DAVIDSON, N.C. — It’s been quite a week for Steph Curry.
One day after Curry led his Golden State Warriors to their fourth NBA championship in eight years with a Game 6 victory at Boston, Davidson College announced Friday that its most well-known graduate, Steph Curry, will have his number retired.
Because Davidson had a longtime policy of not retiring the jersey of any player who didn’t graduate, Curry’s No. 30 wasn’t retired even as he became one of the NBA’s all-time greats in the 2010s.
On Aug. 31, 2022, Davidson College will have a mini-graduation ceremony for Curry, who will also be inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. The event will be public, with more details to come.
But the door opened when Curry graduated in May 2022, 13 years after he skipped his senior year at Davidson to join the NBA one year early. He had always said he would eventually get his college degree, and he finally did at age 34, doing Zoom calls after road games and meeting with professors after workout sessions.
Davidson coach Bob McKillop, five Wildcat players and two Davidson managers who also graduated beamed with pride in a photo from that May graduation day, with McKillop holding a cardboard cutout of Curry.
“Steph made a commitment to Davidson and to his parents that he was going to graduate,” McKillop said in an Charlotte Observer interview shortly after that graduation. “This was a superb, remarkable story about honoring a commitment, something that again shows that Steph prominently displays character traits that are so absent in our world today…. He is a multi-millionaire, and yet he still takes the time to finish his education.”
Curry wrote on Twitter shortly after his graduation to his 16 million followers that his sociology degree was a “Dream Come True.” He added: “Thanks to my whole village that helped me get across the finish line. Made the promise when I left and had to see it through….. Momma we made it!”
Davidson’s timing of Friday’s announcement was fortuitous. Curry won his first-ever NBA Finals MVP Thursday night, checking one of the few boxes he didn’t already have in his Hall of Fame career. Already the NBA’s most prolific 3-point shooter, Curry has also been NBA MVP twice and has won two NBA single-season scoring titles. Most importantly, he now has those four championship rings.
At Davidson, Curry was a lightly-recruited player known as the son of former Charlotte Hornet Dell Curry who blossomed into a star. In his most successful season, Curry led the Wildcats on a run through the 2008 NCAA Tournament that ended in the Elite Eight, when Davidson was edged by eventual national champion Kansas.
