Drug dealers are now naming heroin after Stephen Curry
As Stephen Curry has improved and developed into the NBA’s most potent offensive force and its Most Valuable Player over the past couple of years, he has also become one of the sport’s highest-profile superstars, a pitchman par excellence who has become ubiquitous thanks in part to endorsement deals with Degree, Kaiser Permanente, JBL, Brita, Fanatics, Chase and, of course, Under Armour. While we’ve grown accustomed to seeing Curry’s face in all sorts of places, it’s a safe bet that the Golden State Warriors point guard never envisioned his mug appearing on this particular product:
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Yep — according to Thomas J. Nestel, chief of police of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Philadelphia-area drug dealers have taken to including printouts bearing the MVP’s face and name in the plastic bags of heroin they sell, making Steph “this week’s brand for heroin in Philly.” The “honor” comes in the same week that Steph, his wife Ayesha, and their children, Riley and Ryan, are featured on the cover of Parents magazine, which means Steph’s occupying space on very, very opposite ends of the recognition spectrum this week.
Unseemly as it is, Curry’s far from the first celebrity whose name has been co-opted for the purpose of selling narcotics. May we never forget about the “Beast Mode OG” named after Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch, the Colorado dispensary favorite “Peyton Manning,” or “Chuck Norris Black and Blue Dream.” (“But Chuck Norris isn’t an athlete,” you say. “That’s what you think,” I reply, as Chuck Norris appears from out of nowhere to perform a perfect roundhouse kick with one millimeter of space between his foot and the top of your head before giving me a thumbs up for continuing to believe in him.)
In fact, he’s not even the first NBA player to receive this treatment in Philly. From an October 2012 story in the Philadelphia Daily News:
Upper Darby police said that they busted a major heroin dealer from Philadelphia on Thursday who had 140 packets of the deadly drug – all of which were stamped with the silhouette of a basketball player and the name “LeBron James.”
“I don’t think LeBron James would be too happy with this drug-dealer dude using his name on these street bags,” said Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.
There are nicer, more positive and far less fundamentally destructive tributes, of course, but I guess this is one way to confirm that you’ve completely permeated the public consciousness. It’s pretty weird that we can now tell the youth of America to be like Steph Curry and stay off that Steph Curry, but then, the world’s an endlessly strange place.
Hat-tip to The Big Lead.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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