Video: Stephen Curry and the Simple Reality of Greatness

A mesmerizing video of Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry drilling 105 consecutive shots over five minutes set the internet abuzz over the weekend.  

And while it’s easy to simply label Curry “a natural” as the son of former NBA sharpshooter Dell Curry, author Ben Cohen writes in his book “The Hot Hand” that he’s really anything but:

“In the summer between his sophomore and junior years of high school, when other kids his age were juggling college scholarship offers, Stephen was busy teaching himself to shoot again. By lifting the ball above his head and releasing as he ascended, he was essentially making himself taller. But his learning curve was steep. He took hundreds of shots every day on the court outside his family’s stucco two-car garage, where crepe myrtle trees prevented the ball from bouncing into the pool when he missed, and he missed so often that he began to hate shooting. It was a brutal summer that made him miserable. He almost quit basketball altogether.”

We often question how those around us have achieved their levels of success as we struggle endlessly to get off the ground. And we frequently conclude that they must have some innate gift, that the heavens smiled down on them at birth and bestowed them with natural prowess while blatantly passing us over.

But the reality is that the line between success and surrender is often very thin and that many of the people we most want to emulate nearly capitulated to adversity at some point as well.  

Sure, Curry may have good genes and may have been afforded some physical and mental luxuries that we weren’t. But Cohen’s passage suggests that Curry’s success was largely bred in the same place ours must be: the monotonous solo grind that tests fortitude and competitive stamina.

We undoubtedly live in a world that craves instant gratification. But the most accomplished among us can embrace the notion that high-level achievement is often preceded by repeated failure.

In one way or another, we will face adversity. The next time it comes, let’s maybe not think of arguably the greatest shooter to ever live. Let’s instead picture a skinny high school kid missing shot after shot in his parents’ garage.

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