Steph Curry couldn’t be muffled. He drilled 30-footers, slinked through the defense, dropped pretty floaters, and almost single-handedly powered the Warriors to a victory in Game 2 of the 2019 NBA Finals. He whipped perfect, quick passes out of traps that played into the Warriors’ hands. They looked like the vintage Dubs. When Curry is on, modern defenses have the resistance of cardboard against a tidal wave.
Trailing by 11 with the game dwindling down, Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse was desperate. The youngest of nine siblings, an unknown interloper who played at the University of Northern Iowa, bouncing around the British Basketball League and the then-D-League before landing in Toronto as an assistant, Nurse was never supposed to be here: under the bright lights of the NBA Finals as a rookie coach, on the precipice of losing one of the biggest games of his career.