Today’s word of the day, courtesy of The Dictionary Project’s daily email, is connoisseur. A connoisseur is a person “who has expert knowledge and is competent to critique, particularly in matters of art, style or taste” or “who is knowledgeable, discerning and appreciative of something,” according to the email. Merriam-Webster says it is a person “who understands the details, technique, or principles of an art and is competent to act as a critical judge” or “who enjoys with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/connoisseur). I suppose some of you might be a connoisseur of my word of the day, though I have heard no judgments from any of you. It can be pronounced / ˌkɒn əˈsɜr / or / ˌkɒn əˈsʊər /, though I honestly prefer the second pronunciation.

The word appears in the English language in “1714, ‘a critical judge of any art, one well-acquainted with any of the fine arts and thus competent to pass judgment on its products,’ from French connoisseur (Modern French connaiseur), from Old French conoisseor ‘an expert, a judge, one well-versed,’ from conoistre ‘to know,’ from Latin cognoscere ‘to get to know, recognize, become well-acquainted with,’ from assimilated form of com ‘with, together (see con-) + gnoscere ‘recognize’ (from PIE root *gno- ‘to know’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=connoisseur). The website continues, “Transferred sense of ‘a critic in matters of taste (in food, wine, etc.)’ is from 1796. The attempt in dictionaries from 1730s to introduce a corresponding abstract noun connoissance from French did not succeed” (ibid.).

Toward the end of the 18^th century, English borrowed an Italian word, cognoscente (plural cognoscenti) which has a very similar etymology, except that the earlier Italian is conoscente, meaning “knowing man,” but in contemporary English cognoscenti has a difference sense, more like, people who are “in the know,” who have access to inside information. And the standard pronunciation of this word is / ˌkɒn yəˈʃɛn tiˌ/, where the gn is pronounced as if it were ny.

On this date in 2015, Steph Curry was named the Most Valuable Player for the 2014-2015 NBA season.

Wardell Stephen (“Steph”) Curry, Jr., (b. 1988) grew up a basketball player. His father, Dell Curry, played at Virginia Tech and for several NBA teams, most notably the Charlotte Hornets. Dell Curry was a 6’5” shooting guard and is still regarded as one of the better shooters in NBA history. He was a first-round pick in the 1986 NBA draft, and he was a career 40% 3-point shooter. He also took his boys, Steph and Seth, to his games with him, even letting them shoot around with his teams.

Steph attended a private Christian prep school for his high school years in Charlotte. He led his team to three consecutive conference championships and playoff appearances, but he wasn’t at one of the big basketball high schools in North Carolina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Curry). Curry is 6’2” (1.88 meters), and in high school he weighed in at about 160 pounds (72.58 kilograms), not exactly impressing anybody with his size. So while he wanted to attend Virginia Tech, where his father had been a star, Tech offered him only a walk-on position, no scholarship. And the recruiters at other universities weren’t exactly knocking his door down.

The one coach who did aggressively pursue Steph Curry was Bob McKillop at nearby Davidson College. Davidson is one of the smallest NCAA Division 1 schools, but it does have a strong basketball history. In the 1960s, the team was coached by Lefty Driesell, who got the Wildcats ranked in the top 10 in the nation on four different occasions, including as high as second in 1969. The coach after Lefty was Terry Holland, who went on to coach the Virginia Cavaliers and then become Uva’s Athletic Director. What followed in the mid 70s was a period of decline, but with the hiring of Bob McKillop in 1989, basketball life came back to Davidson. McKillop stayed at Davidson until 2022, when he retired. In the meantime, he won 8 Southern Conference Coach of the Year Awards and 2 Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year Awards.

Curry’s career at Davidson began in 2006, and as a freshman he led the team in scoring, getting over 21 points per game. He was named the Southern Conference freshman of the year, tournament MVP, and first-team All-Conference. Davidson lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Maryland after winning the Southern Conference tournament.

In his sophomore year, Curry led the team to an undefeated conference season and a trip to the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament, where Davidson lost to eventual champion Kansas, 59-57. He averaged over 25 points a game in the regular season and over 30 in his four NCAA tournament games.

In his junior year, which was also his last as a Wildcat, he averaged over 28 points a game, but Davidson lost in the Southern Conference tournament, and since the SC is a very small Division 1 conference, Davidson did not get to return to the Big Dance, instead losing in the second round of the NIT.

After that season, Curry announced for the NBA draft. In June of 2009, he was chosen by the Golden State Warriors with the 7^th pick of the first round. The players chosen before him were Blake Griffin, Hasheem Thabeet, James Harden, Tyreke Evans, Ricky Rubio, and Jonny Flynn. A lot of experts thought that Curry, despite his success at tiny Davidson College, was too small for the NBA and didn’t have the big-time college experience that those other players had. Of those chosen before Curry, only James Harden has won an MVP award. Curry, on the other hand, has won the MVP award twice and won four championships. He has set the record for the most made three pointers in league history (recognizing that great shooters like Jerry West and Pete Maravich did not have the three-point shot). Even more, he has changed the game; the three-point shot is much more of a weapon than it was before Curry entered the league. In fact, Curry and his teammate Klay Thompson are 1 and 2 in most three pointers attempted, and by a large margin.

I grew up playing the three biggest American sports, baseball, basketball, and soccer. And I have to own up to the fact that I played soccer for three years at Davidson College, just a few decades before Curry played basketball there. I’m also not very big, so I really appreciate the success of someone who is not a seven footer. I’m not sure that I should be considered a connoisseur of basketball, but I am a fan. And I think I’m pretty knowledgeable, though I wouldn’t say that I’m one of the cognoscenti of basketball. But Steph Curry is, for a variety of reasons, one of my favorite basketball players of all time.

One quick story. I understand that this happened, though I have no proof. During that run to the Elite Eight, in the second round, Davidson fell 17 points behind Georgetown, who was heavily favored to beat the Wildcats. Coach McKillop called a time out. When the guys got to the bench, feeling a bit down since they were so far down in the first half, McKillop asked them, “Are you having fun?” They looked at him like something was wrong with him. So he said, “You’re in the second round of the NCAA tournament, something thousands of other guys wish they could be doing, playing the game you love. You should be having a good time.” After that, the guys went out and had a good time, gradually cutting down on the lead while they were doing it. And of course, they eventually won. There’s a reason we call those activities games: they’re supposed to be fun.

Today’s image is from a 2022 Sports Illustrated article about Bob McKillop’s retirement and Steph Curry’s message to his former coach, an article by Jelani Scott (https://www.si.com/college/2022/06/17/stephen-curry-reacts-davidson-coach-mckillop-retirement-announcement).