New Year, New Steph

In February the San Francisco 49ers lost to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, which was the last time this humble journal posted anything about the Bay Area teams. Though not even a year has elapsed, the months-long suspension and de-prioritization of all sports has made last year's pre-COVID Super Bowl seem like ancient history.

In the regular NFL season just ended, the 49ers were plagued by injuries to their biggest stars and finished with a record of 6-10, last in the NFC West.

Turning to baseball, the San Francisco Giants ended their schedule out of the playoffs with a 29-31 record. The Giants had only three players (Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt) remaining from their 2014 championship team and will need several rebuilding years to contend with the 2020 World Series Champion L.A. Dodgers, who are in the same division.

Damian Lee celebrates Steph's
performance (Chron photo)

The Golden State Warriors, after their June, 2019 defeat by the Toronto Raptors in the NBA Finals, finished dead last in the 30-team NBA during the COVID-abbreviated 2019-2020 season, when they lost almost the entire team to trade, retirement, and injury. Future Hall-of-Famer Stephen Curry showed only flashes of his 2016-MVP form as teams focused all their defenses on him.

The new basketball season began dismally as All-Star Klay Thompson suffered a season-ending injury for the second year in a row. With only five games completed through Friday the Warriors were already declared by CBS Sports as "quite possibly, the worst team in the league right now."

With mutterings from the rest of the league that Steph Curry is not good enough to carry his team to the playoffs without other star players helping, Steph Curry put up 62 points last night as the Warriors beat the Trailblazers.

After 11 seasons in the NBA, two MVP awards, and three NBA championships, Stephen Curry at the age of 32 scored the most points in his storied career. The feat made him the second-oldest player (behind Kobe Bryant, 37) to score at least 60 points in an NBA game.

For one game Steph Curry reminded us of the joy that fans used to find in sports and gave us hope that a New Year will chase away the clouds of 2020.