Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry contains multitudes. No player in the NBA has demanded such a level of individual attention from opposing defenses in the past decade. And yet, there may be no more selfless teammate in modern times than Steph.
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Anybody who has had the privilege to play with Steph has raved about the experience, whether it be on the Warriors or on Team USA. Even going back to his college days at Davidson, Steph elevated his team into more than just the sum of its parts.
The Warriors have won four rings in the past decade, and although head coach Steve Kerr has had some outstanding players on his roster, Golden State wouldn’t have won anything without Steph. Oddly enough, Steph’s status as the sun in the Warriors’ solar system didn’t yield him a single Finals MVP until he took home the award in 2022.
Andre Iguodala controversially won it over him in 2015, and then Kevin Durant won back-to-back Finals MVPs in 2017 and ’18. In an interview conducted by China’s CCTV in the 2018 offseason, Steph acknowledged that he couldn’t help but think about the one thing missing from his resume. However, being named Finals MVP was never his ultimate goal.
“The idea of that being a conversation, I couldn’t run from it. It was something that was always front of [my] mind, because we had been to four straight Finals at that point, had won three out of four; 2018, I guess I was close. I had a bad Game 3. KD played unbelievably the entire time,” Steph said.
“If you’re playing for a Finals MVP, you’re probably not gonna get it done because you’ll get distracted and might sabotage yourself a little bit. So I never really thought about it that much. In ’18 I got close to thinking about it, but yeah, I’d rather have rings obviously, and the opportunity to go get rings,” he added.
That’s the kind of selfless attitude that is often missing in sports, and it’s a huge reason why Steph and his teams have been so successful. Even his willingness to accept a fellow all-time great like Durant on what was “his” team shows a unique lack of ego that is all too rare.
Good things come to those who wait. And though Steph did achieve his goal in winning three rings in four years, the sweetest one may have been the 2022 championship when most people assumed the Warriors’ dynasty was over. KD was no longer on the team, but Steph led the Warriors past the Boston Celtics, and he was rewarded with his long-awaited and well-deserved Finals MVP.
Durant has been a controversial figure in Warriors history. Many NBA fans decried the way he left the Thunder to join what was already a juggernaut. And even though he was the best player on the court in two series that featured Steph and LeBron James, that did little to shut up his most vocal haters.
KD is known for battling trolls online in defense of his legacy. But his former Warriors teammate Quinn Cook once said that Durant actually wanted Steph to win the Finals MVP in 2018, but that he was so good that “he just accidentally got the Finals MVP back-to-back.”
Durant eventually left to seek out new challenges, but Steph and he have always spoken highly of each other, especially when they helped Team USA win another gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Steph deferred to KD at times with the Warriors; this time, it was Durant who went out of his way to get the ball to a red-hot Steph, all in the name of winning.
