Stephen Curry fulfills his promise to Warriors fans, six years later
From his high school days through the pre-draft process — “… it is notable how far apart Curry’s role in the NCAA was from the role he is likely to play in the NBA” — there have been questions about just how big an impact Stephen Curry’s likely to have. Seven games into his pro career, answers seemed tough to come by.
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After selecting the former Davidson superstar with the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft, the Golden State Warriors opened the 2009-10 season 2-5, with three of those losses coming by double-digits. Despite the presence of capable veteran scorers like Monta Ellis, Stephen Jackson and Corey Maggette in head coach Don Nelson’s uptempo system, the Warriors were struggling to score, ranking down around the bottom third of the league in points per possession. On a more expected note, they couldn’t defend anybody, giving up 108 or more points in five of their seven outings.
Curry was slowly finding his way, averaging just under nine points in 30 minutes per game, and had come off the bench for the first time in a 14-point loss to the Indiana Pacers. It was a sputtering start to his career, one that didn’t necessarily seem to portend greatness ahead … and yet, he was determined to find a way forward.
Promise to all the Warrior fans…we will figure this thing out…if it’s the last thing we do we will figure it out
— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) November 12, 2009
And now, nearly six years later, they have.
It wasn’t a clean, clear and linear trip from 2-5 to, now, 79-18, and four wins away from the Warriors’ first NBA championship in 40 years, of course.
The entire Warriors organization — from ownership to the front office to the sideline, where Golden State has cycled through four different head coaches in less than six seasons — has been turned over in pursuit of both top-flight talent and the sort of organizational alignment that, as we’ve learned, can prove so hard to find.
The entire roster — save Curry, of course — has been turned over, too. Ellis gave way to Klay Thompson in a revamped and more balanced All-Star backcourt. he also gave way to Andrew Bogut in a franchise-tilting trade that put Golden State on the path to becoming a defensive powerhouse. Out went the likes of Maggette, Anthony Morrow, C.J. Watson and Anthony Tolliver; in came the likes of David Lee, Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala. The Warriors’ current bench is scarier and more potent than its former starters.
There have been countless invaluable inflection points along the way. The Bogut deal. Landing Game 5 hero Barnes, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player runner-up Green, and impactful reserve center Festus Ezeli with the seventh, 30th and 35th picks in the 2012 draft. Locking Curry up to a reasonable-at-the-time, utterly-obscene-now four-year, $44 million contract extension four months later.
Curry’s star-making turn during the 2013 playoffs, which saw Golden State topple a 57-win Denver Nuggets squad and put the fear of God into the venerable San Antonio Spurs in Mark Jackson’s second year on the bench. The deft maneuvering to make it worth the Utah Jazz’s while to facilitate the addition of Iguodala the following summer.
The high-risk/high-reward decision to jettison Jackson in favor of Kerr, in hopes that a more fluid and dynamic offensive system could elevate the Warriors’ collection of talents to heretofore unmatched heights without forsaking the elite defense that Jackson built. Kerr making a pair of potentially unpopular decisions — sliding All-Star Lee to the bench in favor of Green, a superior playmaker and defender, and sending career-long starter Iguodala there to join him to help restore the confidence that Barnes seemed to lose in his second year — and getting everybody on-board with them.
The Warriors have come an awful long way, in terms of both organizational evolution and their status in the NBA ecosystem, in the space of just a few years.
“I remember coming to media day [as a rookie] and the media asking me, What do you want to accomplish this year?” Barnes recalled after the Game 5 victory. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, I think I want to make the playoffs.’ You guys laughed, and you said, ‘No, what do you really want to accomplish?’ And three years later, we’re going to The Finals.
“I remember there was a special moment tonight, I looked down the court and it was me, Festus and Draymond on the court,” he added. “We were all drafted together. Just for us to go from where we started, not knowing how to play and just being rookies in the league, to now being able to advance to The Finals together, that was a pretty special moment. I definitely don’t take it for granted.”
But it might seem to many of us like things have changed in the blink of an eye, the process didn’t seem quite so quick to Curry, the last man standing who was there for 2-5 and remembers the promise to figure it out.
“Six years is kind of a long time, since I’ve been here, and a lot of work has gone into it, and obviously it’s not just me,” Curry said after Game 5. “I’m pretty proud of everybody that’s a part of this journey, and it’s going to be a special journey to ride these next two weeks, two or three weeks, to finish off the job.”
And to fulfill a promise he made — to himself, to his followers, to whoever was listening and to whoever might remember down the line — on a November night in the early days of his career.”
“Six years is a long time to wait,” Curry said. “Obviously, the Bay Area has been waiting 40‑plus years. I think it’s time.”
Hat-tip to Erik Malinowski of Sports on Earth.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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