Steph remembers spending time at LeBron’s house before the Warriors-Cavs game originally appeared in NBC Sports Bay Area
Steph Curry and LeBron James’ friendship goes back many years.
Before the two stars faced each other in four consecutive NBA Finals series from 2015 to 2018, they developed a friendship that began in 2009, Curry’s rookie season.
Curry revealed to his father, Dell, about the duo “Heat Check Podcast Series”that the first time he returned to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, after he was born, was coincidentally to hang out with James – another Akron native – the night before the Warriors’ matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers on November 17, 2009 at Quicken Loans Arena.
“I didn’t realize at the time that my rookie year was my first time back,” Steph told Dell. “The day before we played Cleveland in my rookie season, I met LeBron [James] the year before when he was watching college games and everything. When we’re on the West Coast, you only have one trip to Cleveland, so I’m at the hotel the night before the game and he hits me and says ‘Do you want to go home?’ And his house was in Akron.
“I mean I didn’t even have an Uber account at the time, so I got in a cab and went to LeBron’s house and hung out with him that night. I did it. Bryce and Bronny were running around the house, kids.”
The 21-year-old Curry, who had yet to become the superstar he is today, scored just 14 points with five rebounds and seven assists on 6-of-10 shooting from the field and 2-of-6 from 3-point range against Cleveland the next day. Meanwhile, James scored 31 points with five rebounds and 12 assists in the win over Golden State.
Curry and James didn’t know it yet, but that impromptu meeting – and the game that followed – was the beginning of a great friendship and one of the fiercest rivalries in NBA history.
“And that was the first time I came back to Akron, and it’s cool because the connection between me and him, we didn’t know what was in store in 2009, six years later we would start this crazy rivalry in the Finals and everything,” Curry added. “But I only went back twice, but there was still no real realization of the Akron connection at the time and then all of a sudden you get to the finals in 2015 and that’s when you started connecting the dots.”
Curry and the Warriors, of course, would eventually get the better of James and the Cavaliers in three of the four final matchups that followed.
But for one night on the court — and potentially the bowling alley — it was all James and Cleveland.
