Stephen Curry's Unique Pregame Routines
It’s hard to say there’s ever been a player who’s famous for their pregame routines, especially regular warmups. With the age of social media around the NBA, however, broadcasting what players are up to on the court before tip-off has become more and more of a fad.
Naturally, you can sort this back to one guy: Stephen Curry. With some of the most unique pregame warmup routines around (especially when he plays soccer with Warriors assistant Leandro Barbosa), Steph has set the bar for entertainment pretty high. There have been videos of people emulating his routines and highlight clips, and of course, he’s go the famous tunnel shot.
Oh, and he also does things like this pretty regularly:
The joy with which Curry plays the game is pretty unparalleled. He does things like this with regularity, making a whole newsworthy show about how he prepares for games. There’s even a video, posted by the NBA’s official account on YouTube 5 years ago, of Steph doing a routine warmup with no added tricks or anything like that before the Warriors played the Blazers.
The 20-minute clip has 4.9 million views.
That’s unprecedented. Very few other videos of that kind have over 100k, with none getting anywhere close to even a million. That’s with no tunnel shot, no sky-high layups, no other sports involved. It’s just a basketball workout routine.
Curry’s infamous routine also has the added effect of making him very good at basketball. The work he puts in, he puts in for a reason. His training routines are officially the stuff of legends with his trainer Brandon Payne ramping up the difficulty to astronomical heights. Having to shoot the ball perfectly is a pretty insane thing to do, even for the greatest shooter alive.
Another reason these workouts and routines are so effective is because it encourages love for the game. Basketball, while it does require grueling work and isn’t always fun, is ultimately about enjoyment. People play the game because they want to, not because they have to.
It’s that kind of simplicity and work ethic which makes Curry such a watchable superstar. He works on the skills that anyone can work on to be great, but the countless hours he’s put into it separates him from the rest. He’s the perfect role model for the next generation: A hard worker who takes tons of joy out of just getting to play the game at this level.
(Photo credit: Golden State Warriors)