With his NBA career now standing as one of the truly historic ones, Stephen Curry can look back with a degree of pleasure after he proved the doubters wrong.
Having been wildly underestimated upon being drafted into the NBA, he has ended up changing the way the sport is played, vastly increasing the dependence on three-points shots from beyond the arc.
There has never been a distance shooter like Curry, he has made it part of the sport and it’s difficult to see that change ever being reversed now youngsters are practicing distance shooting way more than before Curry exploded onto the scene in the NBA.
An Apple TV+ documentary about Curry‘s career is about to be released, in which he makes clear that he will never be able to escape the feelings of rejection when people wrote him off as a youngster.
“It’s been a great opportunity for reflection, gratitude and appreciation of my journey. Seeing the end product of who I am right now and going back to being a skinny, short kid who didn’t pass the eye exam,” Stephen Curry says in an interview with SensaCine.
“Believe in yourself, believe in the process and not really worry about the results because that will take care of itself, even dealing with success and failure along the way.
“It’s a normal life experience. I think this has something for people inside of sports, within basketball and even in life in general.”
Curry was seen as too skinny
Prior to showing his incredible shooting ability, you have to remember the era the NBA was in. It was all about power.
Shaquille O’Neal had defined an era with his unique size and athleticism, and then LeBron James had taken over with the power of a weightlifter in the frame of a toned athlete.
Curry wasn’t in that bracket. He was thin, gangly and looked like a high-school prospect playing with senior collegiate players.
However, he has been able to change how talent is evaluated in the league and develop his own physique in the process.