Stephen Curry’s Gladwellian Ideas that lead to Success
Community, Extraordinary Opportunity, and 10,000 Hours.
By Chloe Lundberg | Business Major and Studio Art Minor at Bethel University (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Stephen Curry, two-time reigning MVP, was only one 3-pointer away from breaking the record: most 3-pointers in one NBA game, which he currently held with Kobe Bryant and Donyell Marshall. Curry lined his toes up and let it fly from behind the arc. The ball was a magnet to the hoop and he sank it. Curry wildly bobbed his head and shuffled his feet because he knew what he had just done (McCauley). Curry helped the Golden State Warriors beat the winless New Orleans Pelicans 116–106 that Monday night.
Curry wasn’t always a big hit. Stephen is only a mere 125 pounds and only 5’ 6″ with a babyface. With him being so short nobody wanted him. He graduated high school with no offers for college basketball. Less than 5 years later, Curry won the NBA Championships with the Golden State Warriors and was crowned Most Valuable Player in 2014 (Lavery).
Curry is now known as the greatest 3 point shooter ever. He found a way to stand out and succeed even though he was short. Stephen Curry exemplifies Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: Stories of Success theories about community, extraordinary opportunity, and 10,000 hours.
Stephen Curry was 13 years old at the AAU national championship in Tennessee. He played terribly. This was the moment he had been waiting for to measure up and he fell short. His one take away was he wasn’t good enough. He went back to Holiday Inn Express with his family and was down after his weak performance. Currys dad made it to the league and Stephen couldn’t even make a mark against some other 13 year olds. Then his parents gave him the most important talk of his life. His mom told him nobody gets to write his story but himself. No scouts, coach, game or even his last name. That lesson stuck with Curry during his childhood and throughout his basketball career. He always repeated to himself “This is no one’s story to write but mine. It’s no one’s story but mine” (Curry).
Curry not only got to grow up experiencing the NBA through his dad, but he grew up playing basketball with great coaches. He knew he had to work to be where his dad was and it was not just going to be given to him.Currys community from coaches, to family, to fans got him to where he is today. In 2013–14 Brian Scalabrine joined the Warriors as an assistant coach, he told Curry about a drill that Atlanta’s Kyle Korver completes after every practice. Scalabrine told Curry that Kover takes 10 threes from five spots along the arc and does it again and again working in the opposite direction till he does 100 shots. Curry started using that drill and 2 years later he still is (Jenkins). Another coach that told Curry something that he used to help him be successful was his highschool coach. After Curry didn’t get any offers to play for any big schools he listened to his coaches advice. He said “Normal people do normal things, you’re not normal” (Dunkyard 1:26). Curry knew he needed to stand out and do things differently to get bigger schools to notice him.
In the book Outliers, Gladwell writes that what parents do matters. It affects you if they are supportive or not. In a small town called Harlan there was a feud between the Howards and the Turners. Both families blamed the other for anything bad that happened to them. They also both held trudged causing many family members to be murdered. Will Turner was just and about to die when his mother said “Die like a man, like your brother did” (164). All growing up Will was compared to his brother and never felt accepted by his parents. He never thought they believed in him so he never believed in himself. Because of this he never put himself out there to be successful. Currys parents were very supportive and Curry knew that so he was able to put himself out there without being afraid to screw up because he knew he had his parents’ support.
Stephen Curry was a freshman at Charlotte Christian High School. It was 2002 and Currys dad had just retired from the NBA. Currys dad took a job as an assistant JV men’s basketball coach. That was the first — and only — time Dell coached his son in an official capacity. Currys parents never forced basketball onto him, it was always a choice.
Curry had many extraordinary opportunities growing up that led him to where he is now. Curry had the opportunity to work the first ever Kobe Bryant Nike Skills Academy. Curry stated that “Nike invited the top 20 high school shooting guards and the top 10 college shooting guards in the country to this camp with Kobe, and it’s kinda funny now that I look back on it, how many of those players are now household names in the NBA” (Lavery).
In the book Moneyball written by Michale Lewis, Billy Beane was just another scout who had to make a winning team out of little money. He knew he had to come up with a new way of deciding who to draft because he didn’t have enough money to do it the way everyone else one. Beane had the extraordinary opportunity of meeting Paul Brand who helped him write a code to find who would be best when and where based on numbers. Without the help of Brand, Beane would not have succeeded. That is like Curry’s story. Curry had the extraordinary opportunity of meeting a lot of people who helped him become big. He met these people like scouts and coaches with connections because of his dad. Because his dad played in the NBA he also had the opportunity to grow up watching professional basketball live and front row. These extraordinary opportunities lead Curry to his success today.
It was 30 minutes before their teams workout and Stephen Curry was on the court already practicing his shooting. Most of the other players were still in their flip flops with their headphones on getting ready. Curry and his team had two workouts a day for three days straight. By the time the workout officially started he’d probably already made 100–150 shots, almost in a full sweat (Lavery). By getting that extra practice he was not only getting better than the rest of his teammates but reaching his 10,000 hours sooner. In Journal of Pediatric Surgery Ronald Hirschl writes “The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours” Hirschl). Because of Currys extraordinary opportunities and community growing up he was able to reach his 10,000 hours before he got too old. Curry was in eighth grade when he first remembered he started playing well. He was in Toronto and played for a team called the 5–0. Curry recalls shooting everywhere and couldn’t miss. He started playing really young which helped him reach 10,000 hours sooner. In the book Outliers Bill Joy was a student at the University of California at Berkeley. He got a job with a computer science professor so he could program during the summer. Because of this access he got in the computer lab he was able to practice all the time and reach 10,000 hours of practice. Malcolm Gladwell wrote “ Bill Joy is one of the most influential people in the modern history of computing.” Just like in Outliers, Curry also had enough opportunities to practice enough basketball to reach his 10,000 hours.
During Curry’s junior season, coach Brown told the players that if they attended every mandatory practice, they’d receive a prize. Stephen made every practice except for one. Stephen went to the Brown and said “Coach, we missed one today, it was my fault, can we come early tomorrow and make it up?” Brown said yes and so Curry came the next day at 6 a.m. and doubled his workouts. He showed that off the court he is a good person who is very respectful and respected. He was willing to put in the work for himself not just for show (Clemmons).
Curry didn’t get any offers senior year to any big schools. He had to find a new way to do things if he wanted to succeed in basketball. He had many opportunities growing up that helped teach him different ways to do things to succeed. As Moneyball author Michale Lewis writes, “If you challenge conventional wisdom, you will find ways to do things much better than they are currently done” (108). Curry decided to score his points by shooting 3 pointers. His Extraordinary opportunities, community, and 10,000 hours lead Curry to find a new way to play the game and become successful.
WORKS CITED
Clemmons, Anna Katherine. “Curry Following in Dad’s Footsteps.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 24 May 2010.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: the Story of Success. Bookcaps, 2012.
Hirschl, Ronald B. “The Making of a Surgeon: 10,000 Hours.” Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 2015.
Jenkins, Lee. “CURRY FLURRY — Sports Illustrated Vault.” SI.com, 25 May 2015, vault.si.com/vault/2015/05/25/curry-flurry.
Lavery, Cathryn. “What Stephen Curry Can Teach Us About Creating Successful Habits.” Medium, Mission.org, 24 Jan. 2019.
Lewis, Michael. Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game. W.W. Norton, 2013.
McCAULEY, JANIE, and Associated Press. “Stephen Curry Hits NBA-Record 13 3-Pointers.” NBA.com, NBA.com, 8 Nov. 2016,
“Underrated: By Stephen Curry.” The Players’ Tribune.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chloe Lundberg, a freshman from Rogers, Minn., seeks a business marketing degree from Bethel University to someday run her own business. Lundberg likes spending her days on the lake, listing to music, and painting nature.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
In every success story Gladwellian ideas can be found.
Distance learning is not as fun as being face to face with Scott Winter.
Winter has never made a mistake in his life.
When dropping the reader in a moment, start with her first and last name.
By naming dogs, we make a personal connection to the reader.
Write a new sentence that has never been written before.
Eric Adler taught me to finish where I started.
I can have a conversation with Jayden, Mu Ku, and Ryan about the book Moneyball.
Anyone can become an expert at anything if they practice for 10,000 hours.
Chloe Lundberg stared at Scott Winter to trick him into thinking she was listening. She was immediately brought back to reality when Winter asked, “Chloe: What’s the first thing you look at when you see a guy.” Chloe didn’t know where Winter was going with this and panicked as all her classmates stared at her anxiously waiting for what she could possibly say that wouldn’t be embarrassing. Very quietly and hesitantly, she suggested she notices his looks. The whole class laughed and Chloe joined along. It was in this moment that Scott Winter introduced what it meant to name the dogs to build a character.
Chloe Lrg
