Why we need to embrace basketball; one Steph at a time
It is true that Curry is not a cricketer, which in Pakistan means your sporting achievements become irrelevant
Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry has emerged as basketball’s new face, yet his historic feats have gone largely unnoticed in non-basketball playing nations. PHOTO: AFP
While we were busy appointing the new King Arthur of Pakistan cricket, thinking that in the White Knight from the Land of Zulu we’ve finally found the man to tame our band of brats, we were ignoring historical sporting moments taking place thousands of miles away.
The ‘Mickey’ mouse details recently dominated the sports pages in the Land of the Pure to the extent that they blocked out most of what else was going on in the sporting world.
Precisely a day after Shan Masood’s emergence as Pakistan’s fittest player, a moment of real significance in basketball was given the coldest of shoulders by our media.
Shan Masood emerges as Pakistan's fittest cricketer
It is true that Steph Curry is not a cricketer, and not being a cricketer in Pakistan means your sporting achievements become more or less irrelevant. But after achieving what no one else has ever achieved on the planet, he certainly deserves some coverage.
Even the legendary Michael Jordan — one of the select few hoopers who became a household name even in our part of the world — never managed to achieve what Curry did on Tuesday. The 28-year-old Curry was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player in a first-ever unanimous vote.
In simple terms, all 130 first-place votes reserved for broadcasters were awarded to the Akron-born. In even simpler terms, it means not even Shoaib Akhtar-esque analyst, who have a compulsive need to go out on a limb and be controversial for the sake of being controversial, voted against Curry.
End of an era: Black Mamba’s last sighting
What happened of that LeBron James guy you ask? In little over a year, Curry has dethroned ‘King James’ as the world’s best basketball player. Same time last year, someone might have chosen the Cavs guard as their franchise player. Today, only an ignoramus would.
He now stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Lionel Messi, Virat Kohli, Novak Djokovic and Usain Bolt as a truly global sporting icon.
Statistically speaking, Curry is having one of the best seasons that the game of basketball has ever seen. Last year, he sank more than half his field goals, shot an insane 45.4% from the three-point territory, and was on the mark more than 90% of the times from the charity stripe.
Usually only role players or spot-up shooters are this accurate in the NBA, but Curry did it as the starter; the main ball handler and the leader of the Golden State Warriors.
His standards were so high and his brilliance so consistent that at one point it caused a genuine panic among sportswriters to find new ways to define his insane handles and long range shooting — in other words, they ran out of superlatives.
Ranveer Singh’s tweets from NBA All-Star Game will leave you green with envy
Golden State’s golden boy has singlehandedly revolutionised the game’s dynamics as the athletic manoeuvres and leaping game, pioneered by Julius Erving and popularised by Jordan, went out of fashion.
Some purists, including a lot of greats likes Oscar Robertson and Scottie Pippen, find Curry’s redefinition of the game a little too much, but that speaks more about their insecurity and the threat they consider Curry poses to their legacies than it does of the man himself.
But as impressive as the first-evers and superlatives may seem, the truth is that he remains virtually anonymous in Pakistan. Unfortunately, this snub is not extended merely to Curry or basketball; we ignore all sports not named cricket.
Here’s hoping that one fine day, when cricket stops being the be all and end all of Pakistan’s sporting world, the likes of Curry will get the attention they deserve in these parts of the world.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2016.
The ‘Mickey’ mouse details recently dominated the sports pages in the Land of the Pure to the extent that they blocked out most of what else was going on in the sporting world.
Precisely a day after Shan Masood’s emergence as Pakistan’s fittest player, a moment of real significance in basketball was given the coldest of shoulders by our media.
Shan Masood emerges as Pakistan's fittest cricketer
It is true that Steph Curry is not a cricketer, and not being a cricketer in Pakistan means your sporting achievements become more or less irrelevant. But after achieving what no one else has ever achieved on the planet, he certainly deserves some coverage.
Even the legendary Michael Jordan — one of the select few hoopers who became a household name even in our part of the world — never managed to achieve what Curry did on Tuesday. The 28-year-old Curry was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player in a first-ever unanimous vote.
In simple terms, all 130 first-place votes reserved for broadcasters were awarded to the Akron-born. In even simpler terms, it means not even Shoaib Akhtar-esque analyst, who have a compulsive need to go out on a limb and be controversial for the sake of being controversial, voted against Curry.
End of an era: Black Mamba’s last sighting
What happened of that LeBron James guy you ask? In little over a year, Curry has dethroned ‘King James’ as the world’s best basketball player. Same time last year, someone might have chosen the Cavs guard as their franchise player. Today, only an ignoramus would.
He now stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Lionel Messi, Virat Kohli, Novak Djokovic and Usain Bolt as a truly global sporting icon.
Statistically speaking, Curry is having one of the best seasons that the game of basketball has ever seen. Last year, he sank more than half his field goals, shot an insane 45.4% from the three-point territory, and was on the mark more than 90% of the times from the charity stripe.
Usually only role players or spot-up shooters are this accurate in the NBA, but Curry did it as the starter; the main ball handler and the leader of the Golden State Warriors.
His standards were so high and his brilliance so consistent that at one point it caused a genuine panic among sportswriters to find new ways to define his insane handles and long range shooting — in other words, they ran out of superlatives.
Ranveer Singh’s tweets from NBA All-Star Game will leave you green with envy
Golden State’s golden boy has singlehandedly revolutionised the game’s dynamics as the athletic manoeuvres and leaping game, pioneered by Julius Erving and popularised by Jordan, went out of fashion.
Some purists, including a lot of greats likes Oscar Robertson and Scottie Pippen, find Curry’s redefinition of the game a little too much, but that speaks more about their insecurity and the threat they consider Curry poses to their legacies than it does of the man himself.
But as impressive as the first-evers and superlatives may seem, the truth is that he remains virtually anonymous in Pakistan. Unfortunately, this snub is not extended merely to Curry or basketball; we ignore all sports not named cricket.
Here’s hoping that one fine day, when cricket stops being the be all and end all of Pakistan’s sporting world, the likes of Curry will get the attention they deserve in these parts of the world.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2016.