What do you get for powering your team to the summit of one of the most lucrative and influential sports leagues in the world for five consecutive years, with three championships to show for it? A state-of-the-art home arena that features a performance center posh enough to replicate the luxury of superstar basketball players’ homes.
For the Golden State Warriors, the transition to Chase Center — and its swanky Biofreeze Performance Center — should be seamless. Three-time champion and two-time league MVP Stephen Curry took ESPN’s Rachel Nichols on a tour of his new home away from home, and it is a sight to behold.
The weight room features only the best equipment for some of the best athletes in the world. It’s also where the Warriors players will get treatment and take a nap, if they wish.
“So, you’re gonna say, ‘honey, I’ve gotta go to the practice facility,’ and then you’re just going to be sleeping in here,” Nichols quipped.
Curry had a quip of his own (through chuckles):
You’re giving away all of my secrets.
The locker room, which Curry calls “the centerpiece” of the facility, sports spacious individual locker areas, with large, high-back chairs, calming mood lighting, a large-screen television and — to pay homage to the place where it all started — the design of Oracle Arena crafted into the ceiling.
“This is crazy, man!” Nichols said.
On the floor is the court logo from 2015, the year the Curry-era Warriors won their first of three championships.
“[The ceiling and floor] are two pieces that remind us where we came from,” Curry said.
There’s also the hydrotherapy space, where Warriors can work out in a hot tub or cold tub, on an underwater treadmill.
No time for a quick clip? Biofreeze Performance Center is replete with a barbershop to ensure players look and feel their best for primetime television. “Just sign up on the signup sheet like everybody else,” Curry said of the barbershop, “and they’ve got you hooked up just like everybody else.”
The spa treatment room boasts a steam room that is probably large enough to “fit the whole team in here at one time,” Curry said.
Last, but not least is the dining hall, manned by the team’s “legendary chefs, who’ve taken care of us for many years, and made the move [with the team to San Francisco],” Curry said.
To punctuate this aspect of the Curry-led show-and-tell, the Golden State guard ordered his usual: “a little pasta with a lot of different veggies, and pan-seared salmon on top.”
“All the little spices and herbs and stuff,” Curry added. “They do it well.”
Being married to celebrity chef Ayesha Curry, the underrated superstar would know better than anyone if food is done right. But whether the best basketball facility in the world will help the new-look Warriors contend in the 2019-20 season is yet to be seen.
