What’s up with NBA players’ rejection of, well, basic scientific facts?
NASA has offered to give NBA superstar Steph Curry a tour of one of its lunar labs after the Golden State Warriors guard said on a podcast that he doubts humans landed on the moon.
No, really.
Curry made the head-scratching comment on an episode of the “Winging It” podcast, which posted Monday. According to Bleacher Report, Curry brought up the subject himself during the more than hour-long podcast with fellow NBA players Vince Carter, Kent Bazemore and Andre Iguodala:
Curry: “We ever been to the moon?”
The other players: “Nope.”
Curry: “They’re gonna come get us. I don’t think so, either.”
Um, well, OK.
Not quite sure who’s coming after them, unless Curry meant social media, which indeed had a field day with this. So much so that NASA stepped in, sensing an opportunity to school the two-time NBA MVP on the facts.
“There’s lots of evidence NASA landed 12 American astronauts on the Moon from 1969-1972. We’d love for Mr. Curry to tour the lunar lab at our Johnson Space Center in Houston, perhaps the next time the Warriors are in town to play the Rockets,” NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said in a statement. “We have hundreds of pounds of Moon rocks stored there, and the Apollo mission control. During his visit, he can see first-hand what we did 50 years ago, as well as what we’re doing now to go back to the Moon in the coming years, but this time to stay.”
No word on if Curry will accept the invitation. We’ve reached out to the Golden State Warriors for comment but haven’t heard back yet.
“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”
And this isn’t the first time that an NBA player has latched on to a wild conspiracy theory. Last year, also in a podcast, Boston Celtic Kyrie Irving voiced support for one of the oldest ones out there — that the Earth is flat. He later doubled down on this in an interview with The New York Times.
“I do research on both sides. I’m not against anyone that thinks the Earth is round,” he said in a chat with the Times’ Sopan Deb back in June. “I’m not against anyone that thinks it’s flat. I just love hearing the debate. It’s fun to talk about.”
But Irving walked it all back and apologized in October, partially because he said science teachers we’re telling him kids were starting to buy into all the flat-Earth talk.