Stephen Curry responds perfectly to Chris Paul shimmy

Chris Paul came at Stephen Curry with a shimmy Thursday night, but Curry knows what goes around comes around.

The Houston Rockets took a 3-2 series lead with a 98-94 win over the Golden State Warriors Thursday night. After failing to make a shot from the field in the first half, Rockets guard Chris Paul had a hot streak of three-pointers. After one of them, contested by Stephen Curry and late in the shot clock to give Houston a lead in the third quarter, Paul went right into Stephen Curry’s grill with the latter’s notorious shoulder shimmy taunt as they reached the other end of the floor.

Curry brought back his shimmy move during Golden State’s blowout win in Game 3. But Paul remembered it, and a couple games later an opportunity for some semblance of retaliation came.

During his postgame podium session, one of the questions to Curry was about Paul’s shimmy. To the two-time league MVP’s credit, he had a perfect response. It’s hard to dish a taunt as well and willingly receive one back, and a lot of guys could take a lesson from Curry.

“If you can shimmy on somebody else, you gotta be alright getting shimmied on. So I’ll keep shimmying, and maybe he will too.” So Curry will keep shimmying, and he seems to hope Paul will too.

Here’s a look at Paul’s brilliant shimmy in Curry’s face, in case you missed it. Curry’s smile shows he had some appreciation for the gesture.

https://twitter.com/HoustonRockets/status/999840402353082368

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The Curry-Paul rivalry dates back through Paul’s time with the Los Angeles Clippers, and Curry recently referred to Paul as a great mentor. But this is Paul’s best chance to beat Curry and the Warriors in the playoffs, despite an injury at the end of Game 5 that has his status for Game 6 up in the air.