Steph remembers hanging out with LeBron before the Warriors-Cavs game originally aired on NBC Sports Bay Area
The friendship between Steph Curry and LeBron James goes back many years.
Before the two superstars faced off in four straight NBA Finals series from 2015 to 2018, they had built a friendship that started in 2009, Curry’s rookie season.
Curry revealed to his father, Dell, on the duo’s “Heat Check” podcast series that the first time he returned to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, after birth happened to be to hang out with James — another Akron native — – the night before the Warriors faced the Cleveland Cavaliers on November 17, 2009 at Quicken Loans Arena.
“I didn’t know at the time that my rookie year was the first time I went back,” Steph told Dell. “The day before we played Cleveland, my rookie season, I met LeBron [James] the year before, when he was watching our college games and stuff. When we’re on the West Coast, you can only travel to Cleveland once, so I was at the hotel the night before the game and he hit me and said, ‘Do you want to come home?’ And his house was in Akron.
“So I want to say that I didn’t even have an Uber account at the time, so I got in a cab, went to LeBron’s house and hung out with him that night. He had a little bowling alley in his basement. Bryce and Bronny running around the house, little kids.”
A 21-year-old Curry, who had yet to develop into 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. James, meanwhile, 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 start of a great friendship and one of the fiercest rivalries in NBA history.
“And that was the first time I was actually back in Akron, and it’s cool because the connection between me and him, we didn’t know what was in store for us, that was ’09, six years later we would have a crazy rivalry in the Finals and all that,” Curry added. “But I’ve only been back twice now, but there was no actual awareness of the Akron connection at the time and then all of a sudden you get to the Finals in 2015 and that’s when it started. connection.”
Of course, Curry and the Warriors would ultimately get the best of James and the Cavaliers in three of the four Finals games that followed.
But for one night on the track – and possibly the bowling alley – it was all James and Cleveland.
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