SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been a non-stop summer in the Curry household.
Stephen Curry played basketball deeper into the summer than he ever has before, to the middle of June. Right after that his second daughter was born, complete with the late-night crying and round-the-clock effort needed nurturing a new life. He was in Las Vegas for Team USA mini-camp, then showed up to win a surfboard at the Nickelodeon Teen Choice Awards. His summer has been filled with increased demands on his time, from sponsor events to golfing with president Barack Obama.
Has he actually gotten any downtime to rest this summer?
“A little bit,” Curry said Wednesday to NBC Sports, in an event with Degree antiperspirants (which involved deeply in motion analysis and the study of human movement movement, such as Curry golfing) at the TPC Harding Park Golf Club outside San Francisco. “We’ve been moving around a lot this year, from place to place. Obviously there’s a lot of opportunity to celebrate what a great season it was, and obviously the new addition to our family. A lot has changed.
“But in the offseason I get out and play a little bit of golf, I stay moving that way, and then obviously you have to prepare for next season too and I’m already in that mindset. So it’s been a pretty crazy summer celebrating good things, great things, but there’s also been a good amount of time to reflect on how special it was.”
After the Spurs won their most recent title, coach Gregg Popovich was concerned about a drop-off in focus — he said it’s human nature to take a deep breath after winning a title, and that can be a setback the next season.
Curry is not worried about the Warriors keeping their edge.
“That’s going to be easy,” Curry said of the Warriors not taking that breath. “We’re all competitors, we’re all proud of what we did last season, but once you enter a new year, we’ll get our rings on opening night, and that’s the end of the celebrating of what happened and you look forward to the next journey, the next goal, which is to win another one.
“I’m hopefully going to lead that charge, and we have such a great core of guys that are young and hungry and want to relive that intoxicating feeling of winning a championship. You look at the history of the league, you understand how hard it is to win one, but the challenge of winning multiple is something that I’m happy to be gunning for now, that I’ve got one under my belt. But that’s the mission.”
The Warriors got that first title with a modern-NBA style offense that perfectly suits Curry — up tempo, a lot of three-point shots (Curry set the single-season record for makes from three), and going small with versatile players who can defend well plus create challenging matchups. Golden State’s offense is a counter to the Tom Thibodeau-style defenses that were the norm in the NBA, which itself was a counter to shut down isolation basketball teams. The end result is Golden State (and the Spurs, Hawks and a few others) play a fun-to-watch style with ball movement and fearless shooters on offense — fans loved it and watched the Finals at the highest levels since the Jordan era.
The Warriors are not changing what works.
“Who we are is who we are, we’ve just got to be better at it, more consistent at it,” Curry said.
But do they recognize what they are doing helping change the NBA, taking what Mike D’Antoni started in Phoenix with Steve Nash and evolving it into a system that can win a ring?
“It’s playing good basketball but it’s playing our way and not really getting caught up in defining it,” Curry said. “We have our strengths with our team and versatility is what we rely on — guys playing multiple positions — and just being gamers and competitors. We obviously shoot a lot of jumpers and we play fast, but we also play defense at a high level and that’s why we’re world champs right now. We’ve just got to embrace that style of play and be more consistent and be better at it — we’re going to get everybody’s best shot this year, even more than we did last year, but we’ll be ready for it.”
They will get that shot from some loaded teams — the Spurs added LaMarcus Aldridge, the Clippers added depth, the Rockets added Ty Lawson, and the Thunder will (hopefully) have a healthy Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. The top of the West is a gauntlet.
But the Warriors have the rings — they are the team to beat. And Curry is ready to defend it.