Movies, television shows, and fairytales all love the cliche story of the David-like character defying all odds and taking down the Goliath-esque being. Whether it be the story of Rocky defying all odds and taking down the seemingly invincible Ivan Drago, or Daniel-san doing the impossible by defeating his nemesis from the Cobra Kai dojo via a kick to the dome out of the infamous Crane stance -- the greatest tales involve someone who we, the audience, genuinely do not have confidence in proving us wrong.

That is the perfect formula for beloved characters and storylines. So why isn't this the case in the NBA?

Think about it; this generation got to see arguably one of the greatest glo-ups right before our eyes. A not so athletic, scrawny, God-fearing kid out of Charlotte North Carolina-- who by the way was only rated a three star athlete coming out of high school-- finds a way to lead the charge of a Cinderella story during March Madness for a little mid-major that wasn't a household name in its own state. The kid, despite his achievements during his time in college, is heavily doubted to do the same in the pros. He goes on to prove those doubters wrong and nearly wins Rookie of the Year and then in following years wins a FIBA World Championship. All the while, he also marries his high school sweetheart, who he met at church camp.

He and his wife create a beautiful family while dabbling in numerous business ventures, he becoming an NBA superstar while she became a celebrity chef-- all while looking as in love as ever. He then goes on to not only win the league's MVP award once but twice with one of the times being a unanimous decision-- something that had never been done before. He wins three NBA championships in four years, again a feat that not many can say they’ve accomplished while creating different charities and donating to so many different foundations and organizations that really have nothing to do with his field-- like breaking off a check to start-up Howard University's Golf Program. Going from a three-star athlete to a philanthropist NBA superstar isn't easy, but to do so and maintain your faith, create an empire with your wife, and still be the Ray Cambell every household needs is almost movie-worthy.

That movie-worthy storyline, if you haven't guessed it already, is the tale of Stephen Curry-- one of the era's most disrespected all-time greats.

Granted, every superstar is ridiculed by the media and fans alike. That's a given. But the level in which Curry's accolades and stature is diminished is unheard of. From fans photoshopping opposing players head onto his wedding picture with his wife, Ayesha, to different analysts calling Curry one of the most "overrated" stars in the league, Stephen Curry is starting to become the Dinkleberg to the basketball world's Turner.

It's to the point that Curry's former teammate, Andre Iguodala, said that he was playing to preserve Curry's legacy.

"I've never seen a guy that's so humble and has such a great heart receive so much hate," Iguodala said. When pushed by ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, Iguodala clarified that he was talking about NBA players and others in the media.

There are a ton of founded reason and wayward conspiracies as to why Curry receives the opposition he does. The most obvious being the consistent winning he has been a part of the past five years.

Curry and his Warriors racked up a historical five years, having the best regular season in NBA history with a 73-9 record, making five straight Finals appearances, winning three championships, and doing so as a "jump-shooting team."

The jump-shooting part in itself made a lot of retired players, and some analysts brush off the Dubs. Meanwhile, Curry started a revolution that may have just changed the game of basketball forever. The Dubs didn't just win, they did so in a dominatingly fun fashion that ruffled a lot of feathers in the league. From shimmies to turn away three-pointers down to Klay Thompson running down the court before Curry can even shoot the ball-- the Warriors' dominance, led by Stephen Curry, had seemingly become so effortless that is was obnoxious to opposing fan bases and even some players.

"It got old with the antics," one Pacific Division player said. "... You want to beat the hell out of them and see Steph with that towel over his head in the fourth [quarter]."

When you're winning, it's natural to have some players keep that chip on their shoulder, but the bitterness between Curry and his peers went past a chip. In 2015, the year curry won his first MVP, despite leading the team with the league's best record, having the best player efficiency and plus-minus, Curry's peers voted James Harden as their picked for MVP in the league's first National Basketball Player Association Awards.

Again, it's a minor snub, but a very very confusing snub. Along with this, there have been multiple reports of resentment between Curry and other superstars such as Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul, and Lebron James.

Westbrook's feelings on Curry and just about every other guard in the league isn't hard to figure out. In the 2016 playoffs, when Westbrook's OKC team were up 3-1 on the Warriors, Westbrook and his then-teammate Kevin Durant laughed at a question about Curry's defense-- a clear diss that didn't age well for too many reasons.

When it comes to Paul, the two have seen each other for basically all of Curry's career. Most notably, Curry emerged to stardom in the two's 2014 first-round matchup that featured the Donald Sterling saga and a missed foul call on Paul that might've led to Curry making three free throws that would've sent the Clippers home. Instead, it was a play-on, Curry missed the shot, and from there, Curry has not lost another series to Paul-- and not too many regular-season games either.

LeBron James is the tricky one. It was reported that after the 2015 Finals that a drift grew between James and Curry, Curry doesn't understand it.

According to Marcus Thompson of The Athletic, James and Curry were close at one time, but once Curry became somewhat of an equal to James, that relationship changed, and it really bothers Curry.

"The part that's odd for Steph, like why does that mean there has to be some beef between us," Thompson said. "He loves LeBron, he respects LeBron, and he's like ... 'Because the outside world is pitting us together, why do you and I have to now have this disdain between us? I thought we were cool.' That's the question that's in Curry's mind and Curry's camp: 'Why do you not like me when all I did was basically respect everything you did and kind of follow the model you carried out?' So there's an interesting dynamic there, and it's not just with LeBron."

Aside from his peers, analysts also reach very hard to diminish Curry's legacy-- that he is already one of the greatest the game has seen.

Just this past summer Max Kellerman took to his show First Take to call Curry a "front runner," meaning he's a coattail rider-- even though he's been with the same team his entire career, was the leading force behind the culture change of the franchise and the sport, going from a lottery team to champions, and led the team in scoring three of those five finals (2015, 2016, 2018).

Those facts are brushed off because Kellerman, along with some of his peers, have created this narrative that Curry doesn't get the job done in the NBA Finals. Besides the fact he has won in 3 out of 5 Finals appearances, Curry has led the Warriors in scoring in three of those Finals and assist in two of them. In 28 Finals Games, he's averaged 26.5 ppg, that's more than Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Dywane Wade averaged in their Finals appearances.

There weren't debate shows or troll themed Instagram accounts in the 80s, so we only remember the good times, the romanticized plays by the all-time greats. We always say how Magic is this translucent being, but if Rob Parker and Max Kellerman's "hot takes" existed back then, Magic would be defined for his "choke job" in the 1984 Finals when one the best point guards ever dribbled out the clock and followed that by throwing the ball away all in crunch time-- giving the Boston Celtics Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Even before that NBA finals, Magic Johnson, with a healthy and prime Kareem, got swept in the Finals of 1983. This isn't saying that Magic isn't great, because he is. He is one of the sports greatest point guards if the not the greatest point guard. But he had his faulty moments. You can't rip his legacy apart for that, so why do so with Curry? Even in the 2019 Finals, we like to jump on Steph for averaging 30 points. He was going to war with Quinn Cook, Alfonzo McKinnie (neither drafted), and a shell of Boogie Cousins —thanks to a quad injury and perhaps a bummed heel.

In 2015 he averaged 26 ppg, 10 points more than his nearest teammate, and led the team in assists. Not to discredit what Andre Iguodala did in that series, but Curry carried that team to that championship. In the pivotal game 5 of that series to break a 2-2 tie, he dropped 37 points. Iggy did his role phenomenally, but the drop off that team would've experienced without Curry would've been vastly more substantial than the drop off without Iguodala. So the notion that Curry clearly didn't deserve the 2015 Finals MVP is absurd. You hate to say that someone was robbed of an award because then you're taking away from another person's achievement, but in 2015 Stephen Curry was clearly robbed.

And even the Finals that he was robbed in has an asterisk next to it in the minds of analysts. Skip Bayless of the Undisputed went as far as to call the Warriors' first championship a "cheaply earned ring." So that raises the question: do we take away the Raptors title this year because the Warriors were so depleted?

I don't. But it seems that the basketball world wants to take away the Warriors' rings, particularly 2015, because of injuries to other teams. Interestingly enough, no one takes away Isaiah Thomas' first championship in Detroit when he beat a Laker team that was down Magic Johnson and Byron Scott.

Does that make one of the greatest point guards to play the game's first championship, "cheaply earned?" It doesn't, obviously, because that conversation hasn't come up. The only time it has come up is when we talk about Stephen Curry's legacy.

So what's the deal with the blatant disrespect from players and media members? One glaring difference between Curry and other all-time greats is the eye test. Curry isn't super tall, or massively athletic, or overly eccentric.

Instead, he's fairly well built, not that fastest athlete on the court, and can barely dunk-- the exact opposite of what comes to mind when you think of an all-time anything in a contact sport. To put that into perspective, think about Curry's former teammate, Kevin Durant, or his rival, Lebron James. Durant and James are freaks of nature-- something that even the best genetics can't promise. Durant is a 7-foot monster, with long arms, and a hell of a vertical. James is overtly bulk, extremely fast, and can put all of that together to physically enforce his will. Curry isn't any of that. He looks like an average, well built dude.

"I can't jump the highest," Curry told Daniel Riley of GQ in 2015. "I'm obviously not the biggest, not the strongest. And so they see me out there, and I look like a normal person."

And that's what makes Curry so fun for a lot of fans. He glued his butt to the cool kids table even though he was at one point one of the misfits that the other cool kids had a hi-bye just to be nice relationship with.

With that said, there's that feeling that Curry's ascension to that level is abnormal. It's obvious that he's good, but people don't want to put him in the same breath as some of his peers because of the difference in physical ability and personality. Curry isn't the swagged out, mess talking, rah-rah type of guy. He doesn't get a dunk, then stare down his defender, or cross someone over, and licks his lips before draining the three. Instead, when he does anything worth an ouu and ahh, he hits his chest three times and points up to thank God. He turns away before his three goes in. Sure, he shimmies, and even though there usually isn't any music, there's a universal feel that his shimmy may be offbeat.

Going even further, Curry hasn't had the same road that most all-time greats have had. Aside from Larry Bird, who still started at a BCS, Curry is the only star to lead a dynasty as a mid-major alumni. Curry wasn't highly ranked coming out of high school. He wasn't supposed to be the poster child for the NBA, and the fact that it happened is one of the biggest glo-ups of the 2000s-- making Curry the most relatable, realistic model for kids coming up.

Stephen A Smith said it best when it comes to being realistic about what is attainable for the majority of people.

"For the Jay-Zs, Lebrons, Shaqs, and others, I don't consider them the American dream," Smith said. "I consider me the American Dream. You get a one in a billion shot to be them, but you can be me. You can go to school, you can work hard, you can make it and be Stephen A."

Granted, Smith is speaking of the traditional American working seemingly regular jobs, but in terms of athletics, Curry's rise is the most realistic for most athletes everywhere. He isn't a freak of nature. He didn't have a bunch of big offers coming out of college. He got in the lab, perfected his jump shot, tightened up his handles, and worked to become one of the greatest point guards in the league's history.

With that said, the basketball culture has adopted the rough and gritty culture of blacktops across the country. The very essence of the suburban grown, jump shooting, God-fearing family man named Wardell is the exact opposite of that culture, and yet he has revolutionized the game-- and according to his former teammate Matt Barnes, others can't stand that.

"I think, he came in, he's the golden boy," Barnes said. "He came in and destroyed record books, won championships, beat LeBron -- he's done a lot of things that probably angered other players and other fans. That's why I don't think he gets the respect he deserves.”

"He's obviously the greatest shooter to ever play the game, and I can see people being bitter from that. Not to mention the whole light-skinned thing, and people have problems with that. Like I said, he's a perfect example of what the NBA needs to be represented as, and people don't like that either. Most of the time, when people are so good, or something's so perfect, people don't like that, and that's exactly what you get with Steph."

Stephen Curry has a case as a top 15 all-time great. The way he revolutionized the game is something that hadn't been done seen since Michael Jordan with all respect to Lebron James. Steve Nash, another undersized Hall of Fame point guard, understands this fully, explaining Curry's greatness in a nutshell.

"I hate to break it to you, but he's already an all-time great," Nash said. "He's the ultimate one-off. He's the evolution of basketball. It evolved before our eyes. There's layers to his place in the Zeitgeist. People don't associate him to greatness because he doesn't dominate the game physically. He dances. He pays a tax for that. He pays a tax for his great teammates."

Doc Rivers, being on the other side of some of Curry's video game type performances, said that people do not give Curry enough credit among the league's greats.

"This is the point people miss about Steph—and I don't think we give him enough credit—we keep not talking about him being in the top four or five players, and he is," Rivers said.

The Clippers coach also credited Curry for buying into head coach Steve Kerr's system when he arrived in 2014.

"[Curry] gave up the ball 55 percent [more], and he won the MVP," Rivers said. "So he didn't have the ball in his hands, what he learned is movement. That's cooperation. When you watch them, they have bought into who they are. They trust it. They trust their coach, they trust each other."

Stephen Curry has given Omarion levels of unbotheredness for years, expressing that he hears outside noise throughout his career but rarely responds. He is the example that every coach should want their players to follow, the perfect formula to be a beloved character, and yet, he still doesn't get the credit he deserves. His career will have to be in the books and his shoes hung up for Curry to receive the due he deserves in regards to being an all-time great.