Stephen Curry isn’t really known to be a guy who does a ton of trash talking when he’s on the court. Even when someone tries to get under his skin, he’ll just respond by draining multiple 3s in their face and doing his signature shimmy down to the other end of the floor. Or in the case of Dillon Brooks, Curry will just hit you with the meanest ankle-breaking crossover, bait you with a pump fake and nail a triple to increase Golden State’s lead to double digits. He’ll then run down the floor with the most meme-worthy reaction ever to really rub it in.
But there was one time when Curry tried to talk trash to Kobe Bryant, a guy who had a penchant for being so unbothered by opponents trying to get under his skin that when Matt Barnes pretended to throw a ball in Bryant’s face he didn’t blink, flinch or break away from the facial expression he was giving off, which was “don’t f— with me.”
But for some reason, in Curry’s rookie year, he decided it was a good idea to throw a verbal jab at Bryant, which went about as well as you could expect it to go.
“It was a game at home, at Oracle, and they were winning, I think they were up by six down the stretch and we started to do the foul game,” Curry said on 360 with Speedy. “[Kobe] was going to the line and I just walked by him like, ‘Yo, you nervous?’ The look he gave me was one that has been burned into my [mind], like, one, he’s a rookie talking to him and two, like am I nervous, like what are you talking about? I lowkey expected him to do the [Michael] Jordan thing and walk up there and shoot them with his eyes closed and look at me … but the look he gave me said it all. Like ‘yo you just got here, relax.'”
Bryant, of course, went on to make the two free throws following Curry’s attempt at trash talk, and he noted that had the NBA legend missed them, he would’ve told everyone about the time he got in Bryant’s head. That though didn’t happen, and given the tameness of Curry’s chosen words you can probably see why he isn’t a big trash talker. But when you’re undoubtedly the best pure shooter in NBA history, you don’t need words to back your game up.
