Curry Reveals When He Realized He Influenced a Generation of Players

Stephen Curry permanently changed basketball. If you watch games from the few years before he exploded onto the scene, the game looks completely different. The pacing, the spacing, and, of course, the three-point shooting. 

That’s why calling Curry “the greatest shooter of all time” is almost insulting. He is much more than that. He singularly shifted an entire sport and redefined the way the game was played completely. 

Does Curry even understand how influential he was/is? On LeBron James’ Mind the Game podcast, he asked Curry when he realized how big his impact on the next generation of players was. 

“When Trae Young came in the league and that was like the first person who they said was like the next me, even though he's a different player and I knew him when he was in high school, that was like the first time you're like one, I'm getting a little older with these kids that are watching you, who are now emulating their their game after the way that you play or like there's now expectations on said person to be you or play like you. That might be the first time I thought about it or really experienced like what the impact was. But I got that ‘you-ruined-the-game’ question all the time after Mark Jackson said it and now it's kind of tongue-in-cheek just cuz you understand there is an influence and now it's about how you can allow kids to hear the story about the entire journey and not just the finished product.”

Trae Young is only the beginning. Over the next decades, we will have countless players who were influenced by Curry. That’s the type of legacy the greatest players leave on the game. Ones where their influence inspires generations to come.