Several of the NBA’s biggest stars have a one-sided hatred for Stephen Curry, per Bay Area News Group’s Marcus Thompson’s new book The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry. This “disdain” as Thompson calls it, stems from jealousy of Curry’s rapid ascension to stardom. Thompson appeared on The Big Lead’s radio show with Jason McIntyre:
There’s a thing with he and LeBron that’s a little weird. There was a time when LeBron and Steph were big brother and little brother and LeBron was like a mentor.
He was a big fan of Steph, went to games at [Davidson], and even when [Curry] got to the NBA, they had moments where LeBron was looking at him like, ‘wow’ and then Steph kind of challenged LeBron’s status. The part that’s odd for Steph – why does that mean there has to be beef between us? He loves LeBron and respects LeBron, and he’s like, ‘because the outside world is pitting us together, why do you and I have to now have this disdain between us, I thought we were cool? … that’s the question that’s in Curry’s mind and Curry’s camp. Why do you not like me when all I did was basically respect everything you did, and follow the model you carried out? … it’s not just with LeBron … Steph wants to be accepted by all these guys. this is what he worked for. For [them] to say, ‘you’re one of us.’ It seems like they don’t want to give that to him.
Curry jumped ahead of guys who may have felt that they were next in line to win a championship and be the league’s premiere star:
Generally, I think it was all so sudden. [Curry] leapfrogged a whole lot of people. There’s a whole lot of people who never got the adoration Steph gets … they don’t like that. Players who were probably Hall of Famers [were saying] ‘nobody ever anointed me like this.’
When asked which players feel this way. Thompson replied:
Everybody on the Clippers … Chris Paul was one of those guys. Chris Paul was somebody [Curry] looked up to. Chris Paul used to dominate that matchup. Chris Paul was supposed to be next in line to win a championship. Then, suddenly, it was Steph … that’s another relationship where [Curry] was like, ‘oh, I look up to you,’ and suddenly there is this disdain vs Steph. There’s a lot of those.
Thompson also said – without sugar-coating it – that Russell Westbrook just straight-up doesn’t like Curry.
Frankly, players can feel however they want about Curry, and that shouldn’t bother him. With greatness comes jealousy from others. He isn’t going to apologize for being a great player.
