Stephen Curry: ‘I Want to Be Better Than I Was Last Year’

Coming off a historic MVP season, Stephen Curry is not satisfied, and is striving to improve as a player.

Curry says playing with Kevin Durant will have no effect on his “process.”

The 28-year-old superstar is fully recovered from nagging injuries that limited him in a crushing NBA Finals loss to the champion Cleveland Cavaliers.

Per Yahoo:

“That was the situation,” Curry said Tuesday about playing with knee and ankle injuries last postseason. “There are certain situations that everybody has to deal with and whoever is at the end … there is no need for any other storylines. I hated that I was asked about it that much, because at the end of the day, I was on the floor playing. If we would’ve won, the situation would’ve been different. Obviously, the question would’ve been a little different: ‘How did you overcome such a catastrophic injury and win a championship?’”

 

“That’s life. It’s all part of it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Curry. “Pick a player in history – maybe not Bill Russell, he won every year – but I remember Michael [Jordan] when we lost to Orlando [in 1995] and he came back. His summer was different. He was upset. [Larry] Bird, Magic [Johnson] used to beat each other, those guys would go home and try to get better. Unfortunately, losing is kind of part of this. We lost last year. We all had to lick our wounds. So now Steph wants to be better. He’s ready to roll and I think our guys have good perspective, too. We’re lucky to do what we do. We’re lucky to have a really good team and have a chance to have fun every day.”

 

Durant has added more excitement to a championship contender that hasn’t had a chance to get stale. And, Durant also spared Curry from the pressure of topping a regular season in which he was arguably, simultaneously, the MVP and the most improved player. […] “I haven’t really thought about it like that,” Curry said of Durant’s arrival, “because that would kind of cheat my process. I have the same mentality. I don’t really think about any other expectations. I want to get better. I want to be better than I was last year. That’s going to be the same, regardless if KD was here or not. You would think there is a blessing with pressure or whatever, but that’s not how I can think, because I’ve got to still do my job and do it at a high level for us to be as great as we want to be.”

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