stephen curry all star starter (Photo: still shot of Warriors.com video)
Sometimes being a blogger can be a disadvantage. Sometimes it can be an advantage.
On a night where Stephen Curry made history, pretty much automatically etching his name as an all-time Golden State Warriors great, becoming the first player representing the franchise as a voted-in starter in nearly two decades, I certainly got to experience a piece of the surrealism that Curry kept alluding to in his post-announcement conference call.
This blog has the advantage of not being tied down to newspaper industry deadlines. Nor do we have the need to seek the prestige of being the first agency to break a story. All we are here for is the fans.
We observe, report, participate in discussion, build more enthusiasm, rinse and repeat. Suffice it to say, we have the luxury of time, although for the fans’ sake we can’t always take all the time we want. However, we can sit back and smell the roses, and tell it campfire-style. We can wait for the Warriors to upload the audio to their SoundCloud.com account and transcribe without too much pressure coming from anyone.
And that’s why I decided to give you an inside peek as to how Steph’s conference call went. I’ll even fill in the blanks with some extra quotes that not every reporter used.
The Warriors PR team, led by the very tenured Raymond Ridder has often said, “Don’t just transcribe an interview, write a story.” As always, he’s right. A transcription would do no justice to Curry tonight.
But first, watching all the tweets come in… So many Stephen Curry fans. Based on the Twitter profile pictures, it was men, women, boys, girls, all of the above — not necessarily in that order. It was Americans, with a splash of foreigners (remember, China blocks Twitter).
There were so many great tweets congratulating Curry, it was as if digital 1’s and 0’s created emotion out of the screen. Truly, so much love was pouring in.
I dialed in at the exact call time, 5:15PM PST, and after a short wait, the conference began. Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area got things started and asked Steph what his reaction was:
…Curry was typically humble and grateful.
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“When I saw my name it was . . . a real emotional kind of experience,” he said during a conference call from his Oakland home. “I’m glad my wife (Ayesha) and daughter (Riley) were here to watch it with me.”
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That Curry went from being snubbed last season to receiving more votes (1,047,281) than any other Western Conference guard indicates this is more than one man’s climb up his professional ladder. As much as this achievement means for Curry, and it is a career highlight, it’s even more consequential for the Warriors.
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That is the natural product of egregious ownership/management, misled by the recklessly misguided and frighteningly thoughtless former owner Chris Cohan.
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This is the franchise where, shortly after Cohan took control, a brash rookie named Chris Webber clashed with a stubborn coach named Don Nelson, with disastrous results. This is where a tightly wound veteran guard named Latrell Sprewell grabbed and choked a coach named P.J. Carlesimo. This is where a disengaged veteran Mookie Blaylock once skipped a game to hit the golf course. This is the place that delivered 12 consecutive losing seasons, including four in which they lost three of every four games. Coaches were changed as often as most folks change underwear.
Carl Steward of the Bay Area News Group must be a ninja when it comes to transcribing, because I did not catch all of Curry’s quotes as it appeared Poole missed some as well. Steward had the full quote on the initial reaction:
“I saw Kobe (Bryant) come on the screen and knew the next person was going to be me or I was going to be left off that list,” he said. “When I saw my name, it was a real emotional kind of experience. I’m glad my wife and daughter were here to watch it with me, and then the phone calls started coming in.”
Marc Spears of Yahoo then chimed in, said he was calling from Miami where the Heat had just played the Lakers on TNT, said he’d talked to Kobe Bryant:
…Curry still hopes to play with Bryant in the West backcourt in New Orleans.
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“He’s made some comments before about the young guys and he is paving the way for young guys,” Curry said on a media conference call. “It’s commendable, but if he is healthy I expect him to play and do his cameo experience. It would be really special to suit up alongside Kobe in an All-Star game.”
Ann Killion of the San Francisco Chronicle asked about Steph having used the word “surreal” several times:
“It was surreal,” Curry said an hour later in a phone call with reporters. “I grew up watching my dad in the NBA. Every February we watched the All-Star Game. I’ve been to a few as a kid, when my dad was in the three-point contest. I understand how big it is to be selected.”
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After the announcement, the phone calls and texts started pouring in. Including a call from Dell Curry.
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“He’s not an emotional guy,” his son said. “But his voice was a little shaky. He told me how proud he was. He was probably thinking about it more than I was. He knows how cool an experience it is for his son to be in that situation. Like a dream come true.
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“He was more emotional than I’ve ever heard him.”
Parallel to Steph’s calls coming in were the likes we got when we posted this congratulatory image on our Instagram account (almost 500 likes!):
But what caught my ear the most was Curry’s nod to Warriors fans, as well as the Warriors in-house social media team, all in a few paragraphs of quotes.
I’m going out of chronological order, but Sarah Todd of SFBay.ca would later ask how important it was for him to quickly acknowledge the fans, especially with the thank-you video.
“Oh, that was of utmost importance at this point,” Curry said, “As a starter, that’s 100% the fans’ doing, so I thank them for spending their own personal time to go online and however many avenues they have to vote and to actually make that happen.”
Todd writes:
Immediately after the announcement, Curry took to Twitter, posting a video of himself thanking his fans for sending him to the All-Star game in New Orleans.
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Curry told SFBay that getting to the fans first and thanking them was the most important thing in that moment:
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“Over a million votes that’s crazy. So I’ve got to thank the fans and show them some love cause this is all because of them.”
When asked by Scott Howard-Cooper (I’ve not found the story yet) if Steph was surprised, Curry took another opportunity to reference the fans.
“I would use the word surprised just looking at the history. Coach Jackson always said it: we fight the bad years. Our fans have been so supportive and so diehard all through those years and when you give them a winning product, it shines even more.
“They do what they do and they support this whole process,” Curry said, “To get over a million votes, it’s crazy. That — call them #DubNation — that many supporters getting me in as a starter, obviously we were fortunate to go to China this October and get some exposure there…”
Hearing Steph use the very hashtag that has been promoted so heavily by the Warriors’ social media team, must have left them secretly smiling and sharing in the pride:
@samcmlaird @juliephayer @Wittnessed Thanks, Sam. Can't forget @dougmacklin @Andy_Fahey @TallSWAG & a lot more, including all of #DubNation
— Kevin Cote (@kcote) January 24, 2014
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Rick Bonnell of Steph’s hometown Charlotte Observer then chimed in, asking if Curry had been taken aback by the path that led to this monumental evening:
Earlier in the day, during USA Basketball’s conference call to discuss the player pool, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski acknowledged how badly he underestimated Curry’s potential out of high school
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“If I was smart I would have (coached) Stephen a long time ago,” said Krzyzewski, who will again be men’s Team USA coach.
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Krzyzewski’s regret – he later coached younger brother Seth Curry, who transferred to Duke from Liberty – is a common refrain among ACC coaches.
Bonnell summarized Steph’s response, but it’s worth looking at yet another reflection of Curry’s humility. There’s certainly no resentment for being snubbed as an ACC recruit. And when he mentioned Davidson, of course, Steph would not forget his teammates.
“I’m blessed to have gone through some up and downs and the game’s been good to me. I think looking back, like you said, you could start in high school the whole recruiting process, not getting the ACC looks, then going to Davidson and making the story with my teammates there,” Steph said.
“Getting drafted and still getting criticized as a guy that was probably not gonna do much in the NBA. It’s just an amazing ride,” Curry added, “I’ll continue to work hard. The Lord blessed me to be healthy through these ankle surgeries and all that, so I’m just enjoying the ride and (I’ll) try not to look back because I’m just enjoying the momemnt.”
When Antonio Gonzalez of the Associated Press (I also haven’t found this story yet) asked if Steph had used last year’s All-Star omission as motivation, Curry once again re-framed it towards his team, the up-and-coming Dubs.
“When you’re winning, individuals get noticed and accomplishments start rolling in. It’s a credit to everybody that’s a part of our team and what we’re trying to do, trying to change our culture,” Steph said, “As leader of the team responsibility falls on myself and other guys to lead that charge and I wanted to take advantage of it.”
How many superstars have you heard proclaim themselves the leader and yet not display one iota of an ego?
Steward then asked about the Western Conference lineup.
“Everybody but Blake (Griffin) is guys I played with on the World Championship team in 2010 in Turkey, so i’m very familiar with those guys. That kind of brings back some good memories of that team I played on,” Steph said, “When we do it at the All-Star Game, obviously we know the moment and the stage that we’re on, so I’ll enjoy it. It’s gonna be fun. When you look on the other side too, the names that are gonna be donning those All-Star jerseys, it’s pretty special to be a part of it.”
Curry couldn’t hide his excitement, adding, “I’m excited man. I’m honestly excited to get down there and represent the Warriors.”
And so the conversation ended the same way that it started. The surreal feeling, the emotion.
Killion asked what dad Dell said.
“I could just tell how proud he was. He was probably thinking about it more than I was. I was trying not to think about it these last couple weeks,” Steph said, “For him to have played sixteen years in the league and obviously have peers and competitors, people he played with and against that have gone through the All-Star experience, he knows better than anybody how cool of an experience it is for his son to now be in that situation.
“It’s probably a dream come true for him.”
It was for all of us.
[NOTE: One thing I left out was Steph saying that he’d celebrate by going to Benihana to with his wife and daughter. Here are the tweets:
Now, Stephen Curry is headed to Benihana with his wife and daughter — "just the way I always envisioned my All-Star celebration."
— Rusty Simmons (@Rusty_SFChron) January 24, 2014
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Steph Curry says he is going to celebrate his All-Star starter vote by going to a nice restaurant [name redacted] with his wife and daughter
— LetsGoWarriors (@LetsGoWarriors) January 24, 2014
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Steph Curry says he is going to celebrate his All-Star starter vote by going to a nice restaurant [name redacted] with his wife and daughter
— LetsGoWarriors (@LetsGoWarriors) January 24, 2014
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…]
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