Tonight in Charlotte

Against the Bobcats:

After a modest start to his NBA career, Curry has been very hot the past two months. He recorded the first triple-double of his career in a February win over the L.A. Clippers, registering 36 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds. Only five other NBA rookies have ever posted a 35-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist performance -- Michael Jordan, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor and Jason Kidd.

“I've got a lot of confidence right now,” Curry said. “Nothing has really changed with how I’m approaching the game, but I’m getting a whole lot of playing time due to all the injuries we’ve had.”

Warriors.com. AJC blog last night: On a semi-related note, as small as Davidson College is, every Davidson grad in the Atlanta area must have been at the game. He got a noticeable ovation at the beginning of the game. He played all 48 minutes, too. Stephen last night in Atlanta: “It’s going to be fun. Lot of family in town. Lot of Davidson fans are going to be there. My teammates from last year are going to be there. They’re going to be loud, and it’s going to be fun to play in that arena. I worked out there all summer, so it’s going to feel like home.” Corey Maggette last night in Atlanta: “Sitting down and watching him is unbelievable. There is something bright at the end of the tunnel. Even in the darkness, you notice the way Steph is playing. You see flashes of greatness. We’re watching an All-Star forming. No one expected him to be doing what he’s doing. I mean, we saw what he could do in college, but you never know if that is going to transition into the pros. He’s scoring and facilitating. He is a hell of a point guard.” DavidsonNews.net: Keeping track of No. 30. Worth the read: Frank Hughes on SI.com. Stephen talks with Kilgo.

That’s Stephen, Michael and Oscar

San Francisco Chronicle: Curry, Jordan and Robertson are the only three rookies in league history to have more than one 30-point, 12-assist game.

Marcus Jordan

The former Davidson recruit on his NBA2K10 habits: “I play with the Lakers. So I always have to give Kobe the ball, [or] Ron Artest. I actually traded Derek Fisher and some other players for Stephen Curry. So, Stephen Curry runs my point guard. Stephen Curry gets a couple shots here and there, too.”

Sports in the Carolinas

My contribution about Davidson and March 2008 is in here, pages 21 to 34, along with essays about Dale Earnhardt, Michael Jordan, Big House Gaines, Kay Yow and many others, from writers like Tom Sorensen, Lenox Rawlings, Will Blythe and Ron Green Sr.

‘Moved like small children’

Michael Leahy in When Nothing Else Matters:

I’d always wondered what could draw people, night after night, to what is after all just a game. But in a world marred by so much imperfection and loss, on frigid winter days when the sun died too early and a man felt the chill of his life’s regrets, it was nice sometimes just to drive to the arena with the defroster on and contemplate the possibility of seeing Michael Jordan perform brilliantly, to imagine fallaway jumpers rippling nets, again and again. There is a benefit to being reminded that we are not so hardhearted that we cannot be moved like small children, that there remains room in our lives for something as mysterious as magic. …

There is something achingly prayerful about it -- I don’t mean anything religious -- but prayerful just the same, the screamers wanting something to lift them for a few seconds, to remind them that obstacles are not always insurmountable. People pray with their shouts.

The gift

Read this yesterday for the first time. It’s what the Duke Basketball Report wrote after last week’s game at Cameron:

Here’s something to kick around: the more talented you are, the less likely you are to be a great basketball player. The catch, of course, is how you define great.

If greatness is defined by physical ability, then the argument is moot. But if you look at basketball as a series of adaptations to physical challenges, then the less talented player has to make more adaptations to continue competing at a higher level than does the more talented player.

You could argue this case with Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain, Reggie Miller vs. Michael Jordan, or with Larry Bird or Magic Johnson vs. any number of their contemporaries.

You could, one supposes, start to make that argument about Davidson’s Stephen Curry.

Interesting. It made me think about something I read last summer when I was up in Davidson. Pat Jordan on Tom Seaver in his anthology:

The point is I could bring it faster than Tom. I always could. In Little League. In high school. Tom never had the luxury of my blinding talent in his youth. ‘I never threw hard then,’ he says. ‘I was aware of my physical limitations at fourteen. I had to adjust.’

Pitching became for Tom, at fourteen, not a physical activity, but a mental one. He learned how it felt to be shelled unmercifully one inning and then have to walk out to the mound to begin the next. ‘It’s a terrible feeling,’ he says. ‘You want to quit. You feel it’s hopeless. You have to force yourself to start again. Some guys can’t do that. They’re always fighting things beyond their control.’

Tom Seaver learned, earlier than most, to deal solely within the framework of his limitations. To circumvent those limitations. Unlike me, I raged against my limitations, and in the process, my very real talent suffered.

Which made me think of Stephen.

Lots of people have tried to identify the reasons for his immense appeal -- reasons, obviously, that go beyond points scored.

How he looks is on that list.

If he can do that, well, maybe I can do …

But what I like about this idea here is that it at least starts to demystify. It doesn’t stop at the notion of some nature-and-nurture tonic that makes Stephen able in some extra-special way to do what he does. No.

The suggestion here is that perhaps a gift can be what’s not there.

That it’s up to us how we choose to respond.