Stephen Curry is no stranger to slights. Passed over by all the major colleges, tabbed as too small to attain NBA star status, he has made a career of turning these slights into the fuel that feeds his raging competitive fire. It is not a coincidence that Curry became the first unanimous MVP in history -- draining a record 402 3-pointers at a 45-percent clip in leading the Warriors to a record 73 wins in 2015-16 -- after the validity of his first MVP, and the Warriors' 2015 title, was questioned all summer.
Suffice it to say, he heard the chatter.
Or, perhaps more accurately, he read the chatter.
And we're not just talking about offseason talk radio that Curry happens upon when he's flipping through the stations in his car. He's apparently seeking out the slights. According to his former Warriors teammate Andrew Bogut, Curry has been known to pull his phone out and check his social media mentions at halftime when he's having a bad game, just to see what the people are saying.
"He'll check his mentions at halftime, when he has a bad half. It's the craziest sh-t I ever saw," Bogut said on a recent episode of his Rogue Bogues podcast (go to the 52-minute mark). "Yeah, Steph, if he had a bad half, he would go on social media and then come out and drop 30 [in the second half]."
Personally, I find this to be awesome. If it were a player with a history of insecurity, I would think this was a bad sign of a player who cares way too much what people are saying about him. But with Curry, you're talking about one of the most secure-in-his-skin superstars in the league, maybe in history. He has a wonderful way of being prideful, even positively petty, without his own agenda superseding his joyful, team-first identity.
But there's a bomb bubbling within. It gives me great joy to imagine Curry potentially sitting in the locker room combing Twitter after scoring zero first-half points in Game 6 of the 2019 Western Conference finals. I can see him thumbing those slights right into his vengeful heart, like dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, shaking it up, then exploding for 33 second-half points to send Golden State to the Finals.
And hey, if you're a Warriors fan, now you know how to get Curry cooking when he's having a slow night.
