Episode Transcript
There’s an article in the Ringer that I keep coming back to. It’s called, It’s More Than Just a Shot, and it’s about Steph Curry, but not the NBA champion Steph Curry you think you know. It’s about the 15-year-old version of him, five six, a hundred thirty pounds, playing JV basketball at Charlotte Christian High School in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Steph was already a good shooter. Making shots was never the issue, but his father Dell Curry, who had just retired after 16 seasons in the NBA, noticed something that was going to become a serious problem as the competition got tougher. Steph’s release was too low. He was essentially pushing the ball from his chin and against longer, stronger athletes, it would get blocked.
So Dell told his son, we need to rebuild your shot completely this summer. Steph later described that summer, and I’m quoting directly here from the Ringer piece, the worst summer of my life, basketball speaking. So for about three months, he shot almost exclusively from the paint because he couldn’t yet shoot from any further out with his new form.
He didn’t have the strength or the muscle memory. And so imagine going from a shot that had worked for him, the one that even allowed him to begin separating himself as better than just about everyone else around him, to then for a time getting measurably and visibly worse. And then gradually, painfully he got better.
Better in ways the old form never would have allowed. And we know what followed Davidson, the Warriors MVP awards, four championships, and not just being the greatest shooter in basketball history, but being the spark for a revolution that completely changed how basketball’s now played. But here’s what I keep coming back to.
Many elements had to be true for Steph to stick it out that summer. To name just a few. First, the feedback came from someone who, had legitimate experience. Dell Curry had 16 seasons of shooting at the highest level in the world. He wasn’t guessing. He knew exactly what needed to change and why. Second.
Dell had to give that feedback to Steph with sufficient care and detail. Had he just said, vaguely, your shot is terrible and won’t work in college, let alone the NBA and left it at that, it likely would’ve left a young 15-year-old boy confused, maybe even disheartened. Third, Steph had to have the grit and patience to stay in the discomfort long enough for the new form to take hold.
He didn’t bail when things got worse and they did get worse. This is one of the most underappreciated aspects of being feedback literate, which is, sometimes genuinely good feedback from a genuinely qualified source when you try it out, will make you worse before it makes you better. And most of us, when we notice that performance dip as we try out some new behavior, take it as evidence that the feedback was wrong or just not for us, and we go back to what was comfortable.
Here’s what I want to leave you with. Think of one skill you’re, you’re currently trying to develop and ask yourself two questions. First, is the feedback I’m receiving on this skill coming from someone with genuine expertise in this specific area? Not just general credibility as a human but real lived experience in this specific area.
And second, am I willing to get worse before I get better? If the answer to both is yes, stay with it a little longer than may seem reasonable. You might eventually decide to drop it, which is fine. But it could also turn out to be your version of Steph Curry’s worst, but arguably most important summer.
Catch you next week.
Show Notes
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