Read: 2026-01-06
Recommend: 10/10
Stephen Curry is the first unanimous MVP (Most Valuable Player) in NBA history. Although he discusses faith and basketball, you can still learn valuable lessons from it even if you’re not religious or don’t know basketball. These include setting goals, working hard, staying humble, and finding joy in your work.
Being shot ready requires practice, training, and repetition, but it rewards that work with an unmatchable feeling of transcendence.
The times when you’re most uncomfortable are the inflection points in your life. The discomfort is how you know you are changing.
all you’ll see in the media is a product, not a process.
Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:
We practice not until I get the shot right, but until I can’t get it wrong.
With one switch, four lines of fluorescent ceiling lights flicker to life and hum over the hardwood. I give the ball a hard dribble, because even here in the practice gym, intensity and intention are important. Warming up, I look out at the five empty rows of blue pull-out bleachers that line the court—as a kid in an empty gym like this one, I would picture a crowd filling those seats.
I was never the most gifted athlete—not the highest jumper or the fastest runner or the tallest player on the court. In college, I looked like a middle-schooler trying to age himself up with a mustache so thin it seemed drawn on. Depending on my haircut, I’m still only 6’3” in a league where the average is 6’6”.
But the work carried me through. I fell in love with the grind. You have to. With the sacrifices that it takes to be great, you have to find joy in the work you do when no one else is around. I hate when coaches or trainers on the internet talk about “the unseen hours” that go into being successful, because it makes that sort of preparation sound mysterious and secretive. But when I talk about “the grind,” I’m simply describing the most important hours in any pursuit, the ones we invest in ourselves.
I spend so much time practicing in this feeling so that even under the bright lights and crushing pressure of a real game, I can easily fall into an unconscious flow and execute my training. Of course, I’ll still feel all the nerves, but I don’t let them linger. Instead, they pass right through me. What is left behind is a calm that allows my training to kick in. And then I deliver. Being shot ready requires practice, training, and repetition, but it rewards that work with an unmatchable feeling of transcendence. My peak experience of joy is when I can lose myself in the poetry and rhythm of a fast-paced game—when there’s no time to think, and there are nine other guys flying around me, but I have the ball in my hands and somehow know exactly where it is going to go.
Success may not always look the way you expect, but it’s attainable for all of us when the rigor of our preparation and the depth of our belief meet the urgency of the moment. That’s what it means to be shot ready.
Grounding means returning to the fundamentals of the game, which is important whatever your game is. If you don’t master and remaster the basics, you’ll always be wasting time compensating for fundamental flaws. That doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. Maybe you’ll get by. Maybe instead of preparing, you wing it and let adrenaline push you through. Maybe instead of learning to delegate, you take on every burden yourself and muddle through. Even if those things work for a little while, the inefficiency of working harder for the same result will keep you from growing to the next level. Growth is the ultimate objective, but it emerges from grounding. Without mastering the fundamental principles of success, you can still struggle through, but at best you’ll be meeting your challenges instead of growing from them.
If you are stuck at a certain level and can’t quite break through to the next one, look at your fundamentals. Are you grounded in power? What habits have you developed that create a chain reaction of compensating actions? Slow down to examine what you’re doing, starting from the smallest variable—whatever your equivalent of the fifth metatarsal is—because being disciplined about small details, and taking joy in the work of getting them right until they’re second nature, is how you build consistent success.
In my summer practices, we don’t just passively shoot around. Instead, Brandon invents game situations where I’m shooting against a score number or against the clock. To reinforce my shot-ready mindset, we also try to keep my heart rate at the level it reaches during a game. This adds tremendous value to workouts: First, it allows me to feel the stakes of the game in my body, even while we’re practicing, but it also allows me to practice controlling my heart rate. In other words, this method is not just about getting used to the feeling of a faster heart rate; it’s about learning how to get it to go down again. I’ve practiced enough breath control that even in the middle of a game, I can calm my heart to a resting rate in one 90-second timeout. Learning recovery is part of any practice. We all need it. Whatever your equivalent of a 90-second timeout might be—a day off, a break between meetings, a drive from one work site to another—is downtime you can use for recovery. But believe it or not, you have to practice that kind of productive rest.
At the end of this exhausting drill, I lie down on the court and Brandon places a sandbag on my belly, just under my rib cage. With the weight of the bag pushing down on me, my diaphragm has to work harder to get air, forcing me to take stronger, more efficient breaths. Now when I’m in a game, and there’s no sandbag, I can still recall this breathing technique, which calms my mind and speeds physical recovery. The drill is a shooting practice, of course, but also it teaches me to make the most of short bursts of downtime. I am training myself in the art of recovery.
It boils down to this: Making life harder in practice makes things easier in life.
We will do our best to outwork everyone else.
It is joy that will sustain your commitment to greatness and the work it requires. But joy is more than a great motivator. It is both the means—the thing that drives your effort—and the end, the glorious payoff of all that work. If you look for it, you will see it as the thread that runs through and supercharges everything.
My parents were extremely strict about me and my little brother Seth not going to my pops’s games on school nights. We’d watch the first half of most games at home until our bedtimes, and then wake up and read the box score in the paper the next morning.
They all think they’re the greatest shooter ever. To be great, you have to live on that tiny border between confidence and cockiness. But it’s your work ethic that earns you that real estate. You can have the most reckless confidence in the world, but if you haven’t done the work, it won’t mean a thing.
If something is handed to you or a task comes easy, you won’t get the chance to develop the drive you need to sustain excellence. I wouldn’t have the confidence I have if I hadn’t had people tell me I was too small to be a threat on the court. I had to develop habits of positive self-talk to encourage myself, because there were plenty of voices telling me no. I didn’t look the part of a Division I recruit, but that made me work harder, maximizing my skill set as a sharpshooter who could tire out any opponent by racing all over the court. Being real, we know that not everyone is going to make it to the top tier of every dream they pursue—just like not everyone who picks up a ball makes it to the league. But the worst way to fail is to lose what makes you different because you’re busy trying to be someone you’re not. Find strength in what sets you apart. It’s your superpower.
It’s tempting to look around and see people who are on different timelines—they may be older or younger or just at a different point in their development—and measure your progress by their journey. But I can’t know what’s brought them to that place, and, more than that, comparing myself to others will give me a false sense of superiority or inferiority, neither of which will give me the fuel I need for my own improvement.
Instead, I put the blinders on and compare myself to myself. What is the next limit I need to challenge myself to push past? I shoot a hundred threes at the end of every workout, which provides a specific measurement I can use to track my progression from day to day. It allows me to be my own accountability partner. Feelings are important, but data is something you can measure. What stat can you track in your own life to make yourself accountable for your own progress?
The times when you’re most uncomfortable are the inflection points in your life. The discomfort is how you know you are changing.
The average kid’s temptation might be to make a couple of shots in the paint and quickly move to the three-point line. But he taught me that you have to rigorously train your body in the proper form on close shots before you move out to the arc. The repetition is how you lock in your mechanics. This is where I learned—not intellectually, but in my body—that consistency at the point of release is the key to great shooting.
It was a lesson in maintaining commitment without immediate validation. I was used to thinking that my value as a player was measured in makes. In being fast enough and smart enough to slip past a defender. Now I was learning that my value was in the work I was willing to do to get better—and in the patience I could summon to do that work slowly, carefully, and consistently, before it ever started to pay me back.
It’s harder now for young players to keep blinders on and stay focused when social media is there to remind you of your every make and miss—and everyone else’s. You might see people posting their wins and want to do the same. You might even look at me and other people who’ve made it to the bright stage of the NCAA, the NBA, or the WNBA and feel a twinge of envy. But just remember that all you’ll see in the media is a product, not a process. This whole book is meant to reveal all the steps along the way—the bumps and hurdles, the misses and mistakes that make us. No one is made of wins.
I learned lessons that would carry me through the next years: what it feels like to get challenged and exposed, what you learn in defeat, the thrill of getting outside your comfort zone, and the value of playing against the best.
Controlling people’s feelings is an impossible task, so good leaders create a culture where feelings can be contained and altercations quickly overcome. When everyone shares a mission, issues can be solved quickly, with a collective eye on the shared goal. Effective leaders cultivate an environment of honesty and transparency; if they speak with candor about their own shortcomings, it makes it easier for everyone else to acknowledge mistakes and missteps, which allows the team to course-correct instead of letting problems linger.
When you meet a new coach or manager, you want to show that you can be coached. Yes, they have to earn your trust, too, but they need to know that you’re not going to waste their time. They will test you early, giving you specific instructions to see how much you’re listening and processing. If you can’t do that in a pregame or interview situation, you’re not going to be able to perform when it matters.
Don’t cower from the criticism. If it’s right, take it to heart. If it’s wrong, prove it.
I still get butterflies and nerves before every game. Regular season, preseason, Game 7 of the Finals, it doesn’t matter. I understand now that I can’t stop this great wave of nerves from coming before games, but I can control them once they get here.
I teach this simple breathing routine to young people at our basketball camps because I know their energy levels can sometimes outrun their oxygen levels. They just want to hoop and barely need to warm up, let alone pay attention to their breathing while playing. But learning deep and intentional breathing will not just calm their nerves; it will help them process information better and respond faster.
I’m not a guy who bashes people over the head with a Bible. I love to talk about my faith, I take every opportunity I get, but I also let my actions speak for themselves. Before I am a basketball player, I am a husband and a father. And before all those things, I am a believer, because that is the root of everything I do.
I always made an effort to play it cool when I met these greats who I’d studied on the court. I told myself to separate my fandom from the job, because now I’m not watching them—we’re going at each other. But I couldn’t entirely suppress the feeling of wow. I was on the same court as A.I. No, more than that, I would be responsible for checking A.I. when we matched up.
You only really learn patience because you’re forced to. When you’re not getting enough minutes (and nobody thinks they get enough), and you feel like you’re invisible, you don’t want to hear about the benefits of practicing patience. But the truth is that the waiting will make you a better player if you let it teach you.
Cutting his hands close to his eyes, he told me you’ve got to have tunnel vision early in your career, because even if your team’s not built for success, you have to find a way for you to get better. Worry about what you are doing on a daily basis. Build the right habits that are gonna set you up for success down the road, so that when opportunities present themselves for the team, you’re ready to walk in and meet that moment.
You have to appreciate your competition. Approach them with respect and what I call appropriate fear—after all, they’re coming for you. That’s the only way to beat them.
Setbacks are there to teach us, not to define us forever. If I give in to a losing spirit, I’ll just keep finding different ways to lose. This is true for individuals or any team you’re on or leading: Absorb the lesson, but don’t let the feeling linger into another game.
Later Kobe would remark that even though our approaches to the game were different, we each had the same willingness to do whatever it takes to win. I do it with a smile on my face and he did it with a scowl.
The point of conditioning is that it allows you to do whatever your best thing is all the time, not just in short bursts. Some people can procrastinate and then summon superhuman focus “when it counts” because of a deadline. But I believe it always “counts.”
But you can push through even in the bleakest situations if you have something bigger than yourself to fight for.
The body responds to the mind. An obstacle to the work can help you see how much you love the work. Let that clarity and gratitude drive you.
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
The two surgeries were vital, but what I did after the surgeries is what made the real difference in my career. During my recovery, I reached out to as many people as I could to ask them about how to take care of my body a little bit better. With the help of Keke Lyles, who would become the Warriors’ director of performance, I learned what it really means to get stronger—not just bulking up, but retraining my movement patterns to be more efficient and strengthening my core. Lyles introduced me to alternative bodywork I’d never done before, like hyper-specific yoga poses for my hips and trap-bar deadlifts for the glutes. I practically got a degree in human anatomy, learning how every piece of your body’s puzzle fits together. I was open to all of these new ways of becoming a better, stronger, healthier player, but I was only in that space because the injuries put me there.
By the time I got to the NBA and the Warriors, Coach Jackson accepted my unusual shot selection without us ever having to have a formal talk about it. I didn’t have anybody checking me, because I didn’t need anyone to check me. Coach Jackson trusted me because he knew I was taking shots I had practiced a thousand times—and when I started hitting them, he didn’t want to pour water on the fire.
“Call my bluff,” Coach said. When someone vouches for you like that, the pressure to prove them right is a powerful motivator, stronger even than the need to prove someone else wrong. We were determined to back him up.
Success can be its own motivation, but all of my most meaningful achievements come when I play for something bigger than myself.
Coach Kerr approached us with real humility from the first meeting. “I don’t want to come in here and re-create the wheel,” he said, “but with a couple tweaks in how we approach our offensive playbook, we can win a championship based on what we already have.” As a coach, he knew the value he was bringing, but he acknowledged that the team was already made to win. We needed to hear that then. It disarmed me, which in hindsight is a great tactic for a leader. Okay, I thought, I can roll with this.
That’s as close as I got to getting my license taken away by Coach. But it ended up having the opposite effect. For the first time, he acknowledged that he wouldn’t tell us what a bad shot is. This was what me and Klay needed—trust. Once we had that, we could stretch our shot-taking creativity and imaginations. We could redefine what a good shot was. Now that kind of offensive creativity became part of the team’s DNA.
I had a tendency back then, after a tough loss, to go straight to watching the film and looking inward to try to figure out what’s going on. Then I’d give some direction or leadership on what we all need to do. I was afraid to let my emotions go first and then have to reel it back in after review and reflection.
I couldn’t anticipate the new level of freedom that winning a championship would give the team. When you get one, you get greedy. Because the stress of getting that first one, 82 games locked in, then more games in the playoffs—you’ve got to keep your head down. But when you win, you get to look up again. You get to feel the euphoria of final victory.
When you get hurt, your emotions go all over the place. In a split second I was pulled back into those early years of agony, injury, recovery, and an enduring narrative that I’d never be healthy enough to be a star. I was feeling the weight of everyone staring at me on the floor like it was over. Again. Anytime it’s my ankle, when I feel that familiar sensation of pain, fear threatens to take over. So, lying there on the floor of the arena, the first thing I had to conquer was just the fear of getting up. Trying to put weight on it. When I finally did, I realized I could walk. Gingerly, but I could walk—a world of difference from the old days. This was what I had worked for. Injuries happen, I would tell myself during all those hours of PT and conditioning. But when it inevitably occurred, would I be strong enough to walk away? And here I was.
I needed to feel the floor beneath me so I could ground myself. I did some deep breathing and had a conversation with the pain. It was smaller now, leaving me. Okay, I said silently. Let’s get back into what I was trying to do.
When you get beat, make sure it’s a fight.
People had tried to complicate the idea of him coming to the Warriors. How would I handle a superstar player coming onto the team? Would it threaten my sense of leadership? The better question is, What kind of leader would I be if it did? What K needed to know from me was more direct: How did I feel? Did I want him on the team? “We want to win,” I said. “Think you could help?” As a leader, I needed to know that he was fully committed to what we want to do and how we do it, and if he could answer affirmatively to that, that was all that mattered.
As a leader, it’s always got to be about prioritizing the team, prioritizing winning, and understanding that it doesn’t diminish my value or my role to have another talented individual coming in to join the movement. It was the start of three great years.
The big picture is that egos come in all shapes and sizes. In every industry, but especially sports, with the competitive nature of what we do, there are public and private conversations around “Whose team is it?” and “Who’s the best player on the team?” and “How does this impact legacy?” All of that. I’m just not wired that way. Focus on your value and how it impacts winning. People talk about setting egos aside, but I don’t think that really helps the team. At the end of the day, we all gotta keep our egos. It makes us who we are. It’s okay for everybody to bring our healthy egos and best selves to the floor every night.
You want to work hard enough to establish yourself so that the threat of what you can do is enough to draw players.
Rituals are vital to any team. Not for superstition, but to settle your nerves. They can help you relax so you can focus and enjoy being present in whatever game it is. Game number one, number 82, playoffs, the Finals…wherever you are. For me, it starts with my ankle braces and socks. I put my lefts on before my rights. Always. Left-side brace, then right. Left shoe, right shoe. And every year I pick a new song to play for the last three minutes of the drive to the arena. People expect it to be some inspirational track, but one year it was New Edition’s “If It Isn’t Love.” The song—and any ritual— lets your body and mind know it’s time.
In moments of failure, you have to acknowledge whatever happened so there can be room for growth. But it shouldn’t kill your confidence. It’s not like I worked any harder than I usually do that weekend between the Lakers game and the Monday game in New Orleans. Instead, I worked with confidence and intentionality: This is going to be a very short downturn, because I know I’m prepared. I was not burdened. I was focused.
Back when I was a rookie, I could go through all my routines and play a game—then wake up the next morning just ready to go. Now, it’s different. I start preparing for the next day as soon as the current day’s work is done. From diet to sleep to recovery strategies to film study, there’s an endless cycle of preparing for the next game, and it starts way earlier than I ever had to as a rookie.
The first thing we did was take big goals and turn them into bite-sized pieces. “Accomplishable things” became our guiding principle—little wins that got us closer to an end goal that we were no longer going to talk about so much. Because if we kept talking about the end goal, it put too much pressure on everything that we did on a daily basis.
As a veteran you begin to understand that certain moments require a different level of performance. It’s about that balance: You don’t want a win so bad that you get in your own way and the pressure sends you spiraling in the wrong direction. Even in a hostile environment, you still gotta show up and play. But sometimes that killer instinct has to come out.