Steph Curry closed his eyes and imagined he was elsewhere.
He was in the middle of a shooting slump during the Olympic Games in Paris, averaging just 7.2 points through four contests. Instead of allowing frustration to overwhelm him, he transported himself away before the semifinals against Serbia.
“I was visualizing myself on the podium,” Curry told FOX Sports.
Curry tapped into a deep sense of calm. He felt joy. And then he did what he does best: Curry went unconscious on the court, erupting into one of his signature scoring flurries that have led to him being considered the greatest shooter in NBA history.
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With Team USA on the verge of worldwide embarrassment, trailing Serbia by 17 points, Curry exploded for 36 points, making 12 of his 19 shots, including nine 3-pointers, to lead his country to a 95-91 win.
After the game, Kevin Durant called Curry’s performance “God-like.”
The 37-year-old Curry has been defined by moments like that over his 16 seasons in the NBA. Most recently, with the score tied at 94-94 at the top of the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s play-in tournament, Curry scored 15 of his 37 points to lead Golden State to a 121-116 win over Memphis, clinching the seventh seed in the playoffs.
Curry is able to enter into a flow state – perhaps more than any athlete ever – where he seemingly can’t miss his mark. When he’s in that mode, it’s like having a window into watching Van Gogh paint a masterpiece or Beethoven conduct a symphony.
During those avalanches, Curry appears to be throwing a basketball into an ocean instead of an 18-inch diameter hoop. He makes shots, even when wildly off-balance, while hands and limbs obscure his vision, while crashing to the ground with no view of the rim.
Steve Kerr — who coached Curry on Team USA and for the last 11 seasons with the Warriors — called his ability to access the flow state “his super power.” Curry can seemingly turn on the faucet at any time, even when he’s struggling on a global stage.
“He sort of knows that he’s always on the verge,” Kerr said. “What comes with that is short memory, a lack of self-consciousness when he misses. He just knows that he probably has the best hand-eye coordination of anybody on earth. He believes in the work that he puts in and that he’s always one shot away from that feeling. It’s remarkable that he’s able to enter into it as often as he does. I think that’s one of the reasons people love watching him play so much. It’s mesmerizing.”
For most athletes, the flow state is elusive.
Kerr, who won five championships as a 3-point specialist with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs, described the flow state as “fleeting.” Added JJ Redick, a sharpshooter over his 15 seasons in the league, “I wish I could have gotten into that state more.”
The thing they both agree on?
“Steph enters that space more than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Kerr said. Added Redick, “[Steph] is able to get to the flow state quicker and faster and more consistently than any athlete.”
For Curry, discussing the flow state isn’t easy. Talking about it is antithetical to living in it. In fact, when first approached about this story, he questioned whether he could articulate the phenomenon.
“You’re going to have a blank page,” Curry told FOX Sports, alluding to his mindset in those moments.
But shortly before the playoffs began, with Curry hoping to compete for his fifth championship with the Warriors, he opened up about what it’s like to be in that magical space.
“When it’s clicking, all you need is to get a good look at the basket, you don’t really need to worry about anything else,” Curry told FOX Sports. “You don’t really have too many thoughts. It just builds off of the reps, the confidence, the muscle memory, being able to read the game — all of that happens perfectly at the same time. That’s a beautiful feeling.”
Watching Curry is like watching a Master Class on the flow state.
Graham Betchart, a sports psychologist who has worked with the Utah Jazz, Sacramento Kings and is currently the mental skills coach for the men’s basketball team at UConn, has devoted his career to teaching athletes how to get into the flow state.
After studying the phenomenon for 25 years, he has identified three key tenets. He uses the acronym “TAP” to teach them. The “T” stands for trust, “A” for acceptance and “P” for presence.
Betchart said Curry is the corporeal embodiment of TAP, adding that he’s able to have incredible scoring deluges because he’s not afraid of going 0-for-10 from beyond the 3-point line, as he infamously did during a game in 2016. Typically, after four or five straight misses, most athletes get into their heads. They stop trusting and accepting. They enter what Betchart calls a “math world,” which is the enemy of the flow state.
Curry appears to be immune from those intrusive thoughts, as he proved during the Olympic Games.
“I just see him living in this blissful state of absolute trust and acceptance.” Betchart told FOX Sports. “And the way you know he has really embraced acceptance is he has gotten records for all sorts of s—t. But he’s also gotten records for most misses.”
Betchart tries to teach athletes to be unafraid of missing shots, believing that’s the only way to access the flow state. His trick?
“I’ve got degrees, I’ve read books, but the final piece is you literally say, ‘F—k it,'” Betchart said. “That’s when the magic happens.”
On the court, Curry is an apparent Zen Master, with those two words seemingly his mantra. He’ll shoot from anywhere. LeBron James said in an episode of HBO’s “The Shop” that if he could play alongside anyone, it would be Curry, adding that he inspires fear from the parking lot. “When he gets out of his car, you better guard him,” James said.
Curry’s brother, Seth, who plays for the Charlotte Hornets, said Curry has been making shocking shots since he was in middle school.
“I always call him the luckiest person in the world,” Seth told FOX Sports. “It’s lucky, but he’s consistent. It happens in all different types of sports, not just basketball. He makes crazy shots in golf, hole-in-ones, on the biggest stage.”
Curry has had so many jaw-dropping moments over his career in the flow state.
There was the time he scored a career-high 62 points against Damian Lillard’s Portland Trail Blazers in 2021. Or the time he made 13 3s against New Orleans in 2016. Or the time he scored 43 points in Game 4 of the 2023 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics.
The flow state is powerful, so much so that shooting specialists transform into poets when describing it.
“You’re just perfectly in balance with the curvature of the earth, and the earth spinning on its axis 1,000 miles an hour,” Redick said, wistfully looking into the distance. Added Lillard: “You just feel like the rim is as wide as the ocean.”
Curry isn’t quite sure why he’s able to access the flow state so frequently.
“I believe there is a God-given element to it where some of it is unexplainable,” Curry told FOX Sports. “But I pride myself on the work ethic and the approach to everything that I do in the summer and that I’ve done for the last 20 years. It’s all stacked on and is the foundation of a skillset that I love to show on the court.”
Curry’s workouts are notoriously difficult. He pushes his limits with drills that require him to run around the court and make multiple shots in a row in fewer seconds than deemed humanly possible. He regularly breaks his own records, forcing his trainer, Brandon Payne, to come up with new drills that he deems undoable – until Curry proves him wrong.
But the thing that separates Curry is he’s also great at taking his mind off the game.
“I have a pretty good separation of work and personal life,” Curry told FOX Sports. “I don’t really carry that too much off the court. I’m obsessed with basketball, honestly. I have been for my whole life. But it’s not the only thing I think about.”
When Curry isn’t working out, he focuses on his wife, Ayesha, and their three children. And he has passions outside of basketball, especially golf. He often enters into a meditative state while he’s outdoors, under the sun, concentrating on his swing.
It has all led to Curry having the keys to the other realm.
At the top of March, Curry had a 52-point, 10-rebound, eight-assist and five-steal performance against Memphis. He made 12 3-pointers in that game on 60% shooting from beyond the arc. But those stats don’t tell the whole story. When he’s in one of those trances, there’s something magical about it. It’s as though he cast a spell on the ball, magnetizing it to the inside of the net. It’s stunning to watch.
“We are in awe as y’all are, or anyone else in the world,” said Draymond Green, who has won four NBA championships alongside Curry.
Both Green and Jimmy Butler used the same word to describe what it’s like to share the court with Curry when he’s having one of those scoring barrages: “Easy.”
Green, who has played alongside Curry all 13 seasons of his career, said what wows him most is Curry doesn’t hog the ball when he’s in that state.
“He does it while getting everyone else involved,” Green said. “Never dominating the ball, letting everyone else touch the ball and still getting off. And so it makes it a lot easier for us. Sometimes you get guys that are star players and they get on those runs and no one touches the ball for five minutes and it’s hard to have a rhythm. That’s not him. He’ll get off the ball and keep running and go find the ball again. And so, it’s really easy.”
As for Butler, who was traded to the Warriors in February, he’s just grateful he no longer has to guard Curry. “I’m tired of having to chase him around,” Butler said. “Now I get to watch everybody else chase him around.”
Lately, Curry has sparked a debate: Should he be in the conversation for the greatest player of all time, alongside Michael Jordan and LeBron James?
“As the supreme leader of the big man alliance, I demand you fans to start putting Steph Curry in that greatest of all time conversation,” Shaquille O’Neal said in a recent appearance on TNT.
Curry smiled when asked if he belongs in that rarified air.
“I appreciate the appreciation of my game,” Curry told FOX Sports. “But I don’t ever worry about titles or any of that other stuff.”
But what Curry did during the Olympic Games undoubtedly elevates him for consideration in that category.
It was Curry’s first time playing for Team USA and perhaps his only chance to win a gold medal. And things really weren’t going his way. Through four games, he was shooting just 35.7% from the field and 25% from beyond the 3-point line.
Instead of getting demoralized, he used every trick in his arsenal to pull himself out of that hole.
The visualization exercise he did? The most fascinating part about it was that he didn’t envision himself having a scoring frenzy. Instead, he imagined himself next to his teammates with gold medals around their necks. It wasn’t about him.
That was intentional.
“Usually, it’s wrapped in winning,” Curry told FOX Sports of those mental exercises. “It’s not necessarily just me getting my numbers. There’s a different purpose behind it.”
Curry also used another strategy: While in the depths of his slump, he told his Warriors teammate, Brandin Podziemski, who was also in Paris, that he was going to have monster games in the semifinal and championship rounds.
“Speaking something into existence is a way of just demonstrating confidence or the belief in yourself even if it’s not going your way,” Curry told FOX Sports. “After I said that, I showed up the next day to practice and I worked like I was either averaging 30 and making every shot – or I was in the worst slump. You wouldn’t be able to tell based on the work that I put in.”
Curry’s forecast came true.
After his incredible performance against Serbia, he stunned again in the gold medal game against France, finishing with a team-high 24 points, including eight 3-pointers, four of which came in the final three minutes of Team USA’s 98-87 win.
His final 3-pointer, a fadeaway over two defenders, has been labeled the “Golden Dagger.” Afterward, Curry ran down the court, cupping his hands to his cheek, flashing his signature “night night” pose. It went viral, with videos popping up of kids all over the world emulating that gesture after making a shot. When asked if Curry wants his eventual statue to be doing that pose, he chuckled.
“I don’t know what it’ll be,” Curry told FOX Sports. “But it won’t be that, though.”
Still, the moment left Kerr in awe. He turned to his assistant coaches and summoned the only five words he could.
“F—king Steph Curry,” Kerr said. “Jesus Christ.”
The question is: How did Curry know he was about to enter into the flow state? Did he feel something bubbling inside him? Did the ball feel differently coming off his fingertips in practice?
He shook his head.
The answer was much simpler: Ultimately, he let go of the past and trusted himself.
Curry has figured out a way to straddle the world of mortals and the flow state. And, on the biggest of stages, with the highest of stakes, he used all of his tools to step over the line.
It left the world in awe, wondering how he’s able to access that magic so easily.
“I was just being in the moment, doing what I do, having fun,” Curry told FOX Sports. “Usually good things come from that.”
Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.
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