Pigeonholing Stephen Curry as a point guard seems foolhardy, a matter of placing limits on a basketball player who refuses to be limited, whether by his program height, the geometry of a game played on a 94-by-50-foot rectangle, 75 years of NBA history or, really, imagination itself.

Yet he is a point guard, in stature if not quite style, so in the wake of his fourth championship and first Finals MVP we begin our discussion there, with other point guards from other eras. What is it they appreciate most about him?

“His confidence,” said Rocky Parise, who played the position at Elizabethtown College in the late ‘90s and early aughts.

“His leadership,” said Wali Jones, quarterback of the Sixers’ 1966-67 championship team.

“The way he changed the game,” said Jim Lynam, who manned the point for St. Joe’s in the ‘60s. 

They’re all correct, of course. In his 13 years with the Golden State Warriors, the 34-year-old Curry has redefined greatness in much the same way he has redefined acceptable shooting range. Never mind that he stands 6-foot-2 and weighs 185 pounds. Never mind that he emerged not from some asphalt jungle but the Charlotte suburbs. Never mind that he played not for some collegiate superpower but at Davidson.

“He’s one of one,” said Jerry Johnson, who played point guard at McCaskey and Rider University before embarking on a 13-year pro career overseas.

Curry is fearless, tireless and relentless. He’s great off the dribble and great coming off screens. And he’s a great teammate, celebrating the other Warriors as much as they celebrate him.

The 80-year-old Lynam, also a former NBA coach and now a Sixers studio analyst for NBC Sports Philadelphia, launched into a story as he spoke over the phone Sunday afternoon from his place at the Jersey Shore. That’s always something to relish, for Lynam is a gifted raconteur – passionate, amusing, pointed and forever sprinkling in Philly-guy interjections. (Ya follow me? … Now watch … Ya ready?)

Anyway, he was playing poker in a Las Vegas casino in the spring of 2015. He thinks it was Caesar’s, a place he frequented, but can’t be certain. Down at the far end of the table two young men from the San Francisco Bay Area were talking about a wager they had placed on the Warriors – how one of them not only bet the Dubs to win their playoff game that particular night, but the whole thing.

Another guy seated at the table told them they were wasting their money, that there was no way a jump-shooting team was going to take the title. It is an argument that TNT studio analyst Charles Barkley was fond of making at that point, and this guy wouldn’t let it go.

Finally Lynam, who as far as the others knew was just another face at the table, had heard enough.

“My man,” he asked the guy, “how ‘bout if they’re the best jump-shooting team ever?”

The Warriors did in fact win it that year, and again in ‘17 and ‘18 (with Kevin Durant), and this year, without him – notably after bottoming out at 15-50 in ‘19-20, when Curry and his fellow Splash Brother, Klay Thompson, were injured. In all, there have been six Finals appearances and those four titles in the last eight years, and besides Curry and Thompson, the constants have been coach Steve Kerr, forward Draymond Green and, to some degree, the aging Andre Iguodala.

Green is an unusual player himself. Volatile, to be sure, but definitely unusual. At 6-6 he usually plays center on defense in the Warriors’ best lineups, and point guard on offense. That affords Curry and Thompson the opportunity to probe off the ball, which is often devastating.

A case in point came with 1:42 left in Game Four of the Finals against Boston. Golden State was down 2-1 in the series and clinging to a three-point lead when Green came charging downcourt. He picked up his dribble at the right elbow, knowing Curry was several feet behind him. Curry, amid a 43-point explosion, suddenly darted to the 3-point arc on the right wing, momentarily losing his defender, Derrick White, in the process. Green, seeing the play with the same eyes as his long-time teammate, found Curry with a perfect bounce pass. White was a hair late with his contest, and the triple was away, and true.

It felt like a turning point in the game and the series, and it was. The Dubs won that one and the next two, closing it out when Curry repeatedly exploited a mismatch with C’s big Al Horford down the stretch in the clincher. Curry’s Finals MVP led to an outsized celebration by his teammates afterward, and seemed to be viewed by some as an essential addition to his resume – an odd stance, considering everything else he has accomplished.

He is, after all, a two-time regular-season MVP, an eight-time All-Star and an eight-time All-NBA selection. He has also made more regular-season 3s, more playoff 3s, more Finals 3s and even more 3s in a single All-Star Game (16, this year) than anybody else. So forget the fact that his regular-season shooting percentages were actually slightly down this year; this is a very, very unique guy.

“Best shooter ever?” Lynam asked his buddy Herb Magee on a golf course recently.

“Not even close,” Magee said.

That is great authority, as Magee, the recently retired Jefferson University coach, has long been regarded as one of the game’s foremost shooting gurus.

Lynam mentions Wilt Chamberlain as one of the few players besides Curry who have changed the game, which calls to mind a piece written by Sports Illustrated’s Howard Beck before the Finals. In it he asserted that Curry has made us rethink what a dominant player looks like – how it used to be an imposing physical specimen like Wilt, Shaquille O’Neal or LeBron James, but now must also include the 6-2 guy from Charlotte.

“To me he’s one of the top 10 greatest that ever played,” Wali Jones, a pro from 1965-76, said. He cited not only Curry’s shooting, but also his handle and finishing ability as the things that set him apart.

Matt Steinmetz, a point guard at Franklin & Marshall in the ‘80s and long-time Bay Area media member, has come around to that way of thinking. Took him a while, he said. But Steinmetz, who currently hosts an afternoon sports-talk show on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco (the Warriors’ flagship station), is there now.

“He’s Jordan, Bird, Magic, LeBron,” he said. “Curry’s there, in the conversation with the greatest players I’ve ever seen in my life.”

There was no single moment that caused him to reach that conclusion.

“I just kept getting beaten over the head by what I’m actually seeing,” Steinmetz said. “He dominates in a way that no other great dominated.”

Understand that Steinmetz has always been a big Larry Bird guy. But now he has no problem mentioning Curry in the same breath.

“I still think Larry Bird is a better player than Steph,” he said, “but Bird didn’t have the impact Steph has.”

Then he invoked the name of another great, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“Curry,” Steinmetz said, “demands the same attention Kareem demanded, and he demands it 30 feet from the basket. … He’s turned basketball truisms on their side.”

Coming out of Davidson in 2009, Curry could have been a Minnesota Timberwolve, and actually wanted to be a New York Knick. But the T-Wolves, armed with the Nos. 5 and 6 picks in that year’s draft, instead picked two other point guards, Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn, immediately before the Dubs grabbed Curry at No. 7. And Golden State took him even though Curry refused to work out for the team. He wanted instead to go to the Knicks at No. 8, preferring the hell-bent offensive style of New York’s coach at the time, Mike D’Antoni. As detailed in Jack McCallum’s 2017 book “Golden Days,” Golden State’s general manager then, Larry Riley, insisted on taking Curry anyway.

“I guess it was one of those cases of being careful what you wish for, right?” Curry told McCallum.

Three years later, Golden State traded Monta Ellis to Milwaukee for Andrew Bogut, correctly concluding that two small guards could not coexist in the same backcourt. That caused a furor within the fanbase, as Ellis was a big-time scorer and Curry was only beginning to emerge, his progress having been stalled to that point by recurring ankle injuries.

But the move turned out to be a masterstroke, as did the decision in 2014 not to trade Thompson to Minnesota for Kevin Love – a potential deal, McCallum writes, that was derided not only by Jerry West, then a team consultant, but several other decision-makers. (One last what-if: What if Durant had not agreed to a sign-and-trade with Brooklyn in 2019? That netted D’Angelo Russell, who was later traded to Minnesota for Andrew Wiggins, as well as the first-round pick that became Jonathan Kuminga. Wiggins was the Warriors’ second-best player in the Finals, and Kuminga, who showed flashes as a rookie this year, is a potential rotational piece going forward.)

To review, then, Curry, Thompson and Wiggins might all be in the employ of the Minnesota Timberwolves today, and the Dubs would be, well, the Sacramento Kings. Instead, the stars have aligned in the Bay Area, and Curry has become an all-timer.

In addition to everything else, Steinmetz marvels at Curry’s demeanor. His dad, Dell, was a fine NBA player, an elite shooter. But he was not wired like the elder of his two NBA-playing sons. (Seth, now with the Nets, is nearly three years younger than Steph).

“He’s a suburban kid, and he’s a killer,” Steinmetz said. “That’s what I’m fascinated by.”

Parise likewise noted Curry’s self-assurance.

“If you watch him, his body is always so loose,” he said. “There’s never any tension in his body. That’s why he’s such a great shooter. I think he’s the most confident player in the history of the game.”

Certainly that wasn’t always the case. Lynam noted Curry’s injury history early in his pro career and the way he was “kind of skinny” and getting “knocked around.”

“In the early years,” Lynam said, “I didn’t see it.”

Now he does. We all do. Which led Lynam to tell another story, this one about his grandson Jamison, who goes by “Jamo” and plays at a high school in Virginia. A few years back, Jim gave Jamo a warm-up routine involving ball-handling drills.

“Five or six dribble moves, going down,” Jim said. “Likewise, five or six dribble moves, coming back.”

Recently Jamo was visiting with his grandfather at the Jersey Shore, and they headed over to the Ocean City courts for a workout.

“So ya ready?” Jim asked me over the phone Sunday.

Again with the Philly-guy stuff. Warms the soul.

“He got the ball, and he started, let’s say he’s on the end line, and I was speechless,” he said. “He got from the end line to the 3-point line, and he did a Steph Curry. In other words, he did nine dribble moves between the end line and the 3-point line. … Instead of my six dribble moves down and six dribble moves back, how ‘bout 50? How ‘bout 25 down, at, like, rapid-machine-gun-fire pace – 25 going down, 25 coming back.”

Once done, Jamo was sheepish, thinking his grandfather might be annoyed with him. But he was not.

“Ya ready, dude?”  Jim asked him. “We’ve got a new warm-up routine. Because your warm-up is so much better than my warm-up, it’s not even funny.”

It’s all Curry, all the time. Everything he does, spreading far and wide. The limitless point guard showing that his impact truly knows no bounds.