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NBA star Steph Curry drops ball, suggests NASA moon landing was faked

Commentary: Steph Curry, famous for freakishly dropping 3's, dunks on NASA's moon landing -- and misses. We hope it was all just good-natured dribbling.

Jackson Ryan Former Science Editor
Jackson Ryan was CNET's science editor, and a multiple award-winning one at that. Earlier, he'd been a scientist, but he realized he wasn't very happy sitting at a lab bench all day. Science writing, he realized, was the best job in the world -- it let him tell stories about space, the planet, climate change and the people working at the frontiers of human knowledge. He also owns a lot of ugly Christmas sweaters.
Jackson Ryan
2 min read
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Gregory Shamus/Getty/NASA/Jackson Ryan

Did we go to the moon?

Yes. That's the answer. Yes we did go. We, us humans, went to the moon, in 1969, when Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed the Eagle lunar module on the surface of our planet's natural satellite. There's no grand conspiracy theory, no reason to think we haven't stretched our legs on the soil of our moon. 

We went up there -- and we left footprints.

However, Stephen Curry, who plays for NBA team Golden State Warriors, doesn't believe this great achievement of human endeavor occurred at all. 

Appearing on The Ringer's "Wingin' It" podcast Sunday, Curry, along with hosts Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore, resoundingly suggested humans have never been to the moon.

"We ever been to the moon?" Curry asks.

The hosts quickly respond in the negative.

"They gonna come get us, I don't think so either," Curry responds, presumably using "they" to refer to the Men In Black who usually silence this type of universal truth speaking.

Shouts in the background then decry the fact that back in the 1960s cell phones were so big we couldn't possibly have launched three human beings on a rocket ship to the moon. Cell phones were large, indeed, but that doesn't at all relate to NASA's attempt to get to the moon for the first time.

This isn't the first time an NBA player has spoken about conspiracy theories.

In February 2017, Boston Celtics star Kyrie Irving proclaimed the Earth was flat on a podcast with then-teammates Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, Irving said he believes the Earth isn't a blue-green bauble suspended in the vacuum of space but a pancake-flat disc frisbeeing through the cosmos. It seems Kyrie had picked up that idea from Instagram, that wondrous bastion of scientific knowledge and insight.

The insightful discussion by Curry and Co. followed on from another talking point on the podcast: "How do they know what sound a dinosaurs made in these movies?" 

"A bone don't tell you what a sound is, right?" comes the reply over a cacophony of noise and laughter.

A bone certainly don't -- but with these types of discussions filling the dead space in podcast conversations, let's just hold out hope that some of the most talented basketball players in the world were merely having a laugh with us. We've reached out to Curry to see. 

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