CLEVELAND — LeBron James is accustomed to scrutiny. He’s been in the public eye for so many chapters of his career he could fill shelves with books on the fickle nature of athletic fame.
He’s playing in his sixth straight NBA Finals — a record for anyone who wasn’t a member of the Bill Russell-era Boston Celtics — and has won some and lost some, been the hero and the goat, but is never far from the centre of attention.
His steadiness in the eye of the hurricane never ceases to amaze those around him.
“He handles it very well, he stays locked in,” said Tristan Thompson, James’ teammate with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the past two seasons. “He always tells us: sports TV isn’t good for us, and I agree with him.”
“I get that it comes with it,” said the Cavaliers’ Iman Shumpert. “A lot of times it’s unfair, but that’s what you work for, to have people critique you non-stop … I think he’s used to it by now.”
Which raises an interesting question regarding the other half of the superstar duo battling for top spot in the NBA Finals marquee.
Unlike James, Stephen Curry‘s rise to superstardom has been slow and steady, before coming on in a rush the past two years. He was lightly recruited as a high school star and didn’t make waves nationally until he became the darling of the 2008 NCAA tournament while at tiny Davidson and even then expectations were modest, given the overall talent of his team. Curry was David, trying to slay Goliath with a slingshot.
Even his first few years in the NBA were under the radar, playing for an unremarkable Golden State Warriors team and battling injury.
But Curry’s star has never been higher than it is now as the NBA’s two-time MVP and the face of one of the greatest teams in basketball history.
But as the star rises so does the scrutiny, and through three games of the NBA Finals Curry is facing more than he ever has before. The NBA’s leading scorer is averaging just 16 points a game in the NBA Finals, compared with his 30-point a game regular-season pace. He’s throwing the ball away at alarming rates and has been responsible for his share of defensive breakdowns as well.
“Players have to perform,” said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who scolded his team for being “soft” and “comfortable” in their 30-point loss to Cleveland in Game 3. Given that it was Curry’s worst game of the playoffs, the criticism inevitably landed at his best players’ feet.
Why did Kerr call out his team as soft?
“Because we were,” shrugged Curry.
Curry was part of the problem. According to basketball-reference.com, of the 89 games he’s played this season his Game 3 outing saw him record the lowest ‘Game Score’ of the season in any game in which he didn’t leave midway through due to injury. The results for Games 1 and 2 were both in his bottom 12 for the season.
On the biggest stage of all, Curry is playing some of his worst basketball of the year.
Predictably criticism has followed. It’s nothing James hasn’t dealt with before and he has a long track record of so-called bounce-back outings to answer critics with, not to mention a pair of championship rings.
Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated.com compiled data from the six games James has played after his worst Finals defeats and found that he has never taken a hard loss lying down. His averages in those six games? 31 PPG, 10.2 RPG, 5.7 APG, 52.2 FG%.
So there should have been little surprise when James went off for 32 points, 11 rebounds and six assists in Game 3 – that’s how he responds.
Which makes Game 4 almost uncharted territory for Curry. He’s stumbled in the playoffs before — he struggled coming off his knee injury in the Western Conference Finals and responded to a 5-of-23 outing in Game 2 of last year’s NBA Finals with 27 points on 13 shots in Game 3, albeit in a losing effort.
But this stage is a little brighter, with record television ratings indicating the level of interest the Curry-LeBron showdown is generating. After struggling in the first three games of the Finals this time around as the NBA’s first unanimous regular season MVP, Curry will be up for some LeBron-like scrutiny in Game 4.
He says he’s ready for it, having grown more accustomed to the demands of superstardom as his career has evolved.
“I don’t know if there’s ever a point that you kind of break through [and get used to it],” Curry said. “But it’s all a pretty natural kind of process, I think. The more you go through games like last night or the Thunder series or lapses during the regular season where you’re not playing up to other people’s expectations regardless of what expectations you have for yourself, you understand the emotions that come with it, the questions you’re asked and whatnot.
“So I’m pretty comfortable where I am, and I know, like I said, for me, every night I have a certain expectation for myself that’s first and foremost. If I don’t reach that, then I’m pretty frustrated with myself and kind of know what’s coming, and you just deal with it and move on.”
It is the way of the NBA. As a role player with the great Chicago Bulls teams in the 1990s Kerr saw first-hand how Michael Jordan dealt with the pressures that come with being anointed the best in the game. He believes Curry will handle this taste of adversity just fine.
“I really don’t even need to give him advice,” said Kerr. “One of the great things with Steph is he’s so grounded. He understands how this process works. If you are in the limelight and you’re the one doing the commercials and getting trophies, then you’re also in the cross hairs. That’s the way it works. It’s not like he’s out there celebrating and enjoying all the hoopla and the accolades and then going home to his room and reading stuff and outraged like, ‘Oh, my God, how can they say that about me?’ That’s not Steph.
“Steph gets it. He understands this is all part of it. We’re on the biggest stage, and he’s had a couple tough games, so the criticism will come, and he’ll handle it fine.”
Curry says he’ll do what he always does. Rather than give in to the tension he’ll lose himself in routines that have served him well in good times and bad, in sickness and in health.
“I just basically stick to my preparation and my kind of mental strategy of staying within myself to get myself out of a hole,” he said. “One, not panicking and not overcomplicating things and not trying to psych myself out. There’s a reason that I have confidence out there and it’s about how I prepare for games and for series, and seasons and whatnot, so we’ve got to stick with that kind of thought process.
He knows people will be talking and pointing and asking questions about him, his game and his team. He chooses to listen to his own counsel and let his game do the talking, even if it got lost in translation in Game 3.
“I didn’t get here off of motivation from other people; I know how hard I work and what I’m blessed with,” he said. “So just got to stay true to who I am and allow that to carry you through the good times and the Game 3s.”
