MENLO PARK, Calif. – Every step Steph Curry takes running up and around the trails of Edgewood Park in San Mateo County, the same place Jerry Rice famously would sprint what simply became known as “The Hill,” is a race against time that inches him closer to the finish line while chasing another championship.
A fifth ring. A chance. More individual accolades can, and will, come for Curry. They’re also happenstance along the process of another chase he’s practically addicted to.
Like running through sand dunes a couple years ago, Curry calls the workout his and performance coach Carl Bergstrom’s latest way to “find new challenges.”
Motivation is a funny thing for someone who has everything and has accomplished everything in that person’s respective field. Motivation also always has been a part of Curry. The son of a NBA player, also the string bean of a prospect only offered a walk-on by the alma mater of his father. The small-school superstar who was still overlooked in many ways going into the pros. Early ankle injuries proved doubters right, at times.
Greatness at its truest form is undeniable. It’s inevitable, and it’s never really satisfied.
“I would think that there’s not enough external motivators to bring the drive that I need to do what I do, and have the gratitude to be able to do what I do,” Steph Curry told NBC Sports Bay Area in an exclusive interview. “It all comes from just a drive and a spirit and a wisdom of knowing what I need to do to prepare my body and challenge myself. But I still love it.
“It’s funny, it’s my job, right. It’s what I get to do, and the work that I put into it, whether you see it on social media or not, it’s all a part of the process.”
Curry and the Warriors began the process of looking ahead frustratingly earlier than they expected. The process might as well have begun the moment Curry strained his hamstring during Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals in Minnesota. The Warriors held on to win that first game but couldn’t win a single one with Curry injured. When the light goes out on their sun, the Warriors cannot operate without their brightest star they still orbit around.
The only difference in how Curry attacked this offseason was understanding he needed to let himself first fully heal and recover. There wasn’t prep for the Olympics and going for gold like he did last year. He was more so back into his usual routine of being at the American Century Championship golf tournament in South Lake Tahoe, back to hosting his ninth annual Curry Camp and back to finding more ways to push his peak and test himself in extending what his limits really are.
Every accolade Curry could have imagined already is in his possession. The two MVPs have a space somewhere, as do his two All-Star Game MVPs, Western Conference Finals MVP, Finals MVP and his four championship rings.
There always will be space for more next to his rings. That’s the chase of a competitor who’s never full, whose appetite for greatness never goes away. Who knows the many hurdles that are in his way whether it’s this season or however long he has left, starting first with making it through an 82-game season as healthy as possible before staring down another marathon of the playoffs.
The grind is a war of attrition, as Curry calls it, in the sense of injuries and timing being everything.
“So many unpredictable things that happen during a year,” Curry said. “Can you get your identity and your style of play and your team committed to that? Last year, we were chasing a little towards the end of the year to try and get out of the play-in. Then from there, we gave it a great run in the playoffs, just didn’t work out.
“Just trying to be in a position where we’re somewhere in the top of the Western Conference throughout the vibe and not have to be on the gas pedal all the way down the stretch, and hopefully we’re all healthy come April.”
Hanging a fifth banner would give Curry more championship rings than superstars like LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal, and also one more than his former Splash Brother Klay Thompson. He’d be in the same club as Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and even his coach, Steve Kerr. Curry would be knocking on the VIP door that Michael Jordan gets to puff his cigars in.
Pictures of Curry’s hand filled with a ring on each finger can already be imagined. Iconic. It’s not what he sees when he closes his eyes. The process is, where everything begins and ends to even have a chance.
“No, that just means you’re winning,” Curry says in response to there being extra significance to a fifth ring. “That’s the thing, even with one through four. One, just getting through the hump and becoming a champ, it’s all really about the process that leads to it. All the narratives, all the cool celebrations and stuff like that, they take care of itself.
“You can’t chase that stuff. It’s the process that you commit to. It sounds so boring and dull, but it is the only way you get to where you want to go. And I think I’m old enough and wise enough now to stay on that journey of just being in the moment.”
Yet at the moment, the Warriors are the only team in the NBA to not make a move seven weeks into the offseason. Everything has been held up because of Jonathan Kuminga’s restricted free agency, a player who will be 14 years younger than Curry when the season begins and still is built by upside and potential. The Warriors are adamant on having a team option on the second year of a two-year, $45 million contract they have offered Kuminga while he holds steady to requesting a player option for the second year, sources say.
The longer the situation drags out, the messier it’s going to be. Kuminga taking the one-year, $7.9 million qualifying offer that wouldn’t allow the Warriors to trade him for the entire season is “very real,” per sources, especially if this gets into September.
Curry keeps out of the way as the Western Conference continues to load up, admitting some frustrations to the unknown as he also knows plenty behind closed doors and continues to lean on the foundation people like himself, Kerr and Draymond Green have built within the Warriors for more than a decade together.
“It’s a combination of all of it,” he said. “There is obviously stuff that I know and talking about that isn’t necessarily public, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The way our organization is run, me, Draymond, Jimmy [Butler] are trying to make sure we’re prepared individually and collectively to lead our team to where we’re supposed to go.
“All that stuff will take care of itself. It’s the front office’s job to bring the best team back. When September 29th – whatever it is – comes around and we’re suiting up for practice, we’ll be ready.”
The Warriors made their big move months ago, acquiring Butler from the Miami Heat at the February trade deadline. They went 22-5 in the regular season when Curry and Butler played together, and the two scored a combined 75 points to beat the Memphis Grizzlies in the play-in tournament.
They also still couldn’t evade the play-in tournament. A five-game series was right there in front of the Warriors against the No. 2-seeded Houston Rockets. An extra two games were required, leading to the Warriors losing in the second round, mostly because of Curry’s injury.
It wasn’t just the hamstring that Curry dealt with. He also dealt with issues to his knees, hip, ankle, pelvis and right thumb throughout a season he was named All-NBA for the 11th consecutive time. Butler missed Game 3 of the first round because of a pelvic contusion from a hard fall that held him out for almost all of Game 2. Injuries even affected younger players like Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody in the playoffs.
Those two aren’t 37 years old like Curry, going into Year 17, will be when the season starts. Butler is entering Year 16 at 36, and Green, 35, is prepping for his 14th season. Curry believes having Butler for a full training camp and an entire season from the jump is a “great advantage” that should help the Warriors not be in playoff mode come January or February again. He also has heard those same numbers repeatedly presented as more obstacles in his way.
“We just got a lot of kids running around. That’s really the only difference,” Curry jokes.
He’s still years away from entering the Robert Parrish zone as the oldest champion in NBA history. Parrish was 43 as a member of the 1996-97 champion Chicago Bulls, a season in which he also averaged 3.7 points per game. Duncan recently had turned 38 when he won his fifth and final ring, averaging 15.1 points and 9.7 rebounds per game in his 17th season.
The oldest champion to average at least 20 points per game for a season was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1984-85 season. In his age-37 season, the same that Curry is coming into, Kareem put up 22 points per game on his way to winning his fourth of six championships. Curry averaged 24.5 points last season. It was his lowest since averaging 23.8 points in his first MVP season a decade earlier.
“With age comes wisdom,” Curry concludes. “Obviously we know we have to prepare ourselves. There’s no guarantees, again, that you can stay healthy. Every champion, at the end of the day, has everything go right. We’re trying to be in that conversation. Trying to be well prepared for another run.
“We’ll take the ageism and all that stuff on the chin and keep it moving.”
The crown remains heavy for the Petty King. Curry runs his own race, keeping pace of the process with every step. Time isn’t on his side, nor is history. Chasing cloaked ghosts with a clear vision ignores obstructions and breaks down barriers along his way.
History is perception baked in reality. He knows the facts, he sees and hears all. Curry will keep re-writing his own pages with a little help from his friends, pushing himself and the game to new heights on a never-ending chase for more.
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