When NBA superstar Steph Curry torched the Atlanta Hawks for 50 points to send the Golden State Warriors to 9-1 for the season, he was sort of breaking out of a slump. Huh? How, you ask, could the Warriors be 9-1 — the NBA’s best record — with the shooting star not connecting?
Well you have to remember Steph Curry’s standards, then it becomes clear. The Hawks game was more what he expects of himself, and what fans and coach Steve Kerr expect. Curry shot 14-of-28, then 13-of-13 from the free throw line, while dishing out ten assists and grabbing seven boards. Ahem, MVP voters, take note!
Curry credited his personal shooting coach Bruce Fraser for helping to light him up, saying: “‘We kind of talked about certain preparations into my shot, just certain mechanics that he called it even having a little bit more conviction about when it’s time to shoot.” Curry added that Fraser was “was very timely with those words of wisdom.”
So who is the magic man Bruce Fraser? Well to understand how Fraser ends up at Golden State coaching Steph Curry, perhaps the greatest shooter of all time, you have to go back to the University of Arizona in the 1980s. Back then Fraser was a 6’5″ backup point guard when the best shooter on the team was a guy named Steve Kerr and the biggest star was Sean Elliot — pretty elite company to keep, if you’re a basketball person. Below is Curry making an unbelievable 103 3-point shots in a row.
Fraser held a variety of jobs after college, both in basketball coaching and in marketing. But basketball was the big magnet, and he worked under coaches like Quin Snyder and legends like Larry Brown. Then hooking up with Kerr again when Kerr was the GM of the Phoenix Suns, Fraser started doing personal coaching with two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash.
So you might say Fraser likes to work with two-time NBA MVPs — Curry also holds that status, for now. But if those words of wisdom persist — and telling Steph Curry to have more conviction about when to shoot seems pretty wise to us! — then Fraser might find himself working with a THREE-TIME NBA MVP named Steph Curry. Looking that way now…
