GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 30, 2024

Stephen Curry

Media Conference

Q. Another Bay Area personality that you support, you endorsed Kamala Harris at the DNC in August. What is your thought on the campaign? What do you feel one month ahead of the election, and what do you expect from tomorrow's vice presidential debate? Everything's political for French people.

STEPHEN CURRY: No, it's all good. Obviously supporting her is an honor, a sophisticated leader that I expect and have confidence she can lead our country and provide hope, inspiration, and unity. Obviously there's a lot of tough conversations that need to be addressed in our country and a lot of progress needs to be made.

A level of decency and humanity at the top from our leadership is a must, and I think she checks that box. I know she has a great opportunity with the rest of the campaign leading up to the actual election to dig into her politics and the way that she wants to impact our country in the most powerful office in the world, and I know she'll be able to kind of do that in a meaningful way that provides confidence that she has a great plan.

First and foremost, is she going to run the entire country and be a leader for everybody? I feel like she checks that box. You've got to start there. That's why I have confidence in her.

Q. I know how important your foundation is which is based in Oakland. Can you talk about how important it is for the Oakland A's. They just had their last game, and they're the last professional team to leave the city and what that means going forward for the city.

STEPHEN CURRY: I think overall it's a sad situation because sports franchises in any city are, to borrow a line from a good friend of mine, it's a sense of hope and inspiration for a community. Whenever you start the year, it's a way to galvanize, again, that hope and that unity and that togetherness and having something to look forward to, not just what it does for the economics of that city.

And what Oakland has meant to me, to say the least, it's been huge in the way that I came up in this league, and being able to play in front of that fan base for those 10 years and knowing the history of the A's, the Raiders, and the Warriors there, it sucks.

But to your point around what me and Ayesha are trying to do within Oakland, it's a matter of supporting the community that supported us when we were coming up and making sure we still plant our flag there and have a significant presence there.

It is unfortunate that there aren't any more professional teams that are representing Oakland, specifically just because of how much history there is around sports and that fandom and that sense of pride of being from Oakland.

I don't know how you kind of work around how tough it is, but for me and Ayesha, we want to make sure we continue our work there, especially in the school district, and to create opportunities for the future generations to achieve their full potential. Other than that, you have to admit how sad it is for everybody.

Q. This is for you like the longest off-season you've had in a long time, since your very early career. What are the physical, mental, emotional benefits to having such a long stretch, and how eager are you to get back on the court to play a basketball game in the NBA?

STEPHEN CURRY: It's weird because the timing of it, knowing I had the Olympics this summer. It didn't feel like it. It felt like you're trying to put the pieces together why you're done playing in April. Physically you get a break. Mentally you're watching playoff basketball, still kind of in that grind of assessing where you are, what you need to do to be one of those teams that are playing into June.

Then I took two weeks off, started working out, getting ready for the Olympics. I had a six week run playing in the Olympics, and these last four weeks trying to balance rest and staying sharp physically and mentally to get ready for the season. So it tested me in a different way.

Thankfully I had the Olympics to look forward to, so I didn't have five months of sitting at home. I think that will hopefully allow me to get off to a good start individually. To your question, I'm super excited to be back and to figure out what this team needs to do to win and just the challenge of putting all the pieces together.

We've got a lot of new faces and a lot of guys trying to take next steps in their careers. It's going to be fun from day one tomorrow when we hit the court and start getting our reps in because every day -- we say it all the time in training camp. It is a way of thinking if you want to be great in this league, but it is true for us more than ever. Every day does matter for us to be able to figure this thing out.

Q. When Draymond was in here earlier, he said that in some ways the new additions, the new vets coming in is somewhat reminiscent of three years ago when Otto and Gary and Nemanja came in. Do you see similarities there, and what do you think of the roster the way it is now?

STEPHEN CURRY: It is similar for sure. That's a good comparison, guys that have been around the league in different situations. I think fit style we try to play, even though we do need to evolve and have a different look on offense and defense. We've had two years of kind of some stagnant ball at times but still enough that we're convinced that we can be a good team.

Injuries aside, you want to have everyone available, but pieces fit and to your point, a good balance of youth and a good veteran presence that can hopefully get us off to a good start.

The good news is like I'm coming into this training camp with an open mind of how we're supposed to play. I know there's a Warrior mentality and culture of how we do things, there's a system that we ran for a decade plus that has worked. It doesn't necessarily mean that's how this team needs to play. We have to have kind of antennas up on and an openness to accept what this team's strengths are, what our weaknesses are, and kind of lean into those.

That's including our youth because we need them to play at an extremely high level for us to be the team we want to be.

Q. You were part of the conversation this summer trying to get kind of a bigger name in here, Paul George obviously one of those. It didn't happen. How comfortable are you where this franchise is at, where this team is at in the bigger picture with championship in mind pretty urgently.

STEPHEN CURRY: If you're not the team that's holding the title at the end of the year -- and even, I'm sure, they were thinking about it, Boston was -- like you always were trying to get better. You've been around this league long enough from day to day, week to week, month to month, season to season, what that actually means for your team can change pretty quickly.

So you go into free agency, P.G. decided whether he wants to opt in or not, okay, we definitely should take that meeting, and I was a part of that process. The Laurie stuff, the whole league is wondering what's going to happen there and how real trade talks are, and I don't ever get caught up in that. The noise around it, when something's material, I usually know about it. We have conversations. I'm not the ultimate decision-maker, but you give your input, and that's how the whole process goes.

Even our free agent signing this year, all three guys we brought in all are veterans: Buddy, Kyle, and Melt. Like established veterans that know how to play the game that are good pieces that you need to be a championship type team. Does that mean we're there? I don't know.

You ask all 30 teams last season you have championship aspirations, you probably take 8 of them serious, 12 of them maybe, and only one of them gets to say, yeah, we had championship aspirations.

I think we're in that position where we can be a relevant team early and give ourselves a chance to compete and then assess where we are because that's what every team has to go through. We just have the shadow of, to your point, the expectations that we're supposed to be in that conversation.

I want to win, and I know everybody in that locker room wants to do their part to help make it happen. So that's how we're approaching the season.

Q. What will it mean to honor Al Attles this season? Going back to your early days in Oakland, he was a face at most games. Just to give your heart and soul to an organization for more than 60 years, can you imagine that and sort of his legacy now?

STEPHEN CURRY: It's special to have the patch. His name is on our court down in the facility. To your point, he's such an ambassador for the entire Bay Area, the ultimate Golden State Warrior. You see his face on the wall in our practice facility. You see his name on the court, you see his number and his name in the rafters.

We know the story of what he meant on and off the court to our organization. I don't know if any gesture will go far enough to honor him in what he meant to the entire Bay, but every conversation I had with him, he was very appreciative of his place within the organization and what he stood for, what he meant.

I hope to be in that position where you're part of a community like that for as long as he was because it's special and it's very unique. It's legendary, the impact that he left. This is a very simple but amazing gesture, and hopefully it goes broader than that for sure all year long.

Q. Following up on that, being in the same place for a long time, we haven't spoken to you since your contract extension, how important was that for you to get that done? As you've talked so much about it, it feels like, over the past couple months, just maintaining you staying here in San Francisco?

STEPHEN CURRY: No secret, it's always been -- it always has been and still is a goal of mine to be a Warrior for life, to stay competitive throughout that process. I know it's kind of unheard of, the short list of guys that have been in that position.

Honestly, the ability to kind of let that be known with the decision to extend and not let that be a distraction or be a talking point all year long, no matter what really happens throughout this season, throughout next season, the third year after that, all of my energy is spent on preparing myself to play at a very high level, to do my part and be part of this team to win, and everything else will reveal itself as time goes on.

That's kind of the way I want to approach it. I'm very confident in the fact that being here and being a relevant winning team is possible. Until I'm proven otherwise, that's the way I'm moving forward.

Q. You mentioned being open to changes on style and things like that, and Draymond was in here talking about how for so many years it was always the same thing heading into the year, and this year it's not and it can actually be a good thing. Is there something about heading into a new chapter of this organization, of this team without Klay opening other possibilities and saying we actually do have to change something? It almost feels like there's an obvious opportunity to do so?

STEPHEN CURRY: Yeah, I think you get smacked in the face and don't make the playoffs, that's all the real message you need, the reminder you need that -- again, we have a way of doing things in terms of how we approach practices, games, the level of competition you need to have, but when it comes down to your Xs and Os and the style and all that type of stuff, being open to evolving and pivoting and figuring out what -- especially how the league continues to evolve as well.

Like we're the hunters, amongst many other teams, and what can this team do to maximize every skill set that we have in that locker room? That's the challenge for us. Some new faces on the coaching staff. Like I said, first time me, Klay, and Draymond haven't been together as teammates. Whatever narrative you want to kind of key in on, for us to win, you've got to think things differently.

It doesn't mean you're not going to see some consistencies with how we've played before, but featuring some of the young guys that put us in the position to be successful, the different rotations that will get us in a position to compete with the best teams in the league, we have to be able to figure that out and got to do it quickly.

Q. What did you think of Kerr doing the night night at the DNC?

STEPHEN CURRY: I've seen it at the DNC. I've seen it at the Presidents Cup in golf. I've seen it all over the place. Messi did it. I think Steve takes the cake on knowing. That was a great time to pull it at the end of a great speech and getting some good energy in the building. Si Woo Kim, shout out to you. I appreciate him doing it even though I told him he's got to remind himself about time and score and knowing, when you pull a night night out, you've got to win.

Yes, it's fun to know, especially with Steve at the DNC representing America and coming off the Olympics and him being there obviously as our coach, he got a free pass to do it for sure.

Q. Draymond mentioned what struck him watching the Olympics, you at the Olympics, is how the other players on the team were reacting to it for the first time. I know it's you, so maybe you can't quite speak exactly about it, but what is it like when you have -- just that last shot against France, you have LeBron and K.D. over on the other side, and I think they're open, but you were taking that shot.

STEPHEN CURRY: You think they were open? They were 100 percent open.

Q. What's going through your mind when you're taking that shot? You have Batum and the other guy all over you, and knowing that K.D. and LeBron are just fine with you taking that shot?

STEPHEN CURRY: I wouldn't say that either because I read body language pretty well. When I watched it back, I got trapped, threw it to K. LeBron was open on the swing, swing, but K threw it back to me. When he did that, that's when your muscle memory takes over. I'm already in motion and do my move.

I see the two guys, but I'm already in rhythm. As long as I get it off, I know I'm going to make it. I see both of them, as soon as I'm shooting, their hands up, and they both went like this, like they didn't expect me to shoot it. I'm sure they were ready for a pass back to the weak side, but as soon as it went in, seeing Bron do the gesture, seeing the guys on the bench, K threw his head back and was kind of in amazement.

That was the beauty of that team too because the energy that we showed and the emotion that we showed in the survey game, on the comeback, and down the stretch in the Olympics, like it mattered to everybody to get that done, and everybody knew the sense of urgency of the moment. It was a memory for a lifetime for sure.

It's a nice way for me to finish personally, but we don't get there without all twelve guys on the team, and that's something I'll remember forever.

Q. Obviously Buddy and Klay, as offensive players, kind of have similar profiles, shoot threes, move around a lot. Obviously you don't have the history you have with -- had with Klay. What's it going to take to get you and Buddy in sync, whether he's coming off the bench or whatever? Obviously they want to be able to play both you guys at the same time.

STEPHEN CURRY: We'll figure that out. It's on the list of many things to kind of work through when it comes to, again, the openness of how we're going to play, what's being asked of everybody individually with your role, different rotations that probably we'll experiment in training camp, preseason games, and maybe early into the year.

For Buddy, just he shoots the ball, like you shoot open shots, you play within the system, be a threat to score whenever he's out there. That will solve itself. Obviously we need a defensive mindset as well when it comes to all five guys, no matter who you're out there with, but played a couple pickup sessions with him when he's a shooter. He's confident in his game, and we need that because it's such a valued commodity in the league having a knockdown shooter that can space the floor and somebody you've always got to know where he is.

So I'm not too worried about that, but it's on the list of all the things we have to figure out as a team to put it all together.