Curry responds to ex-coach's comment he's 'hurting the game'

The Golden State Warriors won their much-anticipated Finals Christmas Day rematch with the Cleveland Cavaliers 89-83. But not all is merry in the Bay Area, at least when the topic turns to their ex-head coach.

During Friday’s victory, ABC analyst Mark Jackson — who coached the Warriors for three seasons from 2011 to 2014 — tried to pay reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry a compliment. We think. But it didn’t come out that way.

The commentary began like this:

"Steph Curry’s great. Steph Curry’s the MVP. He’s a champion. Understand what I’m saying when I say this."

Uh-oh.

"To a degree he’s hurting the game."

Bingo.

Then came the clarification.

"And what I mean by that is that I go into these high school gyms, I watch these kids, and the first thing they do is they run to the 3-point line. You are not Steph Curry. Work on the other aspects of the game. People think that he’s just a knock-down shooter."

Regardless of what Jackson meant to say, it is what he said that was the talk of the locker room after the game.

"I have to talk to him," Curry told Yahoo! Sports after the victory. "I don't know what he means by that. If you can shoot, shoot. If you can't, stop."

Warriors big man Andrew Bogut, however, didn’t find it too amusing.

"Anything he says, you can take that with a grain of salt," Bogut told Yahoo! "And you can quote me on that."

Thanks. We just did.