Stephen Curry and Daveed Diggs talk about performing under pressure. Curry says routine and muscle memory let him stay confident whether he scores 40 or 14 points. Diggs notes that performing lets him adopt a different persona that eases his everyday nervousness.
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Hey, this is Stephen Curry. You're watching 5 Minutes from Home Overtime. Hope you enjoy this bonus episode we got for you. [MUSIC] We play in front of 20,000 fans in the arena, home or road. Obviously, when you're on the road, it's a different adrenaline rush because it's just y'all 12 on the bench and your coaches. That's it. But we can really feel the difference between a fan base an audience or an arena that's really engaged and really about what's going on on the floor versus sometimes they get a little checked out or whatnot, and it sometimes affects our energy on the floor.
That's interesting.
I've been to see Hamilton in San Francisco 3 times.
Hey.
I could sense a little difference, subtleties, like certain moments where I got hyped, but it wasn't like one night it was everybody's going crazy, something. One night it was a little bit more subdued, but if you felt that on the stage.
Oh, yeah.
And if that impacted your energy or your performance. Your performance on any given night?
It always impacts my performance, but I try not to let it impact my energy. I try to keep the energy up for me the whole time. But like, the easy thing when you first come off stage, if something didn't go right, to blame the audience.
Right.
Right? If they weren't hype, it's like, man, fuck these boys. Like, I had to work. Am I out here working too hard for that? We do that too.
We catch ourselves like, "Y'all spoiled with winning." Like, "Maybe, maybe not." It's just part of our reaction, but it—
'Cause you also, you are putting on a show.
Yeah.
But like, the stuff you're doing is so technical and so like, nobody in the world can do what you do really. And like, even anybody on the NBA team really are like the top of the top of the top. How do you keep that up? Especially y'all, 'cause y'all been winning for so long.
I don't know, for us, routine is everything.
Mm-hmm.
I'm really purposeful about what I'm doing. Like just the technical part, the mechanics, the muscle memory that takes over so that no matter really like, you wanna, shortened the window of variability for me. Like, I know certain nights I might score 40, I might score 14 like tonight, but I feel a certain type of way when I'm on the floor and I know what I'm doing.
I'm always so happy when I'm up there, you know? Even if it's going bad. Like, it's kind of like I just— I'm a different person up there. I'm a really, like, nervous dude in my life, you know?
Nobody has that in common.
Yeah, you know? So, like, it's— I walk through life kind of shit, and then I get to get on stage and be not myself, you know?
Yeah.
So, like, and it's fun, and it's technical, and it's all that. Do you feel like that in a game?
100%. Like, yeah, part of me, what makes— I think what makes me different is just I try to have the pure joy of, like, being— "Oh, I'm playing basketball for a living." Yeah, yeah. If I can keep the joy and keep the fun and keep, you know, the youthfulness of what I do on the floor and, like, let my creativity kind of show, that's the part that keeps it going. To be honest, this last 2 years has been really challenging because when you reach the mountaintop—
Right.
Little subtle cracks that start to show in order to sustain this, you know, really take a toll on you because it matters that much, right? And you're doing it with 12 guys who have a lot of different personalities. They come from different backgrounds. They handle stress differently.
Yeah.
We know we're not perfect. We know on a nightly basis we're gonna have to pick somebody up next to us and like, "Yo, you—" "What's going on in life? Like, what's going on?" Yeah. "Let's just work through that." That's the part that's made us special as a team. We're trying to sustain that, but it's been challenging this year. And when I'm on the podium celebrating a championship, it just— you take a moment, you think like, yo, how much went into this moment right here? Like, how much went into us putting these shirts and these goofy hats on?
Yeah.
With this trophy that I don't even know where they made it at. And like, just think about how much went into it from the time we all started playing basketball. But if we can keep the joy about what we do, We'll be all right. That's how I try to lead, so it's cool. Make sure you subscribe and hit that bell button so you can catch all the new episodes that are dropping every week.
