Stephen Curry

• 1. Introduction

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  Stephen Curry was born on the 14th of March, 1988, at Akron General Medical Center in Ohio, and grew up shooting baskets on a backyard court in Charlotte with his younger brother Seth. Nobody could have predicted that the slender kid who weighed only 160 pounds and could not earn a scholarship to his father's alma mater would one day be called the greatest shooter in basketball history. Virginia Tech offered him only a walk-on spot. Davidson College took a chance on him instead, having recruited him aggressively since the tenth grade.

  The questions worth asking about Curry are not simply how he became great. They are why his particular kind of greatness proved so difficult to see early on, how a small-school player from a mid-major conference bent the entire sport around his abilities, and what it means that the shot everyone once considered low-percentage became, in his hands, the most dangerous weapon in basketball. Those questions begin at Davidson, but they do not end there.

• 2. The Davidson Years

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  Before Curry had played a single game for Davidson, head coach Bob McKillop told alumni at a booster event: "Wait 'til you see Steph Curry. He is something special." That praise arrived before any college statistics existed to back it up. What followed in his freshman season made the prediction look conservative: Curry finished with 730 points, broke the school's 500-point freshman scoring record, and led the Southern Conference in scoring at 21.5 points per game, ranking ninth nationally. He finished second nationally among freshmen in scoring, behind only Kevin Durant of Texas.

  His sophomore season is the one that introduced Curry to a national audience. Davidson entered the 2008 NCAA tournament as a ten-seed, and in their first game against seventh-seeded Gonzaga, Curry was held in check for the first half while Gonzaga built an 11-point second-half lead. He then scored 30 of his 40 total points in the second half, going 8-of-10 from three, and pushed Davidson to their first NCAA tournament win since 1969. He scored 25 second-half points to erase a 17-point Georgetown deficit two days later. Against third-seeded Wisconsin, he hit 33 points to send Davidson to the Elite Eight.

  In that Elite Eight matchup against the top-seeded Kansas Jayhawks, Curry scored 25 points and hit the three-pointer that set the single-season NCAA record with 159 for the year. Davidson lost 59-57. Kansas went on to win the championship. Curry was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Midwest Region, becoming the first player from a team that did not reach the Final Four to receive that honor since Juwan Howard of Michigan in 1994.

  By his junior year, Curry averaged 28.6 points, 5.6 assists, and 2.5 steals and won the NCAA scoring title. He became Davidson's all-time leading scorer with 2,488 career points, passing John Gerdy. He would go on to complete his sociology degree in May 2022, and on the 31st of August, 2022, he became the first Davidson graduate to have his jersey number retired and was inducted into the Davidson Athletics Hall of Fame.

• 3. The Ankle Years

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  The Golden State Warriors selected Curry with the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft, on the 25th of June, 2009, which happened to be his father Dell's 45th birthday. Dell Curry, a professional player himself, had actually called teams with higher picks to urge them not to draft his son, hoping the New York Knicks would take him with the eighth pick. The Minnesota Timberwolves agreed to pass on him and used the fifth and sixth picks on two other point guards. Warriors coach Don Nelson chose to draft Curry one slot before the Knicks could.

  The early years in Golden State were complicated by a body that kept failing him. Curry missed 40 games in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season with right ankle and foot injuries, including the final 28 games after surgery on the 25th of April. The situation grew serious enough that in 2012, the Warriors included Curry in a trade offer to the Milwaukee Bucks for Andrew Bogut. The Bucks declined specifically because of Curry's ankle history. Ellis was traded instead, and Curry got the starting role he needed.

  Despite the injuries, Curry had produced signs of what was coming. In his rookie year he finished runner-up for Rookie of the Year behind Tyreke Evans and set what was then the record for three-pointers made by a rookie with 166. He recorded a 35-point, 10-assist, 10-rebound game against the Los Angeles Clippers on the 10th of February, becoming just the sixth rookie in NBA history to achieve that triple-double threshold. Prior to the 2012-13 season, with his injury history still a live concern, he signed a four-year, $44 million extension, a deal many basketball writers considered risky for Golden State.

• 4. Breaking the Record

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  On the 25th of February, 2013, Curry scored 54 points in a loss to the New York Knicks and hit 11 three-pointers, becoming the first player in NBA history to register at least 50 points and 10 three-pointers in a single game. That game is cited as the breakthrough performance. By April of that season he had set a new NBA single-season three-point record with 272, eclipsing Ray Allen's previous mark of 269, accomplished on 53 fewer attempts than Allen had used in Seattle.

  Two seasons later, in 2015-16, he broke his own record. By March he had become the first player in history to make 300 regular-season three-pointers. On the 13th of April, against the Memphis Grizzlies in the Warriors' season finale, Curry scored 46 points and finished with 402 made three-pointers on the season. The Warriors won 125-104 to become the first 73-win team in NBA history, surpassing the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' 72-10 record.

  Curry's three-point record-setting was not a one-season event but a sustained dismantling of what the sport thought was possible. He led the league in three-pointers made a record eight times. He made at least one three-pointer in 268 consecutive games from 2018 to 2023. On the 14th of December, 2021, at Madison Square Garden against the New York Knicks, he made his 2,974th career three-pointer to pass Ray Allen and become the NBA's all-time three-point scoring leader. On the 13th of March, 2025, he became the first player in NBA history to eclipse 4,000 career three-pointers.

• 5. The Championship Runs

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  Before the 2014-15 season, the Warriors hired Steve Kerr as head coach. Kerr gave Curry more freedom to shoot and pushed the team to play at a faster pace. Curry won his first MVP award that season, averaging 23.8 points, 7.7 assists, and 2 steals per game. In Game 5 of the conference semifinals against Memphis, he became the first player in league history to register six three-pointers and six steals in a game. Golden State won their first championship in 40 years by defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers.

  The following season Curry became the first unanimously voted MVP in league history, the 11th player to win in consecutive seasons, and the first guard to do so since Steve Nash in 2004-05 and 2005-06. He led the league in scoring at 30.1 points per game, steals at 2.14, and free throw percentage at .908, the first player ever to lead all three in the same season. That Warriors team won the Finals rematch with Cleveland but lost in seven games from a 3-1 series lead.

  Back-to-back titles followed in 2017 and 2018 against the Cavaliers. In the 2018 Finals, Curry hit a Finals-record nine three-pointers in Game 2 and scored 37 points in a Game 4 clincher. He openly said after the sweep that he felt he deserved the Finals MVP, which went to Kevin Durant instead.

  His fourth championship came in 2022, when he averaged 31.2 points, 6.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 2.0 steals per game against the Boston Celtics. In Game 4 he logged 43 points and 10 rebounds. He won the Finals MVP unanimously, becoming the first player in Finals history to average at least 30 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, and 5 made three-pointers per game in a series. That title also marked the season he became the NBA's all-time three-point leader, having passed Ray Allen in November.

• 6. Beyond the Arc

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  Curry's influence on the sport extends into numbers that resist easy comparison. He has the highest career free-throw percentage in NBA history at .912. He set the NBA record for three-pointers made in a season with 402 in 2016. He became the first player to be unanimously voted MVP. He is the first to score 10,000 career points from beyond the arc. He is the first member of what he created: the 4,000-career-three-pointer club.

  On the 3rd of February, 2024, he scored 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks, joining Kobe Bryant as the only players to record a 60-point game at age 35 or older. He also became the second player after Rick Barry to score at least 60 points with at most six free throws attempted. Earlier that season he was named the NBA Clutch Player of the Year, leading the league in clutch points with 189, clutch made field goals with 59, and clutch made three-pointers with 32.

  On the 30th of August, 2024, Curry signed a one-year, $62.6 million extension that made him the first NBA player to earn $60 million in a single season. He joined LeBron James and Kevin Durant as the only players in history to amass $500 million in career earnings. On the 29th of April, 2025, he was named the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year, an award for commitment to team excellence and leadership as a mentor.

  At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Curry won a gold medal with the U.S. national team, adding to two FIBA World Cup gold medals. His work began at the international level at the 2007 FIBA Under-19 World Championship, where he helped Team USA win the silver medal, averaging 9.4 points per game. The career that Virginia Tech would not fully fund eventually led to the Olympic podium in Paris.