With the invention of AAU and year-round basketball, players cross paths well before they make it to the NBA.
The perceptions and assumptions made by a 10-year-old kid can vary drastically from that of an adult. Kevin Durant presented an example of that when discussing his first meeting with Stephen Curry. The two are friends and NBA peers now, but Durant prejudged Curry when they were young and playing AAU basketball.
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“I was about 10 years old, and our AAU team drove down to Charlotte to play,” Durant said. “I thought he was white. He was this yellow kid, right? I’m just being real now, right? Where I come from, in the hood, we don’t see that. We don’t see the light-skinned guys around. It was all guys like me.”
When Curry heard Durant retell the story, he laughed as hard as possible and turned red in reaction.
“I walk in the gym and this guy’s stepping across half court just pulling jump shots,” Durant said. “Splash. Splash. And when we played him, he had like 35 and he was like 10 years old. I was like, who is this? And 10 years later … that was Steph Curry.”