Steph Curry, the NBAs First Viral Star, Breaks Opponents, and the Internet, Too

Check out this GIF. Its transfixing. Steph Curry is weaving through the arms of the NBAs best defensive center (DeAndre Jordan), one of the leagues best defensive point guards (Chris Paul), a man so committed to defense he drove 95 miles to beat up a man dating his ex-wife (Matt Barnes), and a 7-footer with a man bun (Spencer Hawes). None of them catch up to him.

Then Curry, the best basketball player on Earth, casually steps back and takes a 26-footer. I dont even need to tell you this, but it goes in. It doesnt touch the rim. The end of the GIF reveals two guys on his own team standing around by the midcourt line, just watching the show.

The Legend of Michael Jordan was born of the television and Nike ads and SportsCenter. Joe DiMaggios myth was made of tabloids and cigarette ads and Marilyn Monroe.

Steph Curry makes a beautiful six-second video. After each jaw-dropping new play, the rush is on. Americas most prolific children of the Vine are rewinding their DVRs, trying to be the first one to get a grainy Zapruder film of it up on Twitter so that they can get sweet, precious retweets. This kind of thing will happen, oh, twice per game.

Steph Currys Golden State Warriors broke the NBA record for wins Wednesday night, just like hes broken the brains of coaches and the concept of defense and everything else.

But heres Steph Currys silent killing: Because of GIFs like this, he broke the timesheet at the leagues website.

Weve adjusted our staffing schedules to follow our coverage of Steph, said Morgan Dewan. We do measurements on every post we do. He over-performs every single time.

Such is the strife of Dewans crew at Turner Sports, which runs the leagues digital operations, website, NBATV, and the NBA on TNT. Shes the senior director of social media there, which now means managing a team that distributes a ludicrous amount of Steph Curry videos on Vine and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Snapchat and Flurf and any other social media service that we may or may not have just made upall at a record pace.

They have no other choice.

This might marginalize the best basketball player of a generation, but theres no other way to put it: Steph Curry is the first NBA superstar the Internet built. All of the stats prove it.

According to internal NBA data provided to The Daily Beast, Steph Curry was mentioned 12 million times on Twitter in the last 90 days. Thats 40 percent more than the second-biggest story in the NBA right nowthe retiring Kobe Bryant. Its twice as many mentions as Nikes Half-Billion Dollar Man, LeBron James. And its seven times as many mentions as any other playerfrom Russell Westbrook to Carmelo Anthony.