Steph Curry is basketball royalty, a 16-year vet who has left his mark on the game like few before him ever have. Steph has given basketball fans many iconic moments over the years, dating all the way back to his college days at Davidson and continuing through his heroics with the Golden State Warriors and Team USA. One constant through that time, other than his seemingly impossible three-pointers, is the presence of his dad Dell.
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Dell played for 16 years in the league himself and was known as one of the best shooters of his era, so it’s no surprise that Steph inherited the gene and evolved it further. Dell is often seen at Steph’s games, but he nearly missed Steph’s big college breakthrough leading Davidson on a magical NCAA Tournament run.
Dell recalled the incident during a 2023 episode of the Sports Legends of the Carolinas. Sam Vincent was the Hornets’ new head coach, and Dell, who was already working in Charlotte’s front office, took a job to work as an assistant under him. Thankfully, that job didn’t last long.
“I learned quickly that coaching wasn’t my thing,” Dell said, “but on the flip side of that, if I had continued to coach, I would have missed all of Davidson’s run that year when they went to the Elite Eight, so things work out for a reason.”
Dell said he enjoyed coaching high school but not so much the pro ranks, and he cited the long summer hours as one of the main reasons why.
He went on to find his place as a color analyst for Hornets games on TV, a job that has allowed him to call games in which both of his sons have played, sometimes at the same time.
Dell Curry has gotten to see many of Steph’s best moments up close
Despite having a pro baller as a father, Steph has always seemed like the underdog. Maybe it’s his relatively small stature. It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time when he was a lightly recruited high school player who couldn’t get a look from big schools.
Though Steph went on to become a legend at Davidson, even there he faced an uphill battle from the start, and his debut game was the perfect encapsulation of that.
John Kilgo, who was the Davidson basketball play-by-play voice for nearly two decades, once spoke to The Athletic about what it was like to watch Steph’s college debut. The Wildcats beat Eastern Michigan by 4, in large part despite Curry’s wrong kind of double-double: 15 points and an unbelievable 13 turnovers.
“He was awful,” Kilgo said in The Athletic piece. “He was throwing the ball all over the place and none of it seemed to bother him. He never looked over at the bench, like, what am I doing wrong? He might throw it in the fourth row, but he’d say, ‘I’m eager to try it again.’ He was just a different breed of cat.”
Despite the inefficient performance, it’s easy to see traces of the Curry who puts opponents to sleep with his legendary “night night” celebration. Steph has always played with a certain kind of flair that just throws caution to the wind, and it’s obviously worked out incredibly well for him.
Now 37 years old, the twilight of Steph’s career is almost upon him, but he’s still going strong. His Warriors currently lead the Houston Rockets 2-1 in their first-round series, due largely to his 36 points in Game 3 that helped cover the absence of an injured Jimmy Butler.
Steph and the Warriors will try to take a commanding 3-1 lead tonight when they host the Rockets for Game 4. That game will air at 10 p.m. ET on TNT.
