MINNEAPOLIS — Steph Curry is — inarguably — one of many biggest gamers to ever grace a basketball court docket.
He owns each main 3-point taking pictures report, possesses a handful of championship rings and has exuded an immeasurable affect on the game from the NBA on all the way down to grassroots ranges.
Curry is one in all a choose few who can declare to be within the pantheon of hoops immortals.
He is also the following in a rising line of the sport’s icons to be felled by the ascendant, brash and supremely proficient 24-year-old Timberwolves celebrity Anthony Edwards after the Warriors tackle Minnesota within the second spherical.
Recreation 1 will probably be at Goal Heart in Minneapolis on Tuesday evening (6:30 p.m., TNT).
Over the previous two postseasons, Edwards has knocked a whole wing of the Corridor of Fame out of the championship competition.
Kevin Durant, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James and Luka Doncic are among the many basketball divinity felled by the Midwestern Kratos.
Curry, former Wolves star Jimmy Butler and Draymond Inexperienced know they’ve a problem forward of them if they don’t need to see their names added to the checklist after surviving a grueling seven-game sequence with Houston.
“He’s playing with supreme confidence … he’s the same Ant who is trying to take strides with every opportunity he gets,” Curry stated. “He’s going to be a tough challenge.”
Curry and coach Steve Kerr are partially accountable for his development this season.
Kerr coached Edwards and Group USA in the course of the 2024 Olympic Video games, and Edwards has said that Curry’s mentorship in Paris on a gold-medal run had a profound influence on the Minnesota celebrity’s growth.
In case Edwards wanted any further motivation to commit one other act of basketball deicide, the Warriors critiqued his work ethic in the course of the pre-draft course of in 2020, when Golden State used the second general decide on James Wiseman after the Wolves took Edwards.
Edwards later credited these feedback for serving to him hone his work ethic, however these phrases might nonetheless show to be a supply of motivation.
He has already confirmed he can mild up the Warriors. Edwards has scored no less than 40 factors in 5 completely different playoff video games, and scored no less than 27 factors in three of 4 matchups with Golden State this season.
In 4 regular-season video games between the groups, three of which the Warriors gained, Edwards averaged 26 factors per recreation.
Over the Wolves’ five-game sequence win over James, Doncic and the Lakers, he averaged 26.8 factors.
“It means a lot. I mean, we beat the best player in the world, the best player ever,” Edwards stated after the Wolves clinched in Recreation 5.
His first postseason matchup with the grizzled Warriors ought to current a far more durable problem than a Lakers workforce with no identification.
Golden State can throw succesful stoppers reminiscent of Butler, Moses Moody, and Gary Payton II, amongst others, on the high-flying wing who additionally made a league-high 320 3-pointers in the course of the common season.
No matter who his main defender is, stopping Edwards will probably be a workforce effort.
“You’ve got to send multiple bodies at him, and figure out a game plan to go at him,” Curry stated.
In the event that they don’t execute, Golden State’s triumvirate of future Corridor of Famers will probably be added to the ever-increasing variety of luminaries who can’t cease Edwards’ rise to the mountaintop they as soon as occupied.
