Curry analyzes the night that made him a superstar

Show him highlights from his 54-point eruption at Madison Square Garden in February 2013 and he will blurt out “right down Main Street” before ESPN commentator Mark Jones says exactly that on the broadcast to describe the second of Curry’s 11 3-pointers.

Curry is also prone to call out things the average viewer might not see, like the 3-pointer from the corner to open the second half — after letting Raymond Felton fly by — that let him know he had the hottest hand of his career. Or the crunchtime sight of then-New York Knicks guard Jason Kidd looking horrified on the bench as he realized Curry was about to hit his 11th triple right off an inbounds pass. Or the fact that, to this day, it still burns Curry that the short-handed, undersized Warriors — playing without injured Andrew Bogut and suspended David Lee — wound up suffering a 109-105 defeat despite his Kobe-esque display.

I can vouch for Curry’s detailed recollection of the events from five years ago because I recently had the opportunity to sit beside him and watch a nearly 6-minute YouTube compilation of the historic havoc he wreaked on the Knicks. And, yes, watching Steph watch his young self — especially with his 30th birthday looming March 14 — is as entertaining at it sounds.

“Definitely struggling in the facial hair department,” Curry said, acknowledging my not-so-keen observation about how boyish he looked.

“That,” Curry added, “was kind of the coming-out party on the national stage.”

As the NBA leaves the All-Star break behind, Curry and his Golden State Warriors are about to begin a big week. Having squandered a five-game lead over the Houston Rockets in the space of 29 days to slip to No. 2 in the West entering the break, the Warriors are trying to rediscover their edge and enthusiasm to counter a nagging case of the regular-season blahs. And they’ll be coping with new emotions Tuesday when they arrive in the nation’s capital without the usual White House invitation for reigning NBA champions from President Donald Trump.

The reality is that Golden State, as one of the league’s most vocal teams on social issues, was poised in late September to vote as a team to reject any invitation — which prompted Trump to pre-emptively withdraw it — but it figures to be a reflective trip nonetheless.

That’s especially true for Curry, since the Warriors will make their annual appearance in Manhattan to face the Knicks on Monday before the team travels to Washington — nicely timed just one day before the precise fifth anniversary of what Curry looks back on as his “first game that people actually talked about the next day.”

In his fourth NBA season, after struggling with myriad ankle injuries to that point, Curry hadn’t been a frequent feature performer on national television since the spring of 2008, when, as a sophomore, he led unfancied Davidson College to wins over Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament before a narrow defeat to the eventual champion Kansas in the Elite Eight.

The first taste of his new life came in the immediate aftermath of Fifty-Four, when he returned to his room at the Trump International just outside Central Park — where the Warriors naturally refuse to stay now — to try to recuperate.

“I was happy because I had never scored 50 before,” Curry said. “But I was really mad because we lost and couldn’t finish it off. And then I was exhausted because I had played all 48 minutes.

“I remember getting back to the hotel and ESPN was on and the first 15 minutes of ‘SportsCenter’ was all about me. I actually just sat there and watched it. It kind of caught me off guard because I didn’t think they’d talk about a player on the losing team that much.”

After spending much of the past three seasons of my own career stalking Curry and the Warriors on behalf of “SportsCenter,” before joining The New York Times in October, I’m also prone to forget how normal everything was for him as recently as 2012-13. Lee was the Warriors’ lone All-Star that season. As Curry expertly put it in reference to the last time he was an All-Star snub, “Nobody was worried about my pregame warmups in those days.”

Back then, Curry was essentially doing the same shooting routine before games that nowadays draws huge crowds of fans and reporters filming every twitch with their phones. A half-decade later, flanked by a trio of fellow All-Stars in Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, Curry is the face of an all-time juggernaut, on a pace to lead the league in jersey sales through the NBA’s online store for the third consecutive season. Curry also just became the first Warrior to start five successive All-Star Games.

A matchup with the Kristaps Porzingis-less Knicks can’t be oversold as terribly significant for a team chasing its third championship in a space of four seasons. Yet you can rest assured that Curry will have every Garden appearance circled on his calendar for the rest of his life after the manner in which his basketball journey changed course on Feb. 27, 2013.

“It changed the noise around what I was about,” Curry said. “When you can play well in that arena, no matter how good or bad the Knicks are, it’s a different feeling.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.