Steph Curry's Weakness: The Chasedown Block

Steph Curry is a great player. Handles, shooting, passing, this dude almost has it all. Unfortunately, for him, he has a pair of weaknesses that occasionally, and I'm loathe to use such strong language, here, make him look like a chump.

Steph, with all the skills in the universe, can't always overcome the inconvenient truth of his body: he is not particularly tall, and he cannot jump all that high. Last night, Jonathon (It's spelled right, I swear) Simmons, the San Antonio Spurs new out-of-nowhere-forward, chased down Curry on the break, sized him up, took three gigantic strides, and then blocked his shit on the backboard and sent the NBA's primary glory boy to the hardwood. A textbook chasedown to dot the exclamation point in the Spurs' 129-100 season opening victory against the newly monolithic looking Dubs.

Stephen has made it something of a habit to be at the ass-end of chasedowns during his time in the NBA. Here he is in 2012, getting gently swiped by a trailing Nicolas Batum, still with God's own Portland Trail Blazers at the time:

So gentle! Long limbed Batum is something of a specialist in these matters, so it isn't too embarrassing for our guy, supposedly one of the best players in the NBA, to get gently rocked on the break. But as time has gone by, the indignities have continued, one after another, the most spectacular play in the NBA thundering down on Steph's mind and soul and psyche. In 2014, John Wall, BARELY taller than Steph, sized him up for his mantle:

Oof! It was as if Wall bobbled the ball JUST so Steph could get a piece and Wall could flex pure superiority at the rim. And, people: Wall wasn't done haunting Steph. Last year, he did it AGAIN:

Was Curry fouled? It doesn't matter, really. If your hand gets above the flag on the backboard, the call is the providence of God, and God loves chasedowns, so she'll let incidental contact around the shoulders slide.

This is all prelude. Last year, in The Finals, which Golden State, you might recall, lost after leading the series three games to one, LeBron James made Steph into his personal chasedown chewtoy. In game five, he batted this soft attempt away like it was nothing:

Then in Game six, Steph got sniped from behind in the halfcourt (In what is, admittedly, more of a spiritual chasedown):

Watch Steph lose his will to fight in real time as LeBron unleashes a torrent of trash talk. Arms slumped, eyes, exhausted. The mouthpiece loses its place and gets indifferently chewed. The Warriors lost the whole series, right there. Steph would go to the rim no more.

Instead of continuing to be bloodied by LeBron's python arms, I will let my larger, more spirited teammates do the work for me. Andre, perha—

—rats.

Even when Steph played it safe, tried to let someone else get over James, LeBron still found a way to stalk him from behind, explode into the air, and leave him crumpled in a heap on the ground. It is in Steph's very nature to be chased down. He cannot avoid it. These blocks will haunt him until he dies. Even as a 70-year-old man, playing in private pickup games, he will find no peace. The mark is on him. The Mark of the Chased-Down. The last thing he will see before is the hand of death smacking him into the front row from behind. It is inevitable.