Curry’s book delivers. It offers valuable advice and insights into his journey from childhood to NBA veteran. On first read, I may have enjoyed it even more than Kobe’s Mamba Mentality.
From the back of the book: “Shot Ready is a powerful distillation of Stephen Curry’s transformative philosophy of success — centred on preparation, constant improvement, creativity, connection, mindfulness and joy — delivered in his incomparable voice and style. Stunning designed and illustrated with more than 100 gorgeous photographs, Shot Ready is an intimate narrative and a practical blueprint for any reader who wants to unlock their own potential.
Excerpts:
We practice not until I get the shot right, but until I can’t get it wrong.
I fell in love with the grind. You have to. With the sacrifices that it takes to be great, you have to find joy in the work you do when no else is around…But when I talk about “the grind,” I’m simply describing the most important hours in any pursuit, the ones we invest in ourselves. I do this work in the gym in isolation—there’s no defense, no live action—but, even alone, I practice with a shot-ready mentality, training as if the stakes are high and the clock is low, so that I can rehearse finding balance in the midst of great intensity.
Being shot ready requires practice, training, and repetition, but it rewards that work with an unmatchable feeling of transcendence. My peak experience of joy is when I can lose myself in the poetry and rhythm of a fast-paced game—when there’s no time to think, and there are nine other guys flying around me, but I have the ball in my hands and somehow know exactly where it is going to go. This joy is only possible because of what I do in this gym, the hours I invested in practice and watching film. And then when the moment of truth arrives, I can let go. It is the ultimate freedom.
When the season’s over and I come back to a small gym like this, I refresh and return to my basic love of the game. And a key part of that love of the game—my love of play—is the pleasure I get in finding ways to play better.
We all have an off-season, a time to retreat for a while from the main action of our lives…this gift of time offers us the chance to either stay where we are or create new possibilities for the next season of life. In my off-season I put myself in a quiet gym and break my game down to its basics. Working on my fundamentals allows me to see—with clarity and honesty—where I need to grow.
Making life harder in practice makes things easier in life.
I keep talking about joy in the work for a reason. There are 450 NBA players who suit up to play a regular season, every single one of them chasing the same thing: the championship trophy. We each take our own path to that goal, but there is a common oath the best of those players share: We will do our best to outwork everyone else. When you’re playing at this level, when everyone is keeping the same promise to themselves, or trying to, what can set you apart is joy. The ups and downs of any job can steal joy from you—whether it’s a day-to-day pilfering or one big disappointment that leaves you wiped out. Protect your passion. It is joy that will sustain your commitment to greatness and the work it requires. But joy is more than a great motivator. It is both the means—that things that drives your effort—and the end, the glorious payoff of all that work.
No matter how long they’d been playing, the great ones had the confidence that they were the best, but they all wanted to get better.
If something is handed to you or a task comes easy, you won’t get the chance to develop the drive you need to sustain excellence…Be comfortable with who you are as a player, but relentlessly build on those strengths.
…success usually has a lot of failure wrapped up in it…we only truly fail when we shrink away from challenges to stay in a comfort zone.
But he taught me that you have to rigorously train your body in the proper form on close shots before you move out the arc. The repetition is how you lock in your mechanics…consistency at the point of release is the key to great shooting.
…obsessing over failure is just a distraction from the work of improvement.
It’s never about proving other people wrong. It’s about proving yourself right.
I play with joy because that’s who I am, but deep down I have an intense competitive fire. Behind the playfulness is a killer instinct that not many people recognize. But Kobe did.
As a player you have to constantly evolve.
But I want to be remembered as somebody who worked hard.
You become who you think you are. Be the best in your mind and don’t apologize for it.
Surround yourself with harder-working people…All of us always watching the others to keep pace we were going at and the intensity that we had. Constantly leveling up. It was such a healthy environment to just get better.
Success will never come without stress, but controlled breathing can help you train your response to that stress.
It’s important to make the most of obstacles and setbacks, no matter when they come. Adversity reveals who you have become and who have yet to become. What a gift to find at the back end of your career—another chance to discover who you are and who you can be.
As I move into the tail end of my career, I have confidence that I can continue to thrive. But the questions come: “Are you thinking about retirement?” I do think about it, but perhaps not in the way they think I do. There is a timeline, but it’s not a source of dread. It’s a gift. The gift is that the timeline gives me more motivation for the now. To take advantage of every opportunity and edge that I have. Because of course I know the ball will stop bouncing eventually. But not yet. The gift of the timeline is that it keeps me in the moment.
You can’t slow down time, but you can value it. Make it purposeful.
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