Stephen Curry’s former coaches, theater teacher cheering from afar.
Three of the Warriors superstar’s mentors, two coaches and a teacher, continue to make an impact, helping the All-Star keep his feet on the ground in the high-flying NBA world
In a high school office 3,000 miles from Oracle Arena, Shonn Brown and Chad Fair typically begin their chats by marveling at Stephen Curry’s latest feat. The exchanges quickly veer in directions unlike those of any other Curry conversations on the planet. “Have you talked to him lately?” “How’s his state of mind?” “That facial hair is something else.” Any commentary on Curry’s physical appearance — or his emotional state, for that matter — is understandable. Fair and Brown knew him long before he became the babyfaced assassin.
Brown was Curry’s basketball coach at Charlotte Christian School, while Fair taught a class in theater production that Curry took as a senior-year elective.
Together with Bob McKillop, who coached Curry during his three seasons at Davidson College, they form an oft-overlooked segment of Curry’s inner circle — at-the-ready to listen or advise, gatekeepers to his shrinking privacy, holders of his eternal trust.
That Curry has carried the relationships through his ascent to superstardom speaks not only to their values but also, reflectively,
to his:
To his desire to stay centered, to keep his faith and humility and to retain the part of him that existed before the SC30 phenomenon.
“They all shaped me,” Curry said after a recent practice.
“I took part of their characteristics, and added it to mine.
“You can get lost in the day-to-day grind in this league and the drama and the expectations to perform. It’s kind of a bubble. … They give me a fresh perspective.”
The vision
Asked about Brown’s lasting impact on his life, Curry drops his head and let loose a slight grin.
“He saw me when I was 14, 16, 18 years old, and those were some interesting years,” he said of life as a teenager. “But he set vision for what I could accomplish going forward in life, not just in basketball.”
Despite his scrawny frame, Curry was skilled enough as a freshman to play on the Charlotte Christian varsity, but Brown vetoed the idea and instead placed Curry on the JV.
Brown, it seems, was playing the long game — the lifelong game.
“We wanted him to run the JV so that going into the next year, he would be ready,” Brown said. “It would make the transition easier, so he could develop the confidence to lead the group.
“If he was on the varsity (as a freshman), he would have gotten minutes here and there. But what good would that have done? We set him up to have a major role when he got there.
“We talked a lot about the legacy he would leave for Charlotte Christian. We talked about what it was like to be a man. We call it salvation and sacrifice. Now you look at how he sacrifices for the Warriors, how he manages his home life.”
They still talk, Curry and Brown. They talk and they text and they see each other when Curry visits Charlotte during the season or when Brown lends a hand at Curry’s summer basketball camp.
“I remember telling him that I appreciated him letting me work his camp,” Brown said.
“And he kind of looked at me funny and said, ‘You’re coach Brown. You’re my coach Brown.’ ”
Like Fair and McKillop, Brown takes great care never to ask for anything. With all three — as with Curry’s immediate family and other close friends — the aim is to help keep the walls from closing in.
“I’ll say, ‘How are you doing with everybody pulling at you?’ ” Brown said. “I don’t tell him what to do. Instead, I say, ‘I’d ask you to strongly consider.’
“And it doesn’t fall on deaf ears.”
The spirit
Fair’s first encounter with Curry was awkward. He had just moved to Charlotte from Florida and wasn’t familiar with Dell Curry’s basketball career or his son’s burgeoning stardom.
And on the first day of class, Fair took attendance and pronounced Stephen like Steven.
Laughter ensued, but not friction.
“Teachers always size up the room,” Fair said. “They try to figure out which students are always going to be with you, which will never be with you, and which are in the middle ground that you can get on your side.
“Steph was with me all the way.”
The class focused on theater production, not acting. Students read plays, designed stages and costumes, learned stage direction and lighting cues. Fair was impressed with Curry’s humility — “He never carried himself like the big man on campus” — but was unaware a special connection was taking hold.
Soon after graduation, Curry sent Fair a friend request on Facebook. Something about Fair’s spirit had clicked.
“You can’t have a bad day around him,” Curry explained. “He finds the joy in everything.”
Fair and Curry kept in touch, mostly on Facebook, and Curry arranged for Fair to get tickets to the final home game of his Davidson career, against Georgia Southern in late February of 2009.
After Curry was selected by the Warriors in the NBA Draft, Fair sent a text: “You’re coming to a time where you don’t know who’s who or what’s what. I would like to offer to be the person that’s always in it for you.”
Two years later, Curry participated in the “Behind Every Famous Person is a Fabulous Teacher” campaign. His pick? Fair, who flew out to the Bay Area for a photo shoot.
Fair remains in contact with other former students, but he’s a tad mystified by the connection with Curry.
“There’s no reason for him to stay in touch with me,” Fair said. “I’m always shocked when he texts me back. I’ll never forget the day that he asked, ‘Can I call you Chad?’ ”
Their bond makes perfect sense when taken in full: Fair is a man of high spirits and deep faith who earned Curry’s trust long before superstardom arrived.
He is also eight years older. He got married first, had kids first, and is always a step ahead in life experience.
“I bounce parenting ideas off him,” Curry said.
Their exchanges usually take the form of text messages and focus on family and faith — unless they trade selfies of facial hair.
Fair never wishes Curry good luck. He always says “Good providence.”
“I think about his life from a normal guy’s perspective,” Fair said. “To me, he’s not ‘SC30.’ ”
They spent a few minutes together in January at Charlotte Christian, where Curry attended a jersey retirement ceremony. But it was crowded and chaotic, and Curry’s schedule was packed.
A month later, Fair and his family drove four hours to Atlanta and caught up with Curry after a Monday night game in Philips Arena. They huddled privately in the tunnel under the stands for 20 minutes. Much of it was spent laughing.
After hugs goodbye, the Fairs turned and walked back into the open arena, where fans waited for a chance to get Curry’s autograph.
A girl who had witnessed the conversation stopped Fair and asked, “Are you his family?”
The empowerment
When McKillop and Curry talk, they talk about demons — about the people, the obstacles, the emotions that can derail Curry’s journey and sap his spirit.
“You have to remember, he lives his life with joy, and he plays the game with joy,” McKillop said. “In the Finals, when he threw his mouthpiece” — in the Game 6 loss in Cleveland — “that was not joy.
“And we spoke about it. That was the demons. The higher you go, the more demons there are to disrupt the journey.”
McKillop and Curry typically speak once a month. Like Brown and Fair, McKillop does his best to not “be an intrusion.”
It’s difficult to imagine their relationship reaching that point. Curry reveres McKillop — “He’s like a father figure” — and credits McKillop for fostering a sense of empowerment.
“Once you talk to him,” Curry said, “you feel like you can do anything.”
That process began well before Curry set foot on the Davidson campus.
In the summer of 2005, Curry was a high school senior-to-be playing in an AAU tournament in Las Vegas. His game, filled with second-tier prospects, was in an auxiliary gym.
McKillop, in hot pursuit of Curry at the time — Davidson’s campus is just 20 miles from Charlotte — took a seat in the front row
“All the big shots were on the main court,” McKillop recalled. “Steph’s game was like the JV game, and I’m there watching, and he has nine turnovers. Nine! I’m ducking his passes.
“But what I noticed was that he never stopped playing defense, he never complained to his teammates or the officials. He would run to the bench and look the coach (Dell) in the eye, and then he was on to the next play.
“He lived in the present. He never let a mistake intrude on his next step. He has an incredible capacity to do that.”
The Las Vegas experience was on McKillop’s mind a year and a half later, in the first game of Curry’s college career.
He played so poorly in the first half against Eastern Michigan (eight turnovers and a 16-point deficit) that McKillop considered benching him.
“The coaches met at halftime, and we talked about taking Stephen out of the lineup — he was killing us,” McKillop recalled. “But I reflected back on that Las Vegas tournament and his capacity to live in the moment. We stuck with him.”
Curry responded with 13 points in the second half as Davidson rallied for victory.
“We won because he stayed in the lineup,” McKillop said. “That gave him confidence. It was the defining moment for him.”
The next day, Curry scored 32 points against Michigan, and the foundation for SC30 was set.
“I still kid him about that first game, about his double-double,” McKillop said. “He had 15 points and 13 turnovers.”
The teasing, the laughing, the chats about faith and demons, leadership and humility, providence and parenting — Curry wouldn’t have it any other way with McKillop, Fair and Brown.
“They’re like a time capsule, where you go back and tap into it,” he said.
“What it does for me, I don’t really know, but I know it’s important. I know I need to keep that part of me.”