At the outset of the N.B.A. finals, Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, paid tribute to Stephen Curry by comparing him to, of all people, Roger Bannister.
What Bannister was to track, Silver believed, Curry had become to professional basketball: a barrier crasher and culture changer who is reconfiguring the basketball court’s scoring contours.
Silver chose Bannister as his example because, when he ran the first sub-four-minute mile in 1954, “it wasn’t something that then nobody touched for 20 years.”
After Bannister, running a sub-four-minute mile at the high end of the sport became a common occurrence.