Stephen Curry has spent his career turning defenses into decisions. Guard him normally and he’ll avalanche threes. Trap him and he’ll bend the floor until someone else is shooting uncontested. Overplay his airspace and he’ll slip behind you like a receiver finding a seam. After a decade-plus of this, teams don’t just “cover” Curry anymore. Some nights, they attempt to delete him.
Charlotte tried something in that neighborhood on Saturday, and Curry’s postgame response was the most honest summary of what it feels like to be defended as an idea instead of a player.
“There’s a part of you that like fights it just because it’s not real basketball,” Curry said afterward. “But there’s also a part of it that it’s flattering… I’ve seen it all, so I know if that’s how they wanna guard, how I can be effective… not letting it take me out of the game, but also use it to our advantage as a team… It’s also funny at times just how egregious it is.”
Steph Curry on if it bothers him the way the Hornets guarded him tonight:
“There’s a part of you that like fights it just because it’s not real basketball. But there’s also a part of it that it’s flattering. Just knowing that you demand that much attention, and also what it does… pic.twitter.com/if24Okkoza
— aly ✶ (@jinthirty) January 18, 2026
This wasn’t a quote born from frustration at a loss. Golden State won big. The Warriors beat the Hornets 136–116 at Chase Center, and they did it with a kind of “team offense” box score that almost looks like a rebuke to Charlotte’s strategy: eight Warriors scored in double figures, De’Anthony Melton led with 24 off the bench, and Draymond Green scored 20. Curry finished with 14 points, an almost quiet number considering the attention he commanded.
That’s the lesson baked into Curry’s quote. The part that “fights it” is the competitor’s instinct to reject gimmicks, to demand that the game be played straight-up, man-to-man, normal principles, normal geometry. The part that’s “flattering” is the veteran’s acceptance of the truth: when a defense chooses to guard you like this, it’s conceding something fundamental. It’s admitting that the conventional method cannot survive you.
Charlotte’s approach, as it played out, wasn’t about contesting Curry’s jump shot as much as it was about preventing him from ever catching the ball cleanly, ever flowing into his usual off-ball rhythm. In modern terms, it’s a menu of denial: top-locking him off screens, grabbing at the route, picking him up absurdly early, treating his movement like a fire that must be smothered before it can breathe. That’s why Curry called it “not real basketball.” It’s basketball’s version of an emergency protocol.
But the Warriors have been living in that emergency for years. Curry said it plainly: “I’ve seen it all.” When a star says that, it isn’t bravado; it’s scouting. He knows the counters, and he understands the trade-off defenses are making when they over-invest in him. He doesn’t have to score 35 for the attention to be valuable, he just has to hold it. Make the defense keep paying the tax.
Golden State’s numbers tell you the rest. The Warriors hit 23 three-pointers on 52 attempts, and the game became a celebration of the exact thing Curry described: what obsessive coverage “does to create shots for other guys.” Curry can take 14 points and still feel like the center of the game because the defense is still orbiting him. That gravity doesn’t show up in his field-goal attempts; it shows up in how clean everyone else’s attempts look.
There was also a strange irony to the timing. Golden State entered the night missing Jimmy Butler (scratched for personal reasons), the kind of absence that normally increases the load on Curry and invites opponents to sell out even harder on him. Charlotte did, just not in the way most teams do. And Golden State responded by distributing the game: bench production, pace, and a shooting barrage that made the “Curry stopper” concept feel like shadowboxing.
Curry’s most revealing line might be the one at the end: “It’s also funny at times just how egregious it is.” That laugh is not dismissal. It’s perspective. It’s the sound of a player who has been chased for so long that the chase itself becomes part of the theater. When defenders treat a guy like Curry as if he’s radioactive, even when he’s not touching the ball, they’re not just playing defense. They’re acknowledging a decade of trauma.
