Stephen Curry graduated from Davidson College on Sunday, completing his degree 16 years after stepping foot on campus as a scrawny teenager.
Why it matters: Davidson only retires the jerseys of players who’ve graduated — no exceptions. At long last, the small liberal arts college (~2,000 students) will formally recognize its most famous son, with plans to hang his jersey in the rafters this year.
- Curry received a bachelor of arts degree, with a major in sociology, as a member of the Class of 2022.
- He couldn’t attend commencement, but his name was in the program, causing a stir among students and attendees.
The backdrop: As a sophomore in 2008, Curry put Davidson on the map with an Elite Eight run. When he turned pro the following year, he told his parents and coach Bob McKillop that he’d be back to finish his degree.
- Three years later, Curry returned to campus during the NBA lockout to take classes. He practiced with the team that semester, even playing the role of his brother Seth as Davidson prepped for Duke.
- Curry quietly completed his final semester this spring, working with two members of the Davidson faculty, a Stanford professor and a UC Santa Cruz professor — both of whom taught him when they were at Davidson.
The last word: “I knew what I signed up for when I went to Davidson,” Curry said in 2015 of the school’s rigorous academics. In 2019, he shared a fond memory from the team’s Cinderella run …
I was coming back from dinner, after practice — the night before we played Kansas. … And it was the strangest thing ever: I turned the corner down the hallway … and I ran into about half the team. The guys were sitting there, right on the floor, with their warm-ups on and their clunky 2007 laptops out.
Like, this bunch of dudes that had just given back-to-back whoopings to Georgetown and Wisconsin. Sitting on the floor, typing away. And I’m like, “Umm … what are y’all doing?” The whole group of them answer at the same time: “MIDTERMS.”
No, for real. That’s a true story. It’s 12 hours to the Elite Eight, 12 hours to the biggest game of any of our lives — and those boys were literally writing term papers in the hallway. Straight up GRINDING in the Word doc. Man, I love Davidson with all my heart.
— Curry, via The Players’ Tribune
