The 2016 Finals were, in a word, perfect. While the 3-1 comeback may have been the thing that people remember from it, it was quite simply beautiful basketball spread across seven games, played by two all-time teams. ‘Unfortunately’, one team had to lose that series. When the Warriors did, Stephen Curry had to do some reflection.
His brother, Seth Curry, went on the Greatest of Our Era pod, and when the 2016 Finals were brought up, Seth had a story to tell.
Seth remembered waiting next to the tunnel in the family room, expecting Steph to need consoling. After all, the reigning MVP had just lost the Finals after the greatest regular season ever. Anyone would be upset. “So, the game over,” the younger Curry remembers, “and he walking up. I’m like ‘yo, you’re gonna be alright.'”
With the confidence that you need to be able to shoot the shots Steph takes, he echoed three words from one of the most well known movies of all time. “He’s like, ‘nah.’ he looked at me and was like, ‘nah, nah, nah. I’ll be back.'”
seth curry reveals steph’s reaction after game 7 of the 2016 finals:
“so, the game over, and he walking up. i’m like ‘yo, you’re gonna be alright.’
he’s like, ‘nah.’ he looked at me and was like, ‘nah, nah, nah. i’ll be back.'”
the warriors won B2B titles after that pic.twitter.com/zgOacX1ipd
— nana (@namxsj) March 28, 2025
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator in any of the handful of sequels, Curry did make it back to the Finals. He did so both after adding Kevin Durant to make a back-to-back title teams in 2017 and 2018 and in 2022 after Durant left.
Curry has spoken about how confidence is key in both his routine and on-court performance. It’s unsurprising that it extends into his lowest lows, and helps him reach the heights he chases.
“It was just the perfect storm of them playing great basketball” – Steph Curry
Years later, in 2023, Curry was asked about what went wrong for that 2016 team. While he doesn’t give specifics, it is certainly clear on his face how much that loss still stings. As he described it, “it’s just a perfect storm of them playing great basketball, and us not, coming down to the last minute of a game seven.”
As he goes into a bit more detail, his respect for the level that Kyrie Irving and LeBron James reached is clear. Everything from them combing for 82 points in Game 5 to them having two of the greatest Finals highlights any individual could have at the highest stage of basketball, Curry’s simple assessment on why they lost made sense.
In his own words, “[they] played some of the best basketball I’ve ever seen and the timing of it was so clutch.”
