Steph Curry celebrated a milestone earlier this week, passing Celtics legend Ray Allen for the most three-pointers in NBA history. Curry’s well-deserved victory lap at Madison Square Garden Tuesday night was the latest honor in a groundbreaking career that forever changed the sport’s aesthetic. The 33-year-old is seen by many as a pioneer, ushering in a new era of perimeter dominance while transforming basketball from a game of giants to a more finesse one, rewarding technical skill over physical strength. But Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan doesn’t see it that way, expressing his firm belief that Curry irreversibly ruined basketball, calling his particular style of play an “abomination” while accusing the Warriors All-Star of “distorting the game at every level.”
The case presented by Ryan is flimsy, almost to the point of satire, suggesting a generation of Curry wannabes are conspiring to make the sport “unwatchable” by moving it further away from the hoop. Essentially, his argument boils down to one central theme—the 75-year-old Ryan prefers the brand of basketball he grew up on, holding Bill Russell and Elgin Baylor in higher esteem than blasphemous new-age stars like Curry and Trae Young, millennials who have spent their entire careers desecrating Dr. Naismith’s sacred creation by jacking up as many threes as possible.
It’s the epitome of “get off my lawn” journalism, embodying the superiority complex adopted by so many aging sports writers, unable to accept that times change with basketball developing and evolving in the same ways as technology, culture and global economics. Even after being laughed out of the room for slandering a universally-beloved sports figure, Ryan refused to apologize, doubling down on his explosive anti-Curry rhetoric during his recent appearance on CNN.
“Too many people are trying to imitate [Curry] but will never be him and it’s distorted the game at every level. The problem is, he’s so likeable. There’s everything to like about him. He’s a wonderful person. I admire him,” Ryan told CNN anchor John Berman. “I got an email from a local youth coach saying he’s reading part of my column to his kids because all they see is these eight, nine and 10-year-olds cranking up threes. That’s not the way to play basketball.”
Ryan’s beef it seems, is more with the three-pointer itself, an invention he dismissed as a marketing gimmick schemed up by Harlem Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein. “I have an orthodox view of how the game should be played,” explained Ryan. “Those of us who remember [basketball] before the three-point infested the game, destroyed the rhythm of the game, eliminated the low-post play, eliminated a lot of the good passing sequences, would like to see the three-point shot abolished.”
Ryan’s crusade against the three-pointer is a losing battle with that ship sailing long, long ago. There’s a kernel of truth in what Ryan’s saying—Curry has set an impossible standard for long-range shooting, one that may never be matched, no matter how many driveway threes his young fans take. But should that stop them from trying? Michael Jordan inspired an entire generation of tongue-out trash talkers taking off from the free-throw line. Why can’t Curry have the same influence?
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