Mark Jackson on Stephen Curry: ‘To a degree, he’s hurt the game’

“People don’t think that he’s just a knock-down shooter. That’s not why he’s the MVP. He’s a complete basketball player,” Mark Jackson said of Stephen Curry.

Former Golden State Warriors head coach Mark Jackson criticized Stephen Curry for the influence of his three-point shooting on young basketball players during Golden State’s 89–83 Christmas Day win against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday.

“To a degree, he’s hurt the game,” Jackson said on ABC’s telecast. “And what I mean by that is I go into these high school gyms, I watch these kids and the first thing they do is run to the three-point line. You are not Steph Curry. Work on your other aspects of the game. People don’t think that he’s just a knock-down shooter. That’s not why he’s the MVP. He’s a complete basketball player.”

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Listen to Jackson’s comments below:

Jackson coached the Warriors from 2011–14.  Curry and several Warriors responded to Jackson’s criticism following the win.

“I have to talk to him,” Curry said to Yahoo! Sports. “I don’t know what he means by that. If you can shoot, shoot. If you can’t, stop.”

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Warriors center Andrew Bogut went one step further.

“Anything he says, you take with a grain of salt,” Bogut told reporters during postgame interviews. “And you can quote me on that.”

Last week, Jackson told Sports Illustratedthat the shift into more three-point shooting would fit his style of coaching if he had players like Curry and Klay Thompson.

“The shift in style fit my personnel,” Jackson

told

SI

. “When the shift says more three-point shooting and I’m sitting there with

Klay Thompson

and Stephen Curry, then I’m fine with it. I totally understand what coach [Gregg] Popovich is saying.

I think the foolish thing is to have coach Popovich’s team and they’re just trying to jack up threes. The way that they are successful is staying true to their identity. Too many teams are trying to copy the trend, but ultimately it’s going to put them in a position to fail. Let them do what they do and do what you do best.

I totally think you can’t have one way of going and that’s the way to win. The Warriors have won because their style matches their personnel.”

Curry was shooting 44.8% through the first 28 games of the season.