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When the young Steph Curry was growing up it seemed that he would never escape from the shadow of his illustrious father; Steph was too short and too skinny for the big leagues. Now he’s widely recognised as the greatest shooter in the history of basketball, one of the most famous athletes on earth and a global ambassador for the sport. He’s not just changed the way the game is played, he’s also inspired countless people around the world by proving that you don’t need the stature of a giant to become a giant on the court. Now he’s becoming a giant off the court as well; a True Superhero who’s fighting to give a sporting chance to other kids battling long odds. 

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Emerging from Dad’s long shadow 

Steph’s father is Dell Curry, who was coming to the end of his second season in the NBA when Steph was born in 1988. That year Dell moved to the Charlotte Hornets, where he spent the next decade becoming the franchise’s all-time leading points scorer, largely thanks to his  own exceptional three-point shooting skills. Dell ended his career with a 40.2% success rate on three-point shooting, making him one of the leading range shooters of the 20th century. 

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Steph and his younger brother Seth (who is also a successful NBA player) benefitted in many ways from having such a successful father - even joining their dad on court in pregame warmups and practicing with his glamorous teammates - but in other ways their father’s success proved to be a burden. One problem was their height; neither brother could match their father’s stature, and Steph in particular was a late developer. According to the NCAA website he was only 5’7 and 150 lbs when he started his junior year of high school. Although he had tremendous talent on the court, the college scouts who were attracted by his impressive scoring statistics were not impressed by his stature, and although he grew a great deal during his high school career by the time he reached college age he was still only 6’1 and 180 lbs. Steph would later talk of how he struggled to win a scholarship, with the rejection that hurt the most coming from the college where his father had made his name, Virginia Tech. Dell had been a huge star for the Virginia Tech Hokies, and was inducted into their hall of fame in 1998. Steph desperately wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps but the Hokies weren’t prepared to take a risk on him, and neither were any of the other major colleges. He ended up at the unfashionable Davidson College, where he set college basketball alight by leading the Davidson Wildcats on a famous run to the Elite 8 of the NCAA Championship, leaving the scouts red-faced and setting the NCAA season record for three point shooting in the process. 

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Introducing the Splash Brothers

By the time he reached the NBA Curry was seen as a huge prospect, but by no means unique among that year’s rookie intake. He was only the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft, ending up at perennial strugglers the Golden State Warriors, who had made the playoffs only once since 1994. Steph was going to change this but the process took time, and was not helped by his many injuries. In his first three seasons the only thing Curry won was the NBA Sportsmanship Award, and when the time came for the Warriors to renew his contract many pundits claimed that doing so would be a risk because of his many injury problems. Later, the consensus was that Curry’s relatively small salary enabled the Warriors to maintain a core of strong players to support him, with future stars such as Draymond Green and Klay Thompson rounding out the side. This would not be the last time that Steph made sacrifices for the benefit of his teammates.

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Klay Thompson is an especially important figure in Steph Curry’s story. Like Curry, Thompson was a first round pick (in 2011) with a famous ex-pro father (Mychal Thompson) and like Curry, Klay is a guard with extraordinary three-point shooting abilities. The pair swiftly developed a partnership that led to them being nicknamed the Splash Brothers, and they began smashing NBA scoring records. Curry led the way from downtown; he broke the record for three-pointers made in the 2012-13 regular season, with 272; Thompson added 211 more, to bring the total to 483, a record for a duo in the NBA. Their coach at the time, Mark Jackson, described them as “the greatest shooting backcourt of all time”, but their efforts were not enough to propel the Warriors to greatness. The 2012-13 season ended with defeat to the Spurs in the Conference semifinals, and although the Splash Brothers beat their own records by one bucket the following season (Curry with 261, and Thompson with 223), postseason success eluded them again following a first round defeat to the Clippers. Although Steph fought against the decision, Coach Jackson was shown the door to be replaced by Steve Kerr. 

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Changing the face of the NBA

Coach Kerr had some interesting new ideas about how to use his lethal backcourt weapon, and he changed the way the Warriors moved the ball, allowing Curry to find more shooting opportunities when empty handed. This caused opposition defenses problems that they were unused to facing; Curry was already extremely dangerous, not just because of his abilities to catch and shoot from range, but also his incredible ball handling skills that led to unprecedented numbers of unassisted threes. This was how Steph broke records under Coach Jackson, but now Coach Kerr was leaning even more heavily on Curry’s jumper, and the results were extraordinary; Curry was as accurate as ever, but now he was taking more and more shots, and racking up the points. In Coach Kerr’s first year in charge he made 286 threes in the regular season, breaking his own record; the following year he demolished that total, sinking an unbelievable 402. With Thompson backing him up, the Warriors were almost unstoppable, reaching four consecutive finals and winning three of them, with Curry being awarded MVP in the first two years. These seasons caused other teams to change the way they approached both defense and offense, with three-point shooting becoming a much more important aspect of the game across the league. Teams now shoot from range far more frequently, and overall scoring averages are going up year on year. Steph Curry’s influence has been an enormous factor in that change. 

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Steph’s success isn’t just about three-pointers; he also has a winner’s mentality and is willing to sacrifice himself for his team. This was never more evident than in Coach Kerr’s third year in charge, where Curry led the efforts to persuade another NBA superstar, Kevin Durant, to join the Warriors as a free agent. This meant fewer scoring opportunities and a lot less limelight for Steph, but a far greater chance of success for his teammates. This selfless attitude is typical of Curry’s approach and is also typical of his attitude off the court, and one of the reasons behind his enormous popularity worldwide. 

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Leveling the playing fields

Curry has always been a tremendous ambassador for the sport of basketball, not least because he’s easy to relate to; very few people can dunk a ball, but sinking three-pointers is a more achievable goal, and people love to see this comparatively tiny man humbling players a foot taller than him. His personality also wins him many admirers, as he plays the game with an almost childlike enthusiasm. His demeanor off the court is just as warm, but perhaps the most important element of all is the impact he’s having outside of basketball.

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In 2012, Curry announced that he’d be donating three antimalarial nets to the United Nations’ Nothing But Nets campaign for every three-pointer he sank in the NBA; over the following decade that’s led to many thousands of nets making their way from Curry’s hands to worldwide relief efforts. More recently, he’s been focusing on children closer to home with his remarkable Eat Learn Play Foundation, which he set up with his wife Ayesha in 2019. In the following three years they’ve distributed a staggering 17 million meals to families, with a particular focus on those hardest hit by the Covid-19 epidemic. The Foundation also provides much-needed educational and sporting support to children in the Oakland area, distributing half a million books to children and funding a wide array of scholarships. One initiative that is personal to Curry is an endowment to his alma mater, Davidson College, but the gift is to fund women’s athletics programs at the college; Steph has spoken of how the fight for women’s equality has become “a little more personal” since the birth of his two daughters. Another subject close to his heart is golf, and Curry has recently launched the Underrated Tour, which aims to improve diversity in the game by providing fully subsidized tournaments for young players from poorer backgrounds, who often struggle with the sport’s prohibitive cost of entry. It’s not hard to see where Steph’s drive to provide equal opportunities for disadvantaged athletes comes from, and as with all things in this True Superhero’s life, he’s not just determined to succeed, but extremely likely to do so. 

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