The Hoops Whisperer by Idan Ravin

Author:Idan Ravin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

STEPH

toughness is character not punching power

#rethinkdefinitions

Strike while the iron is hot.”

Did I just say that? I wondered, slightly embarrassed.

I try to avoid contrived motivational-speak, yet I dropped this cliché on the college All-American I’d just met, standing at the doorway to the Charlotte Bobcats locker room.

Stephen Curry had recently finished his amazing run through the NCAA tournament in his sophomore year, scoring thirty against Gonzaga, twenty-five against Georgetown, thirty-three against Wisconsin, and twenty-five more while his Davidson team lost to Kansas in the NCAA Regional Finals. His memorable performance widened his NBA appeal, and now he’d have to decide whether to skip his last two years of eligibility and take a leap of faith before the deadline to enter the draft.

“I still want to develop as a point guard,” he said.

“I agree, and you will, but you’re already sitting at the top.”

Looking at his life from the outside, I saw all the things that could go wrong for him during another year of college basketball—injuries, poor play, gimmicky defenses—and little that could make his draft stock any hotter than it was right now. But Steph didn’t think the time was right, staying at Davidson for his junior year before taking the plunge. I assume faith had something to do with his decision.

When we connected again a year later, it was for longer than a few seconds. He had recently relocated to Washington, DC, to prepare for the NBA draft based on the recommendation of a mutual friend of ours, Tim Fuller, Chris Paul’s former college assistant coach. Steph’s family came with him to the gym on our first day. My overprotective parents would have done the same, so I appreciated their involvement in their twenty-one-year-old son’s life. His father stood at one stairwell while his mother sat at another, holding a small hardbound version of what I guessed were the scriptures because of the cross engraved on the cover. Every athlete I had worked with to date found comfort in the heavens, and I assumed Stephen was raised with a heavy dose of religion.

He already did everything well, probably because his father, a former NBA player, exposed him early to the game. Steph relied on a quick unorthodox push release, clever ball fakes, awkward finishes at the rim, and, like a squatter, could find open space on the court left unattended by defenders. Unorthodox players like Steph have an edge.

Think of basketball in terms of music theory. Rhythm consists of sounds and silence organized to form a pattern. There may be a steady beat, but there can also be different kinds of beats that are stronger, longer, shorter, or softer than others. Now consider the rhythm of a ball from the moment it leaves a player’s fingers to when it ricochets off the floor and returns to his hand, and the subsequent beats created whenever the ball strikes the ground. The rhythm, meter, and beat of this dribble will change, depending on the force exerted on the ball, the movement of the feet, and the angle of the hand—like slicing a tennis or golf ball.

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