Stephen Curry

I Got You, Little Man

A sign that never made it through the door, and four words a year later that made up for all of it.

Christian's favorite player is Moe Wagner. His favorite of all time is Kobe Bryant. But Christian is a point guard, and among point guards there is Stephen Curry first, and then SGA and of course, Dame. That is the order, no doubt about it, and it matters, because it tells you what the seventeenth of March 2023 was supposed to be.

Tito Nelson has held season tickets at State Farm Arena for years. He traded them to put the four of us in row two, on the floor, for Golden State at Atlanta. St Patrick's Day. Three days after Steph's birthday. Steph had been hurt and nobody was sure he would play, and then he played.

Christian made a sign with his aunt. Happy Birthday Steph, in red and green and black, a cake with a shamrock on it, confetti, a basketball. He wore the jersey, the shorts, the socks, the cap, and the Sour Patch Currys — because if there was any chance at all of getting a shoe signed, he wanted it to be those. All of it, walking into the heart of Hawks Nation dressed for the other team.

They took the sign before the game. Too big, as per NBA rules.

There was a thing before the game where you could watch the warm-up, except it was mostly adults, and they stood in front, and you weren't allowed out of your own section to find a gap. Ours happened to be near where the Warriors were shooting, so he watched a man he had waited a year to see through the shoulders of strangers. I think Steph glanced at him once. I don't think he saw him.

Then the Hawks won by eight.

Later, during the game, he shouted for him. I want to be clear about what that cost. Christian is a quiet boy. He does not call out to strangers and he has never wanted to be the loudest thing in a room. He stood up in a building full of people wearing the other team's colors and shouted his hero's name anyway, and nothing came back.

Here is the part I want to be careful about: nobody did anything wrong. Security had a rule about signs and the rule was the rule. The adults in front during the warm up had paid for that privilege too. Steph was coming back from injury in a road building with a job to do, and a glance is what anyone gives a kid in a crowd. Every single person behaved reasonably, and the night still took everything a ten-year-old had put into it and gave him back nothing at all. That happens. It is nobody's fault and it is still the worst feeling there is.

A year and ten days later we were in Orlando, early, first ones into the tunnel. Half the team was still in street clothes. Christian said, "Do you think Steph's in the building?" and I said, "Yes, I do."

He came out of the dressing room before I had finished saying it, turned right, and disappeared toward the back where they keep the food.

When he came out again his arms were full, and there was nobody in that tunnel but the two of us.

Christian called out: "Mr. Curry, will you sign for me, please?"

He looked up. He had no free hands and no reason to answer. He said, "I got you, little man."

Then he went in, came out, and ran past every person waiting so he could get to the floor and warm up. And when he came back through, he stopped — for a lot of people, not just us — and Christian sat down and took off his shoe.

He had outgrown the pair he wore to Atlanta. These were the replacements, same colorway, bought because he loved them that much and because he had never stopped hoping. Steph took one out of his hands and signed the midsole, the only clean surface on a shoe that loud.

He wore them home that night. He has never worn them since.

He has come through Orlando twice more. Both times he stopped. Both times he signed — for Christian, for Caeden, and once, kindly, for me.

The sign never made it past the door, and that wasn't anyone's doing. What Christian got instead, a year and ten days later, was a man with his hands full who owed him nothing, had every excuse to keep walking, and gave him four words — and then came back and made them true. We would have taken the sign. We would rather have this.