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NEW YORK Don't worry – even in the last few hours before one of the most important nights of your life.
Be happy.
That was Stephen Curry's attitude Wednesday on the eve of the 2009 NBA draft, an event that has thousands of rumors attached to it like barnacles.
Curry is trying hard not to scrape them off, one by one, for a close inspection. Instead, he keeps bolting out the front door of his Times Square hotel and walking over to Fifth Avenue for some window-shopping. He keeps finding good restaurants and marveling at the skyscrapers.
Curry, in other words, is taking a bite out of the Big Apple – tourist-style. Meanwhile, the all-time leading scorer at Davidson is trusting that the gray-and-tan pinstriped suit he plans to wear tonight for the draft arrives via overnight mail like it is supposed to.
“Right now, I'm on a high, enjoying the whole process,” Curry said, smiling broadly during an interview in Manhattan. “I'm kind of floating through it. I'll probably start sweating bullets as it gets closer, though, waiting for that time when your name gets called.”
That time will come tonight at Madison Square Garden, when Curry believes he will be picked somewhere from No.3 to No.8 overall.
The first-year monetary difference between those two is about $1.268million. The No.3 pick will receive $3.337million in guaranteed salary for the 2009-10 season, while the No.8 pick will get $2.069million.
In either case, Curry is about to become a very rich 21-year-old. So you can understand the window-shopping.
“I'm just getting some creative ideas of some stuff I'd like to get down the road,” he said.
He might end up in an NBA hinterland like Oklahoma City, Minnesota or Golden State. Or he could get what he really wants, which is a spot on the New York Knicks roster.
The Knicks draft No.8 and Curry should be gone by then. But New York might also trade up to try and get him. Or a mystery team could make a deal and sweep Curry away.
His father Dell will celebrate his 45th birthday today at this draft. Dell was once a first-round draft choice also – No.15 overall in 1986 – but he didn't attend what was then a less-hyped event.
“My dad keeps telling me I can't control this so there's no need to play mind games with myself,” Stephen Curry said. “So I'm just trying to have fun with it.”
About a dozen of the top picks in tonight's draft are staying at the same Westin hotel in midtown New York, so a number of basketball fans have clustered outside the lobby for autographs. Once Curry got past those fans, however, he had clear sailing. No one recognized him, he said, as he walked the streets of New York.
“I was incognito,” he said.
That might change in a hurry if he gets picked by the Knicks – a possible selection that draws opinions everywhere.
Unbidden, the desk clerk at my New York hotel offered his opinion upon check-in when he realized I was from North Carolina.
“I hope the Knicks don't take Stephen Curry in the draft,” the desk clerk said in a thick Noo Yawk accent. “I'm not a scout or nothing, but I just don't think he's NBA material.”
A number of NBA teams would disagree. Two months ago, when Curry said he was skipping his senior season at Davidson to turn pro, he thought he would be drafted somewhere from No.7 to No.20.
Since then, Curry's arrow has kept pointing north.
And although naysayers will surface tonight no matter where Curry gets drafted, he won't let it get to him. He's determined to keep floating as long as he can.
“I've heard criticism all my life,” he said, “so it's nothing new to me. They said I couldn't play coming out of high school, that I was too small. Yada yada yada.
“You hear those things and you just brush them off. I know what I can do. And I know I'm very blessed to be in this position.”
Scott Fowler: 704-358-5140; sfowler@charlotteobserver.com.
