Once you start getting big, all of the haters start to show up. That’s what has been happening with Steph Curry recently. With all of his heroics and talent showcased throughout the last year, many players from the older eras believe he’s not that great.

Charles Barkley was on Inside the NBA stating Steph Curry needed to be ‘touched up’ a bit when he’s playing. 

Isiah Thomas echoed his sentiments on Mike & Mike, “You can’t really apply the rules of my era to this one. We have to appreciate what Steph is doing under the rules he’s playing under, and he’s the best player under the circumstances.” 

And all-time great Oscar Robertson took to Mike & Mike to state, “If I’ve got a guy who’s great shooting the ball outside, don’t you want to extend your defense out a little bit?………I just don’t think coaches today in basketball understand the game of basketball. They don’t know anything about defenses. They don’t know what people are doing on the court. They talk about analytical basketball and stuff like that.”

All of these former players come off as the old cantankerous grandpa, ‘Back in my day, we walked 40 miles to school in the snow! You kids don’t know!!!!’ Times have changed people. Society has evolved (in some aspect). The game has evolved. 

Really? You would want to take a jab at Steph Curry on the court to ‘touch him up’? Is it because he’s embarrassing you? If so, man up and lock up. If he torches you, that’s on you and you better ask for help. Isiah says that Steph couldn’t do it in his era because of the rules. Let’s see what happened under the rules of: hand checking, armbars, hard fouls, etc that he played under:

Yay! Let’s do that again! The rules have changed for a reason, to make it more about the skill than the brutish play. I’m not an advocate for today’s game, because I do think it’s kinda soft you can’t put your hands on a person in a contact sport. There are crys, literally crys, for And 1’s and players bitching and complaining to refs while their team is getting scored on the other end, from the 1st-4th quarter. Welcome to the entitlement era. The game needs to be more physical, but not like that Attitude Era, Bash Brothers style. 

I do believe however, that coaches do know how to play defense in this league. By god the SIXERS almost beat the Warriors this year. The BUCKS beat the Warriors this year. They have lost 6 times! The coaches know how to coach, the players don’t know how to play defense anymore. That’s a lost art. It’s not sexy anymore. The kids don’t play defense because defense doesn’t score….oh wait…there’s a stat called ‘Points of Turnovers’ so if you play D, you can score? Hmmm…coaches take note. 

That kinda echoes one thing I agree with that Oscar Robertson has said in that interview, 

“He’s shot well because of what’s going on in basketball today… In basketball today, it’s almost like if you can dunk or make a three-point shot, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

That last part right there! That’s true. Kids now want to shoot threes and not do the dirty work like defense, rebounding, and layups because they see Steph Curry highlights shooting threes (I know this because I still coach). This also goes for football. Kids think Odell Beckham Jr. is the greatest WR ever because of his media overhyped one handed catch. You know the catch people do allllll the time and we’re now calling it ‘Odelling’. Hey, I did it when Randy Moss was huge calling it “Mossing” or “Mossed Him” when I jumped over someone for a catch. It’s all about the media darlings and not the people hat have been doing it in the past that you haven’t been privy to to see.

Phil Jackson tweeted:

And the world lost their mind. But he’s not the only one to echo it:

Wait..is that his coach? Hmm.

All in all, Steph Curry is going to get detractors, off the cuff comparisons and “haters” because he has become prevalent in the basketball macrcosm. It’s going to be endless and draw some annoyance. Even Steph Curry says, “it’s starting to get a little annoying.” And that was before he broke his own record, tied a record and team broke a record that night….bring on the next one.