Steph Curry appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Wednesday night… And no points for guessing how the conversation went.
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Fallon and Curry had a lot of fun talking about their experience at the Paris Olympics, where Steph was the hero for Team USA and the late-night host had a courtside seat. They also laughed about the one time that Steph dunked last year, a rare feat.
Steph was there mainly to promote his new book, Shot Ready. It features images and lessons that he has learned in his life and career. The book was released on Tuesday. Fallon, while touching upon the great stories in the book, brought up one in particular about one of Steph’s meetings with Kobe Bryant.
“That was kind of my ‘Welcome to the NBA moment.’ Preseason game, I got switched onto him, and he was giving me those body blows with his elbow,” Steph said.
“My naive self was looking at the ref like asking for a call. Like they’re gonna give me a call over Kobe Bryant. And then he caught the ball and did a little left shoulder fadeaway and ran down the court, and I was like, ‘Alright, alright, welcome to the NBA,'” he reminisced.
Steph got his revenge three years later. “I hit a shot on him at the top of the key, and that was kind of his passing the torch moment back to me,” he said.
“He kind of gave me a little pat on the way back down the court. So yeah, it was kind of cool to get the initiation and then get the torch passed,” added Curry.
Kobe had huge respect for Steph
Kobe was known for his legendary work ethic and for how seriously he took the game. He saw those same attributes in Steph.
“I see a calmness about him,” Kobe once said of the Warriors’ sharpshooter. “There’s a serious calmness about him, which is extremely deadly, because he’s not up, he’s not down, he’s not contemplating what just happened before, or worry about what’s to come next.”
Kobe elaborated on how Steph is always in the moment, which makes his presence on the court natural, beautiful, and effective.
“He’s just there. And when a player has the skills and has trained himself to have the skills to juke, shoot, dribble left, right, etc., and then you mix that with this calmness and poise, then you have a serious, serious problem on your hands. And so when I watch him play, that’s what I see,” Kobe had said about the Warriors star.
The end of Kobe’s career overlapped with the beginning of Steph’s career. They faced each other 15 times, with Kobe’s Lakers coming out on top in nine of those games. Steph more than held his own, though, as he averaged 22.9 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 7.3 assists compared to Kobe’s 26.9 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists.
Steph had the highest-scoring game in those meetings. The Lakers star put up 44 points against the Warriors twice. But Steph once hung 47 on Kobe in 2013.
Now Steph is the old veteran, and like Kobe before him, he’s not ready to go down without a fight. On The Today Show on Wednesday (yes, he’s really making the rounds), he spoke about his focus at the moment.
“Being able to extend your prime, I’m going into year 17 and really have this belief that I can be at the top of my game again and win at the highest level, so I’m just trying to squeeze the most out of it ’til it’s all over,” said Curry.
Going by what we saw of the Warriors legend last year, he may have a few more seasons of elite play left in him. Elite, as in Curry-level elite!
