During the 2015–16 N.B.A. season, Stephen Curry led the Golden State Warriors to a best-ever 73–9 regular-season record, before losing in dramatic fashion to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Finals, and the tectonics of basketball style and strategy—not only in the N.B.A., but beyond—shifted for good. Curry regularly launched shots from spots closer to half-court than to the three-point line, forcing defenders to cover more ground, drawing them away from the basket, and leaving a more or less open lane ripe for the slashing. This offensive approach, with variations shaped by differences in personnel and degrees of boldness, has become nearly de rigueur across the league—winners beget imitators, every time—and has had a palpable effect on players’ entire careers.

Take Damian Lillard, of the Portland Trail Blazers, for instance, whose Curry-esque, thirty-seven-foot series-ending bomb against the Oklahoma City Thunder caused aftershocks that can still be felt across the league, and whose fearless chucking would seem baffling, or at least ill-advised, had there never been a Steph. Or consider that the “death lineup” trotted out, in crucial moments, by that Warriors team—Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, Andre Iguodala, and Draymond Green—which seemed an undersized anomaly enabled only by Curry’s constant threat to detonate, has, three seasons later, become the model for everyday starting fives on almost every team. If anybody is the progenitor of what is invariably (perhaps annoyingly) called “the modern N.B.A.,” it is Curry.

Some analysts saw this coming. By 2016, Curry had already led his team to a title and had won two Most Valuable Player awards. What was less obvious at the time was that that the 2015–16 season would be Curry’s apotheosis. After the Warriors coughed up a three-games-to-one series lead to the Cavs, led by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, which somewhat dampened the glories of that season, a pile of contingencies has worked to obscure Curry’s brilliance. The most notable of these was the arrival to the Warriors, the following season, of Kevin Durant, who helped the team win the next two championships—and won two Finals M.V.P.s along the way—but also made Curry less central. Of course, Curry had never done it alone: Thompson’s similarly marvellous shooting, Green’s superb passing, and Iguodala’s all-around game were key. None of basketball’s individual marvels—a fierce dunk, a premonitory pass, a shot from some unbelievable distance—can be extricated from the less-noticed things that made it possible, such as a sturdy pick, an artful cut, or a willing decoy. But Durant isn’t just another nuance; he’s more like an eclipse. And, lately, after three years’ worth of begrudging response to his decision to join an already historically great team, praise has rightly followed. During this year’s playoffs, Durant has hopped from hosanna to hosanna like a frog over lily pads. Now that LeBron James has finally started, at least for now, to slow down, attention has turned to Durant, to see if he might grab the mantle of world’s best for a while, before someone from the next micro-generation—Giannis Antetokounmpo, say—takes it from him. That sort of speculation has tended not to factor in Curry, who, a few short years ago, seemed to be taking over the sport for good.

Despite the structural developments for which Curry can take much credit, many of the individual laurels in the years since 2016 have gone to players who seem opposed, at least in part, to the freewheeling, pass-happy, karmically sound brand of basketball that Curry plays. Russell Westbrook and James Harden, the last two M.V.P.s, dribble divots into the court, keep the ball for themselves, and, despite their high assist numbers, use their teammates more as escape valves—or as sentient props—than as joyfully equal partners in the making of beauty on the court. It’s fair to wonder, given the recent prominence of such players, whether, despite the broader three-point revolution, the pendulum of true superstardom has begun, already, to swing away from Curry and back toward the solo heroes of older days.

In the second round, toward the end of Game 5 between the Warriors and Harden’s Rockets, Durant went down with what is reportedly a calf strain, and we got the chance to think about these questions again. Game 6, without Durant, was an opportunity for the Warriors to banish the Rockets from the playoffs for the second straight year, but also for Curry, in a single flourish, to show how he could steer his team toward victory without Durant, and against Harden. Here, he could begin to reverse two narratives at once, and pull his audience—just as he draws defenders to his dangerous person—back into reckoning with his gifts.

Since Game 2 of the series, Curry had been struggling with one of the fingers on his left hand, which was dislocated—helping to push him further into the background, behind Durant—and, at some point during Game 6, he hurt it again. He didn’t score at all during the first half—a terrible omen, although Thompson’s sharp shooting and some fantastic play by the backup guard Shaun Livingston kept the score tied at the break. Curry’s early funk may also have had something to do with Chris Paul’s defense, or with the fact that Paul had, allegedly, made it impossible for Curry to conduct shooting drills before the game in Houston. In the second half, though, Curry looked like a sleeper finally waking. He made some layups, then hit his first three-pointer with about two minutes left in the third quarter, at which point he still had only eight points in the game. He kept zagging into the lane, letting his curt, playful dribbles lead the way, anchored by his springy, wide-set kangaroo’s stance. Sometimes he passed the ball out, other times he scooped it home. His three-point shot hadn’t totally come back—one, taken from the corner, banged off the side the backboard—but you could tell he felt better, except for the finger, which seemed to be getting worse. Between plays he sort of shook it or stood squeezing it between his thighs.

But he kept scoring points in the lane and, increasingly, at the free-throw line. As he gathered strength for a final push, Paul had to stick closer to him, giving room for his teammates to get even more open than they’d already been. These were the old pre-Durant Warriors again, pinging the ball around the perimeter and wordlessly goading each other into shooting from a little bit farther out, tossing each lob a little bit higher and with more English. You almost got the feeling, as you sometimes do with this iteration of the team, that while, sure, the Rockets were there—the game was close and intense all the way, the stakes couldn’t be ignored—the bigger challenge was to keep the fun going. In the fourth quarter, something seemed to break through in Curry’s game: he passed half-court, played a mini-game of give-and-go with Green, then let fly from three, letting his feet angle forward—he was hoping for a foul—and his torso fall backward. The whistle never came, and it shouldn’t have, but the three points did, although the rim, totally untouched, would never have known it. The net shimmied in praise for a moment, then fell still.