Steph Curry : Modern Day 🏀 Maestro


It was exactly a year ago when teammates first noticed a change in Stephen Curry. The Golden State Warriors had just witnessed Kevin Durant suffer a knee injury, which immediately cast doubt on the team's chances of advancing to the NBA Finals for a third consecutive year.
When the Warriors found out the next day that Durant would be available for the postseason, they were relieved. But no one within the organization knew if there would be enough time for the 6-foot-11 forward to return to his All-Star form during the playoffs. The pressure was mounting for a team with championship expectations, especially after the offseason acquisition of KD.
That's when teammates say Curry, a team captain along with Andre Iguodala, made adjustments to his leadership approach. It started behind the scenes. Players said they would arrive for practices to find Curry was already in the gym drenched in sweat.
"You just saw him practicing and he started becoming more aggressive," David West recalled . "When we were going 5-on-5, he was going 100 miles an hour and everybody is like, 'Oh s---. This m-----f----- is serious.' And that was also at shootaround. He got everybody going. It was during that stretch that he became a little bit more vocal, more demonstrative about the urgency we needed to have to keep the season alive when you lose somebody like KD."
Durant noticed the change in Curry, too.
"Hell yeah, I saw it," Durant said. "As a leader, as one of the best players in the league, you see one of your teammates go down, you feel as though you have to pick up the slack. ... Mentally, he was just locked in and he's been that way ever since. That focus carried us to a title last year."
Curry is naturally laidback. His voice doesn't carry very far and he seldom utilizes it. After Durant's injury, he didn't want to drastically alter how he communicated with his teammates out of concern it would come off as inauthentic. So, the only way he knew how to send a message was through action.
"I've had to learn when it was time to say something," Curry said. "I wasn't always considered one of the best players on the team. I had to grow into the role of leadership, and in many ways, I'm still growing into it. But I know how to work hard, and I like to let that speak for me."

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