthpiece or two… or three… “or four.”) But no one seems to feel bad for him.

Curry says, “The level of praise is honestly very uncomfortable and surreal at the same time. I was never the type of guy who said, ‘I want to be the best player.’ I wanted to be the best player, but the idea that you could be the best player in the world or have the best skills in the world never felt real. I’ve always been competitive because I love to win. Another thing that has always been a part of what I do is have fun. I get it all. I’m 6-3, which is a normal height for a person, and I’m very friendly and easy to teach on the court. That and the levels I’ve been able to hit make it seem very strange. I don’t think I’ll understand how great it is until I’m done playing.”

As surprised as I was to learn that Curry has performance anxiety and goes into every game with an unsettling fear of what will happen, he doesn’t seem to be having any existential angst when he’s scoring 17 points in the fourth quarter against the Lakers on Christmas Day. He didn’t seem affected when he made eight three-pointers against France in the Olympic gold medal game, and he hasn’t seemed affected when he put his conscience aside and led his team by making shots from distances no one had ever imagined.

He says, “Yes, I do have anxiety. A lot of it is built into the goals I’ve set and the level I want to play at.” It’s what you think a good game is and how you expect it to play. You should feel like you need to show yourself every night, which is cool. It helps you stay strong.

To explain why Curry is so famous, Payton pauses for a moment and then raises his index finger to show that he has an idea. “Your favorite athlete’s favorite athlete is Wardell,” he says. “No matter what sport, everyone is crazy about Wardell Curry.”

In the middle of the third quarter against Minnesota, Curry drives under the basket and hooks a left-handed pass to Jonathan Kuminga, who catches it on the right wing, about 20 feet from the basket. As Curry throws the ball, McDaniels looks away for a split second, giving Curry just enough time to run along the baseline and get ready for a corner three.

For more than ten years, this has been the Warriors’ offense: the ball moving, Curry soaring everywhere at once, and the defense chasing but never catching. Eventually, a tiny bit of space opens up, and Curry can catch a return pass and blast another three through the net. But this time, as it has been most of the season, the ball never makes it back. Kuminga makes a long two-pointer, and Curry is left in the corner with his hands raised above his head, ready for a pass that never comes. On the surface, this is a successful possession. But for Warriors, seeing Curry left open but without a basket is a missed chance.

As Kerr says, they’re not there yet. The pressure is on his teammates to make the most of what Curry has left, and it’s on him to show them why they should stay loyal. “I count it as a blessing,” Curry says. “I’ve been playing for 16 years, and to be expected to be my best and win a championship? I think so. Thanks for that.”

They’ll keep coming at him, sometimes one, sometimes two, bigger, younger, and heavier. When will his body stop being able to keep up with what his brain is seeing? When will the balance fall all the way over?

He can go on for another five years, but I don’t think he wants to. “I don’t like wasting the rest of his time,” Payton says. Every game is like, “Let’s do this for 30.” Every game we give away is one he won’t get back.

They bring each other’s worlds with them as they work together to make his last stand. But they can’t know for sure: Will he still have enough strength when they get there? Not even Curry can answer that question.