Curry Camp Recap: Steph's Influence and Bob McKillop's Legacy
Plenty of the NBA’s best sponsor summer camps for young players to help them up their games. One of the most prominent the past few years has been Steph Curry’s, with the monikers ranging from SC30 Select in the past to Curry Camp this year. The camp is one of the best around: Held in 2022 at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, it features top high school prospects - from both boys and girls hoops - who come to learn from one of the game’s best minds.
Teaming up with Curry this year is former Warrior Kent Bazemore. Despite switching sides to the Lakers this past year, Baze was a former crowd favorite during his stint in Golden State back in 2014. While his decision to join Los Angeles in search of “a better opportunity to win” fell a little more than flat, considering his new team missed the playoffs and his former won the championship, he still puts on for his guy Steph when needed.
He also got to experience what it was like to get cooked like so many of his teammates did, too. Bazemore’s journeyman status around the league meant that he wasn’t always having to guard Curry in game, but he definitely got a taste of it when he got a gamer dropped on him after a vicious cross from his former point guard:
It’s good to see even in the offseason, people are still having that kind of ridiculous stuff happen to them when they try to stay in front of 30.
Aside from Baze getting smoked to wrap Curry Camp 2022 up, one of the highlights was Steph’s former Davidson coach Bob McKillop giving a rousing speech to the campers following his retirement this year. McKillop, as mentioned, coached Steph all 3 of his years at Davidson and 33 total at the university, producing a career winning percentage of over 61% at the Division I level. Coach started off complimenting Curry’s skill and his nature as a complete player, and ended assuring players that he was there to make them better if they were willing to put the work in.
This was a very rousing speech, and it told a lot about how dimensional Curry truly is as a player in addition to a lot of important knowledge. McKillop highlighted everything from on-ball scoring, off-ball movement, and how Steph elevates his teammates, as well as making the case that players come to Golden State and start playing like Steph, and they end up better for it. This is a highlight of how infectious Curry’s unselfishness is on the court, as players like Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins have come to the Warriors and truly seen their games expand.
McKillop made it a point to inspire the hoopers at the camp to “play like Steph”, something which is entirely the opposite of how the media portrays it. Whenever people try to imitate him, it’s always about how he’s ruined basketball: His game-warping abilities that seem achievable with just a little practice have people trying absurd things like shooting 30-footers with more than half the shot clock left, or trying to weave through traffic with a series of hesitations and wrap dribbles to flick up an absurdly-high floater. When we talk about Steph’s influence in majority media, that’s the portrayal we see.
What we should be looking at is what the former Davidson legend tried to make of his speech: Steph’s influence is, much like his talent, generational. The kids who grew up to go to the NBA having been inspired by LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant? The future is going to look up to Stephen Curry because, while he’s otherworldly in terms of his abilities, the nuances to his game are things that people can learn a lot from. Hustle, heart, persistence, consistency, all of these things are keys to how Steph plays, and it’s something that can just as easily be passed on to the next generation of hoopers. It’s these kinds of things that make Curry so inspiring, and there’s nobody better than his college coach to grow the campers the same way he helped grow Steph, especially with things like this:
Not only does Bob McKillop’s presence upsell the fact that Steph is influential to the next generation of players, but it also shows the nature of their relationship. McKillop started off his speech talking about something similar to the old basketball adage about “playing for the name on the front, not always the name on the back”. His relationship with Steph highlights the importance of that, and how putting the team first can lead to success not just for the team in the form of championships and winning legacies, but also for the individual. It speaks volumes of McKillop that he was at this camp so soon after his retirement, as well as where Steph gets his approach to the game from in many ways. Prior to the speech, Curry’s introduction shed some light onto his respect for his former coach.
“He’s challenged me, supported me like he’s done every player that’s been with the program in the thirty plus years he’s been there” Steph said during his intro. “His consistency, his care, his work ethic, embodying leadership not just with what he says but how he carries himself… it rubs off on everybody that he’s around.”
While Steph will be the player who ultimately holds the influence, Coach McKillop deserves a lot of credit for what he’s been able to do for the superstar. Steph credits him with being a huge part of his development, and anyone who’s played basketball at a competitive level knows how important coaching can be, so we know how true it is not only from his words, but from common sense. Bob McKillop’s career at Davidson was certainly one that established the school as a competitive contender at the NCAA’s highest level, and it was this kind of coaching that inspired such success out of his teams. That arguably the best player in the world respects him so much is all we needed to know in that regard.
As Curry Camp 2022 has drawn to a close, we begin to look towards next season where the Warriors begin hunting for another title repeat. It looks that somehow Steph has gotten even better in this off-season, and we may be seeing a little more fast-break flair from him when he returns to the NBA hardwood:
If he starts dunking on people, it’ll be game over for the league. Maybe flagship sports media outlets will start giving him the respect he deserves if he manages to catch a poster or two.
Regardless, Steph looks to bring the energy that Bob McKillop inspired in him to the Warriors locker room, where players like Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, and James Wiseman can all benefit from it. While Curry may not be a coach, the strength of the messages that stuck with him at Davidson can definitely help him mentor the young guns as they’ll look to be key parts of the rotation this upcoming season. It will be an important one for Golden State, with looming extensions and heightened expectations coming off last year’s performance.
Regardless of where he finishes in the actual race, however, Steph showed this summer why he’s a perennial MVP: To take what inspired him and use it to inspire others is a special talent, in no short part due to a phenomenal inspiration of his own in Coach McKillop.
(Photo credit: The Warriors Talk)