Justice For Tyler Herro

Here are some things I read on the internet about Stephen Curry making a nice move off the dribble and sinking a triple over Tyler Herro during Golden State's 123-110 victory late last night.

Draymond Green said the young defender was "kind of dead." The editorial team of BroBible huddled up and said Curry put Herro on skates. Hundreds of egg accounts said Curry cooked Herro, which is pretty messed-up and should draw the ire of NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

So imagine my intense disappointment after locating the clip and seeing a rather pedestrian exchange between ball-handler and the man marking him. Curry fakes one way, then goes the other, getting Herro off-balance, before pulling the trigger on one of the sweetest shots we've ever seen.

Herro didn't fall down. His feet didn't get tangled in comical fashion. He simply guessed left instead of right and then it was too late. It was an exciting play, to be clear. But it's also evidence that God gives his toughest battles to NBA players who dare to actually try on the defensive end of the floor. Because there is nothing lowest-common-denominator fans mock more than someone who was close enough to a great offensive player to not make a difference.

It usually manifests in the form of posterization, where This League's Society has deemed trying to stop someone from dunking is a worse and more mockable offense than letting someone dunk. But it's prevalent on dribble drives as well. More perplexing is that the offensive player who makes the move doesn't even need to make the shot afterward for the defender to be ridiculed.

And yes, this is old man yelling at cloud stuff and that's not lost on me. I'm not judging. It's just curious. Especially in this specific case. It's really crazy to me that this is a thing. It wasn't great defense but it also wasn't extremely bad or embarrassing defense. Curry has made scores of players look far sillier. I like that Herro tried. Under no definition of the word was he "cooked" or "dead."

Words need to retain meaning if we hope to survive as a species. They are our only defense against deep fakes. Maybe it's too late to go back. But dammit if I won't go out fighting the good fight and being on the right side — which is patting someone on the back for trying to play defense, not pushing them down.