Stephen Curry to three-point supremacy

It seems like Curry was destined to own basketball’s three-point crown, but while he just cemented his status as the best (GOAT) shooter in the NBA, he almost didn’t.

The early part of his professional career was plagued by several severe ankle injuries, but Curry credits that painful time for motivating him to reach this pinnacle.

“One of the narratives is that it almost derailed my entire career,” Curry told ESPN, “but it also gave me the resources I need to make it all work.”

Nine years after the orthopedic nightmares that sidelined him multiple times during his first three years in the league, he appreciates how that adversity challenged him to work harder and smarter.

“Every cloud has a silver lining, and so it was with the ankle,” Curry says. “It gave me a new kind of strategy for the work I do, so it’s pretty crazy.”

If it weren’t for his first ankle surgery and rehab process in 2011, Curry probably never would have met the training partner who helped him get this far.

In the summer of 2011, while Curry was rehabbing at Architech Sports and Physical Therapy in Charlotte, North Carolina, he had a chance encounter with Brandon Payne, a local trainer who worked with other NBA players.

“One random day I’m there, and B-Payne comes in and he’s sitting up front and says, ‘I’ve got some exercises while you’re rehabbing,'” Curry says. “‘You don’t have to stand, I can keep your ball handling crisp, we can work on your hand-eye coordination stuff and you can sit still in your chair the whole time.'”

Neither of them knew it at the time, but that standing-room-only encounter was the spark of a collaboration that fueled a decade of aggressively innovative offseason workouts that helped Curry ascend to the top of the NBA’s three-point mountain.

Making more three-pointers than any player in NBA history requires a combination of shooting skills, creativity and durability. He had the first two skills coming out of Davidson in 2009, but the young shooting guard kept getting injured. In his second season with the Warriors, Curry suffered repeated ankle injuries that led to his first surgery. After working with Payne during his rehab, Curry returned for the abbreviated 2011-12 season due to the work stoppage, but played only 26 games before re-injuring his ankle, which led to a second surgery.

The summer of 2012 was a crossroads moment for the lottery pick with big dreams. In his first few years in the league, Curry spent as much time rehabbing as he did playing basketball.

Payne recalls Curry telling him, “I don’t even remember what it’s like to play basketball without rehab.”

In his first three years in the league, Curry averaged 124 three-pointers per season. Over his 18-year career, Allen averaged 165 per season.

Allen hit 2,973 three-pointers in part because his body held up. He played more than 46,000 minutes in 1,300 regular-season games over the course of his remarkable career. Allen never missed 40 games in a season. Curry did in his third season, and to fully appreciate what he has accomplished, you have to look back at the doubts surrounding his potential less than a decade ago.

In 2012, Curry signed a four-year, $44 million extension with Golden State that would end in the 2016-17 season. Upon reevaluation, that deal became the biggest bargain in the league this century.

By the end of that four-year contract, the ankle problems were gone; he would be a scoring champion and two-time MVP; he would change the sport — and all for $11 million a year.

It’s been nine years since he signed that contract with the Warriors, but the value of Curry’s rookie contract extension provides undeniable evidence that few, if any, NBA executives saw it coming.

CURRY’S THREE-TIME COHETTE took off in his fourth season, thanks to stronger ankles and the ball-handling and playmaking tools they had been honing in the offseason.

“After my junior year, Brandon became obsessed with the different ways you can create space off the dribble,” Curry says.

For the first four decades of basketball’s three-point era, three-point shots were almost always assisted, but as a college player, Curry developed the ability to create unassisted threes for himself.

“The first two years at Davidson I was mostly catch-and-shoot and working off the ball,” Curry said. “My third year, I had the ball in my hands a lot, so I had to deal with a lot of defensive attention to create space there.”