Stephen Curry was hesitant to join Golden State when first drafted No. 7 overall by the Warriors during the 2009 NBA Draft, but after surviving an era of cellar-dwelling in the Western Conference, his light began to shine when his team first broke into the postseason in 2012-13, getting past the third-seeded Denver Nuggets.
Curry's first three years in the league had resulted in early offseasons, falling well off the playoff picture in a merciless Western Conference, but a sixth seed in the West under head coach Mark Jackson changed it all for the soon-to-be two-time MVP.
Via Harrison Wind of BSN Denver:
°When we got to the playoffs that year against Denver, against Andre (Iguodala) and Andre Miller, Danilo (Gallinari), Ty Lawson, we were in the same draft class,” Curry said during an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast. “We just came in and were like ‘We're going to win this series and there's nothing that anybody's going to say about it… And it happened but nobody had any playoff experience, so we didn't know what to expect and I think that played to our advantage…”
Andre Iguodala, who was on that Nuggets team, previously narrated just how a then-irate coach George Karl would ask his players to stunt at David Lee, which left guys like Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry open from deep. Iguodala knew these two young players in the Warriors backcourt weren't ordinary streaky shooters, but legitimate marksmen who could make the Nuggets pay for double-teaming Lee.
Thompson was merely in his second season, but he was playing heavy minutes in the rotation, while Curry scorched the Nuggets for four or more 3-pointers in five of the six games in that series, which the Warriors took with relative ease.
It would take a postseason loss to the powerhouse San Antonio Spurs and another next season to the LA Clippers to finally break through, this time under Steve Kerr, and earn their first championship in 2015.
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