Steph Curry - Straight Shooter

[JohnS]

The following is an excellent article from Cigar Aficionado on Steph Curry, the brilliant Golden State Warriors point guard, which first appeared in their January/February 2024 edition of their magazine...

Straight Shooter

Steph Curry has four NBA Championships, the sweetest shot in the game and a burning love of cigars and fine whiskey

By David Savona | From Four-Time NBA Champ Steph Curry, January/February 2024

Steph Curry, the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history, relaxing in San Francisco with a fine cigar and a dram of Bourbon.

Steph Curry has a reputation as a good guy, a family man with plenty of NBA Championship rings. He’s called The Baby-Faced Assassin for the way he can take apart an opposing team, dropping three-point shots like heat-seeking missiles, all the while smiling and looking as innocent as a schoolboy. But he got into a little bit of trouble when he smoked his first cigar about 14 years ago at his best friend’s wedding at a country club in Minnesota. “I was a groomsman,” says Curry. It was 2010. He was in the middle of his first season with the Golden State Warriors and only one year out of Davidson, the small college where Curry played. Several of his college teammates were there, along with an assistant coach, who had brought a bunch of cigars. 

“About halfway through the reception he calls some of the players out, says ‘let’s go smoke a cigar on the eighth tee box,’ which was behind the ballroom where we were having the reception.” Curry chuckles. He got caught up in the delicious smoke, and he and the rest of the crew lost track of the time. “We were having a great time in our own little zone, we got in trouble when we got back in. We missed the team picture, we missed a lot of the reception celebration. I had to come clean.”

Curry in action at the Chase Center in San Francisco in November. He makes three-point shots look effortless.

He doesn’t even remember what that first cigar was, but it ignited a hobby that burns strong today. “For my inexperienced palate, it was amazing.” Now, Curry smokes regularly, often lighting up Cubans such as Montecristos and Romeos.

Pro basketball players are often shockingly large, people who inspire awe with their physicality. Michael Jordan is six-foot-six, with massive paws that enable him to grip a basketball in one hand, the way a normal human might hold a softball. Wilt Chamberlain was even larger, more than seven feet, and when he made a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wilt the Stilt made Conan the Barbarian look like a kid. LeBron James is built like Superman’s bigger brother, with muscles on top of muscles on his massive and tall frame.

Curry isn’t like that. He’s far from short, but he’s not all that tall, listed at six-foot-two, below average by the lofty standards of the NBA. He’s slim and while he certainly has an athletic look, in some ways he has the appearance of an everyday guy—which makes his incredible accomplishments on the basketball court all the more impressive.

He’s a four-time NBA champion, the heart and soul of the Golden State Warriors. No one in history has made more three-point shots than Curry, who has 3,486 and counting as of this writing, 500 more than second place and nearly 1,000 more than the nearest active player. He’s credited with leading the game’s focus away from driving to the basket to taking long-distance jump shots. Many consider him to be the greatest shooter in the 77-year history of the NBA.

Among his accomplishments is a ridiculous 91 percent free throw percentage, No. 1 of all time. He’s been named league MVP twice, one of those times was the sole time the vote was unanimous. He’s played in six NBA finals, five of them in a row, is a nine-time All-Star and was one of 76 players named to the list of finest ever to play the game. He’s 35 and still performing at the highest level, leading his team in points, his 15th in the NBA. He’s the highest-paid player in the league, his salary for this season a cool $51.9 million.

Sports fans love a good argument about who is the best. Curry’s exceptional play almost always puts him in the conversation. And some big names have weighed in on his behalf.

“Some guys have their own special category that you can’t mess with,” said Shaquille O’Neal in an interview on ESPN. “When it comes to the greatest shooter of all time, Steph Curry is in there by himself. Does that make him Top 10? In my opinion it does. I love the way he plays the game. He plays with great energy, great passion.”

“For him to be that small, but he can shoot from almost half court—and he’s not throwing it, he’s shooting it—we’ve never seen that before,” gushed legendary point guard Magic Johnson. “I love Steph because he’s changed the game in his way. And he’s a great family man. I love him on the court, but I love him off the court as well.”

Curry, who is considered one of the best point guards to ever play the game, driving past befuddled defenders in the first round of the 2019 NBA Playoffs.

Sports analyst Stephen A. Smith went so far as to say that Curry deserves to be ranked ahead of legendary player Chamberlain. “This man has to be guarded the second he steps past half court—that’s how lethal he is,” said Smith, who called him “the greatest shooter we have ever seen.”

“He’s a great player and a tremendous person,” says Charles Barkley. When asked if Curry is the best shooter of all time, Barkley’s answer is short, emphatic and to the point. “Yes sir.”

Highlights of Curry show him dribble seemingly without effort, confounding defenders. One small move and the man trying to guard him slides past helplessly, leaving Curry alone to pull up and pop one into the basket, typically from far away. Even his warmups are fun to watch. He will pregame with two basketballs, one for each hand, bouncing them between his legs, at his ankles, forwards and backwards, sometimes while chatting with a coach, often looking around the court, almost lazily. The balls seem connected to his hands. Then he’ll start shooting, working his way around the three-point line, the shots popping off his high, outstretched hands. Other times, he will start at half court, sink a shot, then repeat the process as he gets closer to the free-throw line. Most go in. Watching him shoot, you might imagine it’s something that has come easily to him. The real story is quite different.

Wardell Stephen Curry II was born on March 14, 1988, but he always went by his middle name growing up, which was often shortened to Steph when he started playing in college. He grew up as a member of a particularly athletic family. His mother Sonya was a three-sport athlete in high school, recruited to play volleyball at Virginia Tech. Steph’s younger brother Seth is also in the NBA, playing for the Dallas Mavericks. His sister, the youngest sibling in the family, played volleyball at college. And then there’s his father, Wardell I, better known as Dell.

Dell Curry was a serious, two-sport athlete who was enshrined in the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame for his prowess on both the baseball field and basketball court. The Baltimore Orioles took him in the 14th round, but he opted to play basketball, and the Utah Jazz took him with the 15th pick in the 1986 NBA draft. He spent one season in Utah, was traded to Cleveland, then was picked up by the Charlotte Hornets in the 1988 NBA expansion draft. He spent a decade there, retiring as the team’s leading scorer. In 1994, he won the NBA sixth man award, reflecting his skills coming off the bench with much-needed shots.

Steph was born in Ohio, when his father was playing for Cleveland, but grew up in North Carolina during Dell’s time with the Hornets. With so many athletes under one roof, let’s just say there weren’t a ton of participation trophies on the mantle. “Competition is everything for us,” says Curry. “Doesn’t matter if it’s backyard HORSE, board games, family reunions, there’s always a sense of competition. It was always something that was part of my upbringing. If I go home and there’s a ball in the backyard, more than likely a HORSE game is going to pop up, just to see who is king of the court. It was always a part of our upbringing and something I want to pass on to my kids.” Curry and his wife Ayesha married in 2011, and they have  three children, ranging in age from five to 11.

The young Curry started playing basketball, baseball and golf. On the court, he was a fine shooter. “I was inspired by Steve Nash and Reggie Miller as I grew up, and I tried to infuse both of their games into how I play.” But he was undersized, and felt out of place even when he was as young as nine. “I was on the 10-and-under team at nine, and I’m rail-thin, skinny. I look around and I compare myself to my counterparts at that age and most of them were bigger, faster, stronger,” he says. “I’m on the bench watching these guys speed up and down the floor, some guys can dunk it, 10, 11 years old.” His playing time was limited. “They called me ‘The Zone Buster’—as soon as a team went to a two-three zone, they said ‘put Steph in.’ ” He would shoot, but it wouldn’t last. “As soon as they went back to man-to-man, ‘alright, come back to the bench.’ ”

That was the first time Curry felt underrated, a phrase that would stick in his mind and later become the title of a documentary about his life released by Apple, among other things. But as Curry grew as a child, he kept playing basketball (along with baseball and golf) and by the time he was 13, he wanted to play in the NBA. By high school, he was a damn good shooter, even if he was undersized. “I could shoot,” he says. But when he was ready to move up to varsity, his father took him out to the backyard and told Steph that he needed to change his form. The young Curry was almost 16, and he was still launching the ball from his waist like a youngster, rather than the shoulder-level release you see from high-level players. It was time to change his mechanics.

A cigar is Curry’s constant companion on the course, and his golf game is almost on par with his ball game.

Curry and his father worked relentlessly on his form, switching the way he shot. “The higher release, ’cause I was going to play against taller guys, faster guys, when I got to varsity. Longest three months of my life,” Curry says. “I had the identity that I was a great shooter, that was the one thing I could do. Now, I’m switching it. Your whole form, your comfort zone is taken away.” The old adage of taking a step back to take several steps forward came in play here—at first, Curry failed with the new form. “For literally three months I couldn’t shoot outside the paint. I was frustrated for the whole summer—why is this not happening as fast as I thought it would be?” But he kept with it.

Sometimes being the son of an NBA player can be a blessing. Other times it makes things harder. “The shadow that he cast, growing up in Charlotte as the son of an NBA player, the blessings that come with that but also the expectations,” Curry says. “That was a long summer. Working through those days—I have a good perspective, everybody’s hills and mountains are real. That was a big deal.”

Curry was getting known as one of the best shooters around, but his size cast doubts on his prospects for making the NBA. He wasn’t recruited by his parents’ alma mater, Virginia Tech, but ended up going to Davidson, a small school in North Carolina with a division one basketball team. He anchored Davidson’s breakout performance in the 2008 NCAA tournament, when they took down Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin before losing a squeaker to Kansas in the Elite Eight. A lot more people suddenly knew about Curry and his talents. After his junior year, he entered the NBA draft, and was taken with the seventh overall pick by Golden State in 2009. He got off to a strong start, ending his first season with 166 three pointers, a record at the time for a rookie.

Curry’s play really stepped up beginning in his fourth NBA season, when he pushed his average points per game to 22.9. It’s never fallen below 20 since, while it’s swelled as high as 32. Starting in the 2014-15 season, he and Golden State went on a run of dominance, making it to five straight NBA Finals and winning three of them. Four of those battles came against the Cleveland Cavaliers in four consecutive years. Golden State won three of them. The 2018 victory was their most dominant, with a sweep of the Cavs. Curry led his team in scoring in three of the four games.

“Deep shooter, Curry is about one of the best,” said legendary player Larry Bird, a man known for his long-shooting prowess. “Any gym you walk into [now], all the kids are shooting three pointers.”

All those hours in the backyard paid off.

“Pops—you’re the example of what a true professional is, on and off the court,” said Curry during his 2015 MVP speech, his father Dell watching in the crowd. “To be able to follow in your footsteps,” he said, choking up. “It means a lot to me.”

In San Francisco, on an off day from the season, Curry is all smiles as he puts a torch to the foot of a dark Oliva Serie V Melanio Maduro Churchill and takes a hearty puff. He’s relaxed, sitting inside the spacious home of Fred Harman, a longtime friend and a huge Warriors fan. A rocks glass with two fingers of Gentleman’s Cut Bourbon sits by his side.

“I grew up around cigars,” he says. Curry’s father smoked cigars at cookouts, on the golf course, something Steph saw growing up. “We talked about it,” he says. But it wasn’t until that landmark wedding in 2010 that he started smoking them. Now, he puffs them regularly.

Cigars are one of his passions, and although the cigar he’s smoking today is Nicaraguan, he gravitates toward Cubans, naming Montecristo No. 2s, Cuban Romeos and Ramon Allones as some of his go-to smokes. But his favorite cigar is a recent discovery. For his 35th birthday last March, a friend gave him a box of Cohiba Behike BHK 56 cigars. “Those immediately became my favorite, and those are in the humidor at my house,” he says.

Curry avoided cigars during the NBA season until he spent some time with Cam Newton, former quarterback for the Patriots and Panthers (who appeared on the August 2021 cover of Cigar Aficionado.) “Anytime I saw him he had a cigar. He was sort of a mythical creature to me,” says Curry. “I didn’t have one in season till I hung out with him. It honestly destigmatized it for me.”

Basketball is all in the Curry family. A proud father/son moment as Steph Curry holds his 2015 MVP trophy standing next to his father Dell, who played 16 years in the NBA.

Curry puffs during the season now, but skips the smoke on days when he’s playing. “Not on game days,” he says. He smokes when he’s on the golf course. “I’ll have one out there, maybe two.”

Curry also smokes to celebrate, and he’s ruined a few precious smokes in the process. “I want a cigar with me as soon as the horn goes off, but don’t give me a good one. It’s going to get soaked with Champagne,” he says. He has a photo in his phone showing one particularly sad victim—his good buddy Kris Stone handed him an H. Upmann Sir Winston Gran Reserva Cosecha 2011 after the 2022 Championship, but the Dom got the better of the Cuban. “I put the goggles on, next thing I come out and I got a soaked cigar,” he says. “You can tell the color is just saturated. And I hadn’t even got close to lighting it yet. So I learned my lesson the hard way.”

Cigars are part of his relaxation process. So is Bourbon. “When you come to my house and look at the bar that I have, you’ll see that Bourbon has always been the one I’ve been drawn to. Bourbon was always the one that spoke to me most.” He recently helped create his own Bourbon brand, Gentleman’s Cut, which launched in May 2023.

Curry drinks his Bourbon neat, and is sipping on a glass during an interview. Whiskey doesn’t suffer the same game-day prohibition as cigars.

“During the season, I’ll have a glass to wind down. Even after a game, I make sure I get all my protein and my recovery specific stuff, but then I’ll indulge in—at most—one glass just to kind of enjoy it.”

On the off days, like this one, there’s a little more, as well as cigars. On the golf course, probably Curry’s favorite spot in the world, he even sneaks in a bottle of his own when he plays. “On the golf course, it’s that special occasion of—well, it’s more frequent than not, having your bottle when you have to sneak it in your bag depending on what course.”

Even though he hides booze in his bag like a weekend hacker, Curry is a superb golfer, with a plus-three handicap. “Scratching the competitive itch of golf will always be a part of me. I’ve been playing since I was 10, 11 years old. . . . it’s why the Underrated golf tour exists,” he says, speaking about his charity tour aimed at opening up the world of golf to those who normally wouldn’t be able to play. Last July, in the offseason, Curry won the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe. He hit a hole-in-one during the tournament, and his exuberant reaction was Internet gold.

So what feels better, winning a championship (his last was in 2022) or getting a hole-in-one? “In basketball I expect to do that, I expect to make shots, I expect to win. I don’t care how hard you work at golf, everything you do out there is kind of a surprise.”

Curry sees more golf in his future when he’s done with playing NBA ball. He’s 35. Jordan walked away from the game at age 40, Reggie Miller and Steve Nash (Curry’s heroes) retired at age 39 and 41, respectively. What will Curry do in five years? “That’s probably a good window to see how long I can keep playing in the league at this level, kind of go out on my own terms on the court.” When the day comes to retire, his long-term goal is to move from playing on a team to owning one. “The North Star for me personally is team ownership within the league. That would be a dream come true,” he says. “I’m definitely motivated and aspire to align the dots for when that’s ready when I’m done playing.”

He takes another puff of his cigar, followed by another sip. He’s doing precisely what he wants to do right now. “Slow down, be in the moment, be in the present and enjoy the company that you’re with,” he says with that smile. “You want to enjoy every sip, just like you want to enjoy every puff you’re smoking.” 

Source: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/straight-shooter

[KCCubano]

I had just read this article in CA over the weekend. Great post!