Seth Curry joined FanSided for an interview on behalf of Bush's Beans, promoting their "Your Fam on a Can" campaign. This interview has been edited for clarity. You can watch the entirety of our conversation with Seth Curry here.
"Stick to it. Keep working. Things have a way of working out."
That's the advice that 2025 Seth Curry — who has played over 12,000 minutes and made nearly 1,000 3-pointers in his NBA career — would give to 2013 Seth Curry, who went undrafted and would spend the first few years of his professional career bouncing around franchises, struggling to find consistent NBA minutes.
An anomaly in the modern NBA, Curry didn't consistently crack an NBA rotation until he was 26, when the Dallas Mavericks gave him an opportunity; one Curry responded to by becoming the Mavs best 3-point shooter in 2016-17.
But it still wasn't smooth sailing from there; Curry suffered a stress reaction on his left tibia a few weeks before the 2017-18 season, and missed the whole year. It wasn't back to square one, but it was a serious bump in the road. A 28 year-old coming off a major injury with just over 100 NBA games under his belt is far from a sure thing; but a one-year, "prove it" contract in Portland was all Curry needed to prove that a strong year in Dallas wasn't a fluke — in fact, he proved it to those same Mavs, who brought him back on a 4-year deal.
Seth Curry experienced a different college basketball world
It was an untraditional route to NBA success for Curry — even going back to his collegiate days.
Players transferring from a mid-major program to a blueblood is as commonplace in today's CBB landscape as NBA players switching teams in an offseason; that wasn't the case during Curry's time as a college hooper, which he started at Liberty, transferring to Duke after one season.
Curry had to sit out a season before taking the floor with the Blue Devils, a factor that made the choice considerably tougher. On the portal, Curry said:
"It's completely different now. I had to think extremely hard, think twice, two, three times about whether I really wanted to go through with the transfer, just because, like you said, I had to sit out a year. I knew it would be tough. I'm just working on my game not being able to play. But I think back then, I felt like it was worth it. I was making a decision strictly for basketball reasons, not trying to get paid more or anything like that."
The basketball reasons Curry spoke of were, in fact, worth it. He scored over 1300 points at Duke, still hanging around plenty of all-time shooting lists for the Blue Devils.
Now, with very few rules on college players transferring, Curry — along with tons of college sports fans— embrace the portal... with caution.
"I mean, you see some of these kids making decisions being short-sighted..."Not to say [it's] to get the most money or whatever, but something that might not help them in the long run."
A 3-point explosion in the NBA
Seth Curry has been in the league for 11 years, and since his rookie season, NBA teams have almost doubled the number of 3-pointers they take per game. A topic of contention in NBA circles, Curry falls where a lot of fans do — it's the logical thing to do, but that doesn't mean it's the most thrilling to consume.
"As long as the rules stay the same... and all the parameters stay the same, we're figuring out a way to optimize offense, and obviously that's by shooting more 3s," Curry said.
The NBA is a shooters league — but it's becoming only a shooters league, and like many NBA fans, Curry doesn't see the benefit in pigeon-holing players who thrive elsewhere.
Honestly, it isn't the most fun to watch. I don't love it, to be honest. I want to see these athletes that come into the league and do different things.... Get some creativity. You turn them into 3-point shooters. It's not, it's not as fun. So I think, I think there needs to be a little bit of adjustments made from the NBA side, as far as changing the rules, or whatever it is to ask them [to add] a little bit more diversity."
Seth Curry's non-basketball path happens in the courtroom
In another universe, where Curry didn't have the patience and foresight to stick with NBA aspirations, his alternate path would have been far removed from athletics at all.
"I always wanted to be a lawyer. A couple of my closest friends growing up are lawyers now. That's the route I wanted to go. I still might do that... I enjoy the reading part and just learning the law."
Perfecting the offseason plan
Seth Curry has gone through plenty of NBA offseasons. The biggest key to staying engaged, he says, is just to keep things exciting.
"I've kind of perfected my routine as far as offseason things I like to do. I mean, you have to take some time to get some rest, and then slowly work back up with weight room work and different stuff to stay in shape, and get in better shape toward the end of the summer, when you're leading up to the season. But at the same time, I try to get creative. You don't want to get bored with your workouts and doing the same stuff, or you want to get your trainers to come up with some different drills. We have a week where we do some yoga or some Pilates or whatever, just to mix it up."
Sticking to it has paid off for Curry
Seth Curry has plenty of name recognition, and he's played in the NBA long enough that it's easy to forget how he got here: from a small college, to going undrafted, to bouncing around in the NBA G League for years, to a major injury after his first productive NBA season. That's not the usual route to an NBA career... but it aligns with Curry's original message to his old self: stick to it.
"There was several times when I was in the G League [then called the D-League] going through some tough times, felt like I was good enough to play in the NBA, but not getting the opportunity, not knowing if I would ever get a chance."