It's the summer of 2001, at the AAU National Championship game in Tennessee. Wardell Stephen "Steph" Curry II, known as just Steph Curry, said at the time that he, "was 5’5”, 5’6” tops — and maybe like 100 pounds soaking wet. We lost badly [in the championship game], and I played worse."
At the time, he wondered how his dad made it to the NBA and he couldn't even get buckets on a bunch of 13 year olds. 10 years later he would be averaging 18 points and shooting 44% from three in the NBA.
But he had doubts at age 13, as almost all current NBA players did around that age.
Steph never got ripped, as you can probably see in pictures, and he didn't really get much interest from colleges. Virginia Tech asked if he wanted to be a walk-on, but mostly because his dad, Dell Curry, went there for college. He ended up putting up some numbers his last few years in high school but had to settle for a small school near where he lived, Davidson College.
At the time, Davidson had an enrollment of less than 2,000 students, very small for colleges in the US. The only notable person before Steph who attended Davidson was the 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who was only there a year before transferring to Princeton.
At most big schools, the basketball players focus mostly on basketball during the season, and less on studies. The student-athletes, as they are called, are more athletes than students. Except at Davidson.
Steph tells a story in a piece he wrote for the Players' Tribune.
"I was coming back from dinner, after practice — the night before we played Kansas. Just walking down the hall. And it was the strangest thing ever: I turned the corner down the hallway…. and I ran into about half the team. The guys were sitting there, right on the floor, with their warm-ups on and their clunky 2007 laptops out. Like, this bunch of dudes that had just given back-to-back whoopings to Georgetown and Wisconsin. Sitting on the floor, typing away.
And I’m like, 'Umm…. what are y’all doing?'
The whole group of them answer at the same time: 'MIDTERMS.'
No, for real. That’s a true story. It’s 12 hours to the Elite Eight, 12 hours to the biggest game of any of our lives — and those boys were literally writing term papers in the hallway. Straight up GRINDING in the Word doc. Man, I love Davidson with all my heart."
Steph led Davidson to its third Elite Eight appearance, averaging 28 points per game and shooting 38% from beyond the arc. He entered the NBA Draft, where he was projected to be picked around the 7 spot, which is where he went.
But there's more to that story. Stay tuned for 'The Most Disrespected NBA Superstar Part II: The Doubters and the Haters'.
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