I finally got around to transcribing yesterday’s morning shootaround interview with Stephen Curry and this couldn’t wait, because it was so good. With the questions coming from ESPN’s Ros Gold-Onwude, Curry went into a deep dive on Chris Paul’s fit with him and the Golden State Warriors.
There was also the origin story of how his name is pronounced “Steffen”, not “Steven”, on how “there’s no him without me” when it comes to Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, and Steph being on the recent GM survey for shooting guards.
There was even a nod to Brandin Podziemski without it being a nod to Brandin Podziemski, if you know what I mean. If you’ve listened to Steph talk for years on end, you know that he has a smooth way of taking a rip current meant for one and transforming it into a high tide that lifts all boats.
I expected a typical Curry Q&A where he kind of gives a journalist all the quotes he or she needs to get to those X thousand words, but this time was different because Ros dared to keep asking CP3 questions, another reporter dared to ask him about his name, and with Steph’s generosity in expanding on his answers, it turned out to be one of his better exchanges in recent memory.
There are timestamps in the Description and Comments for the video below, which incidentally also includes Steve Kerr’s interview. But I’ll catch up on that later and as far as the digests go, we’ll have those in a mega-post for tomorrow Sunday which you can all digest after the morning San Francisco 49ers game and before tipoff at the Sacramento Kings — we’ll go live for that and try to find an on-site reporter to chime in again, as we had CJ Holmes of the SF Chronicle hop on from courtside at Crypto.com Arena late last night.
• On if he thinks about getting their road record right: “…I should say first we know we have to win road games to be a good team compete in the west and try to fight for seeding throughout the course of the season. Obviously correct what went wrong last year is important but we’re not really talking about it in that respect. It’s more the sense of urgency on us trying to figure out what we look like this year, how we come together on both sides of the ball, build our chemistry which has been going on for a while now. So, excited about figuring out whatever the game within the game is on a nightly basis within the preseason, to just feel good about ourselves going into the season. If we can develop an identity over these next four games, knowing that we’re gonna be trying a lot of different stuff that will carry over to the regular season, where you can have a lot more confidence that you can do what we did last year.”
• On what the identity is that he wants: “Smart basketball team that is connected. Coach has been saying that since he first got back from Team USA, talking about our team is we need to be connected. We need to be in a position where we all complement each other and we’re out there on the floor. Obviously what CP brings, another great ball-handler. somebody that can help orchestrate the offense. We have some more veterans on top of JK and Moses taking the next step in their young careers. We’ll probably have some surprise guys, crack the rotation and help us. So it’s gonna be by committee like it always has when we win, but I think a high-IQ basketball team, to understand we’re not gonna have many more cracks at this, so we got to figure out how to do it, to do it now.”
• On who has surprised him so far in training camp: “I mean [pauses], BP — guys that you don’t know, you expect Klay to ball, you expect Loon to do what he does. You expect Wiggs to come back and assert his dominance on both ends of the floor, like GP to be a disrupter out there. All the guys that we know, you don’t take it for granted. But you expect those guys to do what they do and when they have flashes, it’s supposed to be doing that. Myself included. The young guys obviously get an opportunity. JK has been playing really well in practice. And they had a great first preseason game. BP really has been showing how much he understands the game of basketball at such a young age and how confident he is in himself. And that shows every time he steps on the floor, so that’s a nice surprise. But I just like the energy around here from everybody. So that’s been the biggest thing.”
• On what he’s seen in camp that lets him know the partnership with Chris Paul will work: “One thing we can control right now is our collective focus and intentions on how we’re going to try to play. The game itself will tell you what needs to happen as it goes through the season. We can have a perfect plan and get thrown a curveball and teams are gonna guard us or different play sets that work, some that don’t work, and you got to be able to adjust on the fly. But as always, we’re connected on trying to elevate each other, him trying to elevate us as a team. That has to be the intentions behind everything. Like I said, the rest of that will take care of itself. So I like the way that we’ve been communicating. The biggest thing is for him to continue to be doing what he has his whole career. Like I said, he’s elevated every team he’s been on and if we bring our egos and our collective competitiveness, but also understand there’s gonna be some sacrifice that needs to happen along the way from everybody, we put ourselves in the best chance to be successful.”
• On if he’s made a point to talk every day to CP3 and watch film together: “It’s more communication. There’s not a lot of film, really, because he’s such a unique player. And we have a style that he hasn’t necessarily played — he’s played against, obviously, but never where that’s been the bread-and-butter on the teams he’s been on, because of his skill set. So if we can find that middle ground where he adapts and we adapt together. That’s all the communication we’ve been having. It’s hard to have any real film that go to, besides playsets and stuff, to say, ‘Oh, this is what we’re gonna run.’ It’s gonna look different when he’s out there with us. That’s a really good thing. And then as you go through the rest of the preseason and get to the point where we understand truly what rotations are going to look like, then you can start to get real specific with how we can be the most efficient with all the different looks we’re gonna throw out there.”
• On CP3 scrimmaging with the second unit: “It’s been a good balance of it all. Honestly, when you asked the question, I was trying to remember which session he specifically ran with the second unit and it took me a second to remember because we mix it up a lot. But that’s the big thing about him is he connects a lot of different lineups because he’s such a good playmaker and decision-maker, orchestrator of the offense. So it gives us a different look that we hadn’t had in a very long time.”
• On what Klay has meant to the success of his career: “I think like maybe four or five years ago, somebody asked a similar type of question. It was like there’s no me without him, there’s no him without me and Draymond and everybody in the group that’s been a part of this journey. And so I’ll probably write too long of like a little essay after my career is overwith, on what that actually looks like. But we’re all still here for a reason, because we’ve complemented each other so well. And there’s still confidence that we can win at the highest level together. And all the experiences that we’ve been through, none of the success that we’ve had, none of the banners happen without any of us and Klay is as important to that as anybody.”
• On if there’s an origin story as to why his name is pronounced “Steffen” as opposed to “Steven”: “You gotta ask Jack and Juanita Curry out of Grottoes, Virginia. My pops was born, he was Stephen Curry I, I guess you’d say. The Wardell name is a family name that’s been passed down but, yeah, I don’t know where they got the pronunciation for it. I suffered my whole childhood. Everybody called me ‘Steven’. They read it on the paper. Still, to this day, I get it every once in a while. So I was contemplating putting a little accent on my name in high school, just being funny, just to make sure people didn’t mispronounce it.”
• On if the Carmax people got the memo on his name in the commercial: “Yeah, in the contract it said that they (had to use) the phonetic pronunciation, for sure.”
• On if anybody called Dell (his dad) ‘Stephen’ or ‘Steven’: “Nah, he was Dell from the jump. It’s his legal name, is was what it was. And then nobody ever really knew about Wardell with me until high school.”
• On what about the GM survey (which he dominated) impressed him or made him proud of the most: “I think I gotta add one to the list. I think I might have been on the shooting guard list, too. So that’s probably the one I’m most proud of. It doesn’t matter what people say, what my position is, still don’t necessarily agree. But the fact that I can play on and off the ball and be as efficient on both is how I played my whole career, even back in high school. So I’d say that’s the one I’m most proud of in the sense it’s recognized as kind of a dual threat type situation, even though I am a point guard.
• On what he thinks about them not picking the Warriors for the title: “I repeat what Coach said.” [Kerr said that he doesn’t care about the GM Survey on Tue 10/10:]
• On if he is superstitious, given that it’s Friday the 13th: “Oh, I’m very. But I used to — That was a big deal in my house growing up. I should n’t say ‘my house’. For me. I used to watch all the Friday The 13th movies. Love Jason, the whole deal. So it’s always fun when it comes around. Nothing more to it than that.”
• On if he’s gonna be spooky tonight: “Nah. Wait til the regular season.”
• On people still mispronouncing his name: “Uh, where was I at? Oh yeah, I was on vacation, checking into the hotel. Show them the id and all that, but I usually — rooms might be under Stephen. When they read it, they read it the wrong way even though sometimes they do notice or correct themselves quick, but this one in particular, this summer, they did not correct themselves, so I had to correct them.”
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