When you play professional sports, the stakes are high and the pressure is often through the roof, especially when it comes to the biggest stage of the sport. Stephen Curry has felt that pressure perhaps more than anyone else over the last 8 years, having led the Golden State Warriors to 6 NBA Finals in that time while winning 4 championships.
Despite all that success even before this year, Curry’s failure to win Finals MVP in any of his first 5 trips to the Finals was something that was always held against him. Many questioned if he had it in him to deliver his very best at that stage, but he put all that talk to rest this time around.
Curry took the Celtics to task in the Finals as he averaged 31.2 points per game on his way to winning Finals MVP and he got that monkey off his back for good. After partying hard in the days following that triumph, Curry has been keeping himself quite busy this offseason and he most recently opened up Curry Camp 2022 after a 2-year hiatus. He gave some valuable shooting advice to the high schoolers in attendance, and one of them later asked him how he deals with pressure.
Jared McCain (@J_mccain_24) asks @StephenCurry30 about how he deals with pressure: pic.twitter.com/kVp35uTYTz
— Nick DePaula (@NickDePaula) August 6, 2022
“It’s the belief in the work that you put in. There is no better and more powerful confidence than the reps and the work that I know that I’m prepared. In basketball you are not going to be perfect. There are so many highs and lows and everything in between in a week, a 3-4 game stretch, a month, a season, a career, so the work never stops. How can I get better every single day… If you’re cheating the game and not putting that work then you don’t deserve to say that. So when things are going bad yeah you are going to be lost because you don’t know which way to go.”
That is some great advice right there. If you work your butt off and are well prepared, then even when the stakes get high, you’ll be able to keep a level head to deliver under the extreme pressure. Those who cheat the game and try to get by just based on talent, can come up short when it matters most.
We hope that the kids in attendance, all of whom are very talented would have taken those words to heart, as if they do put their heads down and work hard, then they have a bright future ahead of them.
