Steph Curry is 33 and Trae Young is 23.
The Atlanta Hawks rolled into Chase Center and Young had a chance to go toe-to-toe with Curry on his home floor Monday night. The two sharpshooters had comparable first halves, with Young dropping 21 and Curry dropping 24.
Then Steph happened.
Curry exploded for 26 more points on his way to a 50-piece, while the Warriors box-and-one’d Young into just seven more points the rest of the way.
During his weekly appearance on 95.7 The Game’s “Damon & Ratto”, Warriors coach Steve Kerr agreed that Curry wanted to show Young he’s still at the peak of his powers. You can listen to the full interview above.
“Steph’s competitive on a lot of different levels,” Kerr said. “That’s what I mean. He finds ways to motivate himself. It’s not fake. It’s real. He wants to win a championship, he wants to beat the best teams, he wants to let the other players know in the league that he’s still got it. He’s going to take on the challenge, whether it’s LeBron [James] or one of the best players in the league.
“Or a younger guy like Trae, who’s up-and-coming, who maybe is following in Steph’s footsteps. All that stuff factors in. That’s one of the reasons that Steph is as great as he is. It goes so far beyond the skill. It’s the competitive desire and belief in himself that he can follow through.”
Curry has changed the game since entering the league in 2009. Back then, Young was just 11 years old in grade school.
Nowadays, pulling up from the logo in the middle of the game isn’t as outrageous as it used to be. In fact, the notion probably didn’t even exist ‘til Curry joined the league.
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Kerr admitted that it took him a while to just let Curry shoot from wherever he wanted.
“He was taking shots that -- in my basketball blood -- every coach I ever had would have a heart attack watching those shots,” Kerr said. “I had to get over what was instilled in my brain about what was a good shot and what was a bad shot. With Steph, you have to understand, part of what makes him so powerful is that he’s going to steal the ball at midcourt and pull up from 40 feet.
“Even if he misses, there’s just this fear factor for the opponent and an excitement factor with the crowd -- that you can’t coach better than that -- there’s sort of an intangible that comes with him that’s just incredible to watch. As a coach you have to allow that to happen. You can’t get in the way.”
As his team sits at 9-1, Kerr said there’s a familiar feeling surrounding the franchise.
“This is how it should be for the Warriors, with Steph Curry and Draymond Green leading the way,” Kerr said. “This is how it should feel. … It just feels right, we got a team that looks after each other. It’s a deep team.”
