Steph Curry has made a name for himself as one of the NBA’s greatest ever and a player that changed the way the game is played. Curry wasn’t always the best player on the court though and famously struggled in his early years with the Golden State Warriors as well. Curry was unable to go to his first-choice college at Virginia Tech, ending up at Davidson instead.
Curry was aggressively recruited by Davidson from the time he was in high school but it wasn’t due to his incredible abilities, as his college coach Bob McKillop recently revealed. While talking to GQ, McKillop actually told a story about how Steph struggled when he went to scout him at an AAU tournament and Curry wasn’t able to play very well.
“We went to see him play in Vegas in an AAU tournament the summer before his senior year. He played in one of the auxiliary gyms, not the main gym. There were very few people at the game, and even fewer coaches. I felt pretty good knowing that only a couple of guys were watching him.
“And he was awful. He threw the ball into the stands, he dropped passes, he dribbled off his foot, he missed shots. But never once during that game did he blame an official, or point a finger at a teammate. He was always cheering from the bench, he looked in his coaches eyes, and he never flinched. That stuck with me.”
His mentality became apparent in college too, with Curry once famously scoring zero points by simply drawing double-teams which allowed his teammates to play 4-on-3 and win the game. His personality has also seen him thrive in stacked Golden State teams, playing alongside superstars like Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson.
Curry did massively improve as a player when he went to college though, averaging 25.3 points over the course of the three years he played at Davidson. This led to him becoming the 7th pick in the NBA draft in 2009. Injuries slowed him down in his early years with the Warriors as well, but Curry ended up winning three championships and two MVPs after overcoming all the adversity as a true underdog.
