This past Monday, Under Armour held a Grand Opening event featuring Golden State Warriors players Stephen Curry, Kent Bazemore, and Seth Curry at its flagship store in Beijing’s trendy Xi Dan Joy City mall. LetsGoWarriors attended the exclusive event.
Sporting goods are a bit of a new trend in China and stores at the mall might be more appropriately called “carve outs”, with footprints often of less than 1,000 square feet per vendor. Americans might instinctively associate the word “flagship” with department-store buildings equivalent to the Nike Stores that are prevalent in major US cities — that is not the case here, as the Under Armour “flagship” floorspace was no bigger than most one-bedroom apartments.
As such, for safety and crowd control reasons, as well as Chinese policies, many of the fans that had come by to see the Steph had to wait outside, divided by a plastic, almost-see-through roll-down gate, for Steph and the others to come out after the Q&A was over. However, everyone could hear the audio.
The Q&A started with Steph’s thoughts on breaking the three-point record last season.
“It’s a record I didn’t know about, but at the end of our regular season, I knew I had a chance to beat it,” Steph said, “I got a lot of great teammates to help me do it. I’ll try to break (the record) again this year.”
When asked about dunking in his first preseason game while wearing the new Anatomix Spawn model, Steph said, “I shoot threes, I don’t dunk. But the first time I wore the Spawns in a game, I jumped a little bit higher. So it’s nice to get a dunk in my first game wearing my Under Armours.”
When asked about how the shoes feel, Steph replied, “They’re comfortable. They fit like an extension of your foot on the court. I know if I’m going to make any kind of cut or jump, that this shoe will jump with me and it’s going to protect me when I’m out there on the floor. They’re pretty stable, but also light, so I’m going to be quick on the floor, but I’m going to make sure (the shoe is) going to hold up. I think it pretty much encompasses everything.”
“I feel like once I put my shoe on, I don’t need to adjust (the tongue of the shoe) in the game. It stays where it’s at, it forms to my foot, so if I’m out there running really fast or making sharp cuts, I don’t have to re-adjust my shoe. They’re designed to be really mobile for your foot and make sure you’re comfortable when you’re out there playing.”
Steph would then play a 30-second two-on-two pop-a-shot game against Kent Bazemore in which, if Steph and his partner won, Steph would sign a shoe as a gift to his teammate, but if he lost, he would not sign it. Steph, who made 21 shots in 30 seconds, and his partner (who made 15) would blow away Bazemore and his pop-a-shot partner by a large margin, and the audience celebrated the win. Upon the triumph, everybody gathered around Steph to take pictures, but he made a nice gesture and motioned for his shoe-winning teammate to come over and join him to both pose for pictures.
More group pictures ensued with Bazemore and Seth and the Under Armour contingent, as well as the Curry family. Steph’s handler Kate Foley then gave Steph a bunch of signed posters to hand out.
The Beijing Under Armour staff then presented Steph, Seth, and Baze each a special custom Under Armour t-shirt with their Chinese name, “Beijing” (also in Chinese), and the Chinese words for Passion, Energy, and Power, respectively. After that, Steph’s family was presented with additional gifts.
[NOTE: I was unable to attend the equivalent Shanghai event yesterday at their smaller store in Grand Gateway Mall.]Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
