Steph Curry is the face of Bay Area sports

By Art Spander

"Basketball is back.” Steph Curry made that comment a short while after he made us understand he too is back, throwing in those jump shots, tossing in those observations.

There will be no winter of discontent.

Curry and the Warriors head back to Sacramento, up Interstate 80, for another preseason game tonight against the Kings.

“Another opportunity to get better,” is how Curry describes it. “Trying to find my rhythm as fast as possible.”

Not that the search seems particularly difficult.

On Tuesday night, same teams, same place, Steph was rhythmical and accurate. He played 28 minutes. He scored 29 points. He had 4 assists. He had 3 steals,

He had what we know as a Steph Curry game.

Curry not only is the focus of the Warriors' offense, he’s the face of sports in the Bay Area.

He’s the celebrity who plays golf with Phil Mickelson and Peyton Manning. He’s the spokesman who congratulates Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer for becoming the winningest women’s basketball coach. He’s the two-time most valuable player.

There was a broken hand for much of the pandemic-shortened schedule last season. There were ankle problems early in his career. But mostly there has been satisfaction, for Curry, for the Warriors organization as it won championships and for the fans whose patience and loyalty were rewarded with a half-decade of success.

This is the 12^th season for Curry, who off court, with his family and outside interests, doesn’t miss a thing and on court almost never misses a free throw.   

He’s comfortable in his skin and in his roles as husband, father and hero, passing out compliments as smoothly as he passes the ball.

Asked the problem with a defense, which was criticized by head coach Steve Kerr after the Tuesday loss, Curry emphasized it was without Draymond Green, out after a positive Covid-19 test.

”He’s the quarterback, the defensive coordinator,” Curry said of Green. “He’s everything. We all have to be in sync. He makes us an amazing defense.”

Curry is no less appreciative of Steve Kerr, who became Warriors coach before the 2014-15 season, when the start of the domination — three championships, five consecutive NBA finals — began.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” affirmed Curry. “(Kerr) hasn’t changed at all, even with the physical stuff, being in and out of his seat.”

Kerr was so in pain from a bad back that at times, even during the playoffs, he was unable to sit courtside, and the coaching was done by Mike Brown, still the Warriors' primary assistant.

“We have great communication,” said Curry, talking about Kerr and himself. “He’s meant a lot to my success. He’s very consistent. So for me as a point guard, I’m an extension of him on the court. There’s transparency and communication, one through 15.”

Meaning each man on the roster.

This year figures to be different. Klay Thompson will be out. A 7-foot rookie center, James Wiseman, the No. 2 pick in the draft, in time may be in.

Someone wondered what the biggest thing Curry had learned in his seasons in the league and on the Warriors. Not surprisingly, the answer reminded us what we had learned about Curry, that he is eternally aware.

“I don’t think I learned this,” he said, “but I have an appreciation of what we get to do every single day. We haven’t lost that excitement.

“No matter how many championships we’ve won, or how many we lost., we keep the right perspective. The NBA is a blessing, and the ability to be in our world is an amazing experience. We all have lives off the court, and Steve appreciates the values we bring in our own stories.”

Yes, basketball is back, and so is Steph Curry. How fortunate for us all.

Niners’ Trent Williams: ‘Without the ball, it’s impossible to win’

By Art Spander

They tell us good teams find a way to win. This season, the 49ers are finding ways to lose. Therefore, the Niners must not be a very good football team. But you didn’t need any deductive reasoning to know that.

Not after the last two games, one against the Buffalo Bills when they were ineffective on defense, the other on Sunday against the Washington Football Team, when they were, well, terrible on offense.

Terrible, not that they didn’t run or pass — the Niners had 344 yards total to 193 for Washington. Terrible that a pass by Nick Mullens was intercepted and run back 76 yards for a touchdown — the infamous “pick six” — and a fumble by Mullens when he was sacked was returned 47 yards for a touchdown.

Small wonder, then, in their second straight Covid-19-forced home away from home, State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., the Niners were defeated, 23-15, by a team only slightly less worse than they have become. But one that, unlike San Francisco, is going to the playoffs.

Three turnovers Sunday, the two that proved destructive and another lost fumble. There have been a ton of them since Mullens replaced the injured Jimmy Garoppolo — some Mullens’ fault, some not — and they are a primary reason the Niners are 5-8 in a season going nowhere.

As Trent Williams, the offensive tackle who joined the Niners this season after years in Washington, pointed out, “The ball is everything. Without the ball, it’s impossible to win.”

Cycles. We go through them. So do teams. When things are going fine, well, there are lyrics to remind us that all too soon they won’t go well. “Riding high in April,” Frank Sinatra sang, “shot down in May.”

Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. That’s Murphy’s Law. A season after so much went right, until the second half of the Super Bowl, the Niners have been beset by injuries, errors and bad breaks. That’s a blend guaranteed to ruin the hopes of any sporting franchise.

The Niners have been patching and matching and hanging on. Or had been. Was it appropriate that on the first offensive play of the game Sunday, receiver Deebo Samuel reinjured his hamstring and was finished?

Whatever, if you don’t lose fumbles and throw interceptions, you might have a chance.

Last year when he was at Ohio State, Chase Young was making the case why he should be the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NFL draft. That turned out to be Joe Burrow, the quarterback from LSU. Young went second, to Washington. His claim to be first has some validity.

He tore through the Niners in the second quarter (Williams was out of the game temporarily), knocked the ball from Mullens’ hand and ran it the 47 yards for the score that put Washington in front, 13-7.

That came at the end of the first half. The hit may have been intimidating. On the final play of the third quarter, Mullens was intercepted by Kamren Curl and run back 76 yards for a touchdown.

“We had a bad day,” said Niners coach Kyle Shanahan. “We missed a few opportunities early on offense. You don’t keep getting those again; Nick missed a few open throws. We struggled with some big penalties, I thought we had more drops than we usually have.

“Regardless we could have found a way, if it weren’t for the turnovers.”

Shanahan said after Mullens’ big interception, he thought about replacing him with C.J. Beathard. But as Beathard warmed up, Mullens passed to Kyle Juszczyk for a touchdown.

Mullens said on the fateful pick he was trying to find an outlet.

“You have to protect the ball,” Mullens agreed. “You can’t make that mistake. That changed the game.”

Nothing, unfortunately, is going to change the Niners’ record. “I expect us to play better than we did Sunday,” Shanahan said.

But in this season, expectations are thrown or fumbled away.

No excuses for Niners; no defense either

By Art Spander

No excuses. That was the brief observation of 49ers linebacker Fred Warner. No excuses. And no answers.

No doubt either. The Niners, as constituted now, with all their injuries, all, their backups, aren’t as good as the Buffalo Bills.

Or, the way things went Monday night, probably not as good as most other teams in the NFL.

Buffalo is on the rise, on the way to the playoffs. The Bills swept over the Niners, 34-24, Monday night in the first San Francisco home game to be played in Arizona because of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the Bay Area.

But it was the opposition that was responsible for the result, not the location. The Bills have the two basics of winning football, a brilliant young quarterback and fine excellent defenders.

The Niners seemed dumbfounded, as much by what they didn’t do as to what the Bills did. If we heard it once in the post-game rhetoric from the Niners, we heard it a dozen times.

They were not surprised. They were just, well, beaten. Not defeated, at least to their way of thinking. That would be a mental thing, an admittance, a concession. This was, well, confusion.

A lack of execution was the explanation, bringing us back to 1976 and the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers — coach John McKay being asked what he thought of the Bucs’ execution and answering, “I’m in favor of it.”

To a man, the Niners insisted they knew what was coming, other than Allen’s ability to avoid being sacked  — extending the play is what it’s called — even more than perceived from films. Patrick Mahomes did it to the Niners in the Super Bowl, moving, scrambling, avoiding and, when required, running. Now, déjà vu, here came Allen, in the 2018 draft, one year after Mahomes.

Allen on Monday night passed for 375 yards and four touchdowns. That he gained only 11 yards rushing is a trifle misleading. It was the way he kept a play alive that was important.

The Bills had 449 yards in all, the most allowed this season by the Niners, who are 5-7. The Bills are 9-3.

Asked what he thought about the defense, Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said, “Obviously it didn’t work out well.”

The offense also was lacking. And no, the Niners didn’t blame their difficulties on needing to move for several weeks to the Phoenix area when Santa Clara County banned contact sports.

“We just didn’t get it done,’ said linebacker Dre Greenlaw. “They ran similar things to what we expected. We just didn’t execute.”

They were outplayed, but few people — if any — tell you that. Nobody wants to admit they didn’t have a chance, which after the first quarter the 49ers didn’t. Sure, there were a few key plays, an interception by Warner negated by a penalty; a lost fumble by Brandon Aiyuk. But the Bills owned the game.

“They were calling the perfect plays to everything we were dialing up,” said Warner.

The Bills were in control, literally. They had the ball only two seconds fewer than 25 minutes. The 49ers couldn’t get much done on offense and virtually less done on defense.

“We knew Allen could run,” said Shanahan, “and he’s got a big-time arm.”

Watching the game from a box at State Farm Stadium was rehabbing Niners quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, as once more the position belonged to Nick Mullens who, well, looked decent but didn’t look like Allen.

He threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns, but trying a sneak at the goal line in the fourth quarter he was called for illegal procedure.

“I anticipated the snap,” said Mullens, “and moved too early.”

That wasn’t an excuse, just an error in judgment.

Rafer Johnson: Literally a champ, essentially a leader

By Art Spander

“Now the young world has grown old; gone are the silver and gold.” Lyrics from a song recorded by Frank Sinatra, among others. About the passing of time. About memories.

I thought of the words when I heard that Rafer Johnson had died at 86. Maybe because he was a man of both silver — if only once — and gold.

Also, because we were classmates at UCLA. He was a friend, as was his younger brother Jimmy, no less an athletic star, who became a Pro Football Hall of Famer as a defensive back with the 49ers.

Rafer, such a distinctive name. Such an unpretentious person.

A champion literally, with that narrow victory over C.K. Yang — another UCLA student — in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

A leader essentially, who would be elected student body president and in time be known for his global support of human rights.

The Johnsons were from Kingsburg, some 25 miles from Fresno. As was Monte Clark, who went to USC, played in the NFL and in 1976 was 49ers coach.

Sports were a way of life in the San Joaquin Valley, the sons of farmers and oil workers winning games and fame. Bob Mathias, a two-time Olympic decathlon champion, was from Tulare; Frank Gifford, the football great, was from Bakersfield.

No television, no internet. Kids played. And studied.

College campuses were quiet. As did others at UCLA, Rafer went to class. Unlike most others, he went on to sporting greatness.

Not as a forward on a middling Bruin basketball team in 1959 — Denny Crum, who would go on to coach Louisville to two NCAA championships, was a teammate — but as a sprinter and long jumper. 

Track and field was prominent in the days before the Giants and Dodgers moved to California. Johnson did have that silver from the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and was involved in school activities.

Still, he never big-timed anyone, particularly a sports writer from the school newspaper, the Daily Bruin. You’d see him around campus in what was the unofficial attire of the era, a white shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders. He was humble. He was purposeful.

The passing of others is a reminder of our own mortality. We exist in our own fantasies, cushioned against reality. When in 2016 the death of Arnold Palmer was announced, a well-known golfer who idolized Palmer told me, “I thought he would never die.”

It’s been a tragic few months for sports. We've lost Tom Seaver — another from the Central Valley — Joe Morgan, Paul Hornung, Bob Gibson, Diego Maradona. Now Rafer Johnson.

I last talked to him four or five years ago. It was at halftime of a UCLA basketball game at Pauley Pavilion, just a couple of alums discussing the state of the team and the state of the world.

NCAA championship banners, won after both of us had graduated, hung from the beams. Rafer didn’t have anything to do with those, although he played for John Wooden decades earlier.

Rafer’s contributions to the school and society are of a different type.

He was at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. in June 1968 when Robert Kennedy was shot, and he leaped in to help capture the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

He was chosen to carry the torch into the stadium and climb the steps to the rim of the Coliseum, lighting the permanent torch to start the 1984 L.A. Olympics.

UCLA would have sports heroes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Troy Aikman and Evelyn Ashford.

But there has never been anyone like Rafer Johnson.

Reminder of the ’80s: 49ers don’t whine, they win

By Art Spander

This one was reminiscent of the way the 49ers played in the ’80s, responding to adversity with a win, not a whine.

This one told us all we need to know about Kyle Shanahan’s leadership and his players’ character. 

This one told us that despite the changes and the passing of years, the Niners retain a link to those teams of the ’80s, the team of the decade.

In those great seasons of long ago, with men such as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott, nothing seemed to get in the Niners’ way.

They overcame bad breaks and bad flight connections. They played in the ice of Chicago and the humidity of Miami. They had injuries. They had dropped passes.

They never had misgivings.

It was as if their unspoken motto was “Shut up and play,” words that after this weekend would perfectly fit the current team, which Saturday was in effect evicted from its facility and stadium and then Sunday in Inglewood beat the Rams, 23-20, in the final seconds.

“What our team went through really the last two weeks, then a week off, the Covid stuff,” said Shanahan, “I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

What they went through were consecutive defeats, three of them, a bye, then a declaration from Santa Clara County that, because of a spike in coronavirus cases, they weren’t permitted to hold games or workouts at their team's normal venue.

What they went through were doubts about where the team would move temporarily — Texas? Arizona? — and questions about being separated from families.

But the doubts and worries didn’t throw them off the task at hand, playing and winning a football game. Beating the Rams.

Which they did for a fourth straight time, Robbie Gould’s field goal over the crossbar with 0:00 on the clock breaking the 20-20 tie.

The story of the game that pushed the Niners’ record for this confusion of a season to 5-6 was defense.

Along with the unending Covid-19 threat. Along with the return of Raheem Mostert and Richard Sherman. Along with turnovers (four for the Rams, three for the Niners).

Niners defensive coordinator Robert Saleh had a brilliant game plan. (“He’ll be a head coach very shortly,” said Shanahan, as rumors circulated of Saleh replacing the fired Matt Patricia at Detroit.)

The Rams early on seemed incapable when they had the ball, trailing 17-3 midway through the third quarter. It was when the 49ers had the ball that problems started.

Mostert, who had been out the last couple of games — isn’t everyone on the Niners injured, or does it just seem that way? — scored a touchdown for a 7-3 lead in the first quarter.

That went to 14-3 when rookie tackle Javon Kinlaw, the first-round draft pick, swatted a Jared Goff pass, grabbed it and carried the interception 27 yards for a TD. A pick-six, as they say.

Mostert was carrying in the third quarter when the Rams’ Aaron Donald, the best defensive lineman in the league, reached around and extricated the ball. It was brought back 20 yards for a score by Troy Hill. Oops.

After a 61-yard run by rookie Cam Akers, the Rams then scored another touchdown, and the Niners were behind, 20-17. When you’re figuratively homeless for some three weeks plus, and then possibly have to be quarantined to get back where you’re supposed to be, a scoreboard deficit is trivial.

Shanahan said he was impressed the way occasionally maligned QB Nick Mullens (252 yards, one INT) rallied the Niners down the stretch. He said he was no less impressed with the arrangements by the Niners organization in what the TV announcers say “are challenging times.”

“Everyone here has been so committed to keeping safe,” Shanahan said. “We know how big a deal the virus is.”

Without saying so, Shanahan implied the Niners were blindsided by the Santa Clara decision to halt contact sports — is there any sport which has more contact than the NFL? Hockey maybe, but the Sharks aren’t practicing yet.         

The unexpected happens. It’s happening to the 49ers.

They didn’t whine, they won. Like the teams of the past.