Stephen Curry and the Defiance of Adjectives

It escapes words.

Sure the usual hyperbolic descriptions fit: "unbelievable", "extraordinary", "transcendent".

But an attempt to verbally illustrate what Stephen Curry did to the Oklahoma City Thunder last night - and is doing to the NBA in general right now - is to presume that we've seen something like this before and thus have words to accurately portray it. We don't.

It's tough, almost futile, to write this piece. My mind is still warped and coming to terms with the real-life NBA Jam game we watched last night, and attempting to do something I'm openly admitting shouldn't be possible. Maybe it's best to let his play speak for itself...

But just getting your head around it all seems difficult, like we just witnessed a glitch in reality. It had to have happened though; it couldn't have been made up. If last night's script landed on a Hollywood exec's desk, it would be laughed out the door as too far-fetched.

The stage couldn't have been set up better: The Warriors were on a record-setting pace after 50 games; where every loss mattered. They were in tough, down double-digits on the road against one of the few teams who could truly challenge them. Not only were they were weary - having not played a home game in three weeks - but to make matters worse, their emotional lynchpin (and 2nd-best player) lost his shit at halftime and stopped shooting.

Curry proceeded to roll his ankle mid 3rd-quarter, and had Russell Westbrook land on it a second later. It was a scary moment that left anyone familiar with Curry's ankle history feeling uneasy. Then the MVP played it out as no screenwriter could've contrived:

He came back limping noticeably, but began draining a barrage of comically absurd three-pointers, toying with defenders; equal parts jovial playground artist and Leon The Professional as he clawed into - and eventually overtook - the Thunder's lead. After absorbing his reality-altering performance, so many things stick with me, but don't even resonate the most:

See, it's not that Curry dropped 31 points after returning, draining attempt after attempt that would've had any other player in the World instantly yanked.

It's not that he led a dramatic comeback on the road; one that would've been over in regulation if Golden State hadn't missed about 47 Curry-created open layups in the 2nd half.

It's not even that he happened to tie an all-time record for threes in a game, or broke his own record for threes in a season with 24 games still to play.

And somehow it isn't that he hit the ballsiest game-winner in NBA history; not calling the available timeout, casually jogging upcourt and pulling up from the fringe of OKC's midcourt logo with almost 3 seconds left on the clock (note that the game was tied).

It's that none of this should really surprise us.

Curry has specialized in the indescribable to such an extent this year that this doesn't really come as a huge shock, absurd as that may sound.

We've been spoiled. We've gotten too used to these Human Torch antics: lobbing attempts at the net like red shells in Mario Kart, scoring 20 points in 5 mins on 7 shots or whatever, casually canning jumpers from halfcourt and beyond with unseen routineness.

Especially now, coming off games of 36. 42 and 51 points; on a destructive path in the wake of a new round of misguided criticisms from former players. Curry claims to find the commentary "annoying", but it clearly fuels a fire in him, one we should all hope continues to be fed if it produces explosions like this.

Stephen Curry is revolutionizing basketball; there's no other way to put it. Maybe we'll eventually figure out how to properly describe it, but for now we should be content with just seeing what he'll do next.