Road to Duke
The number nobody wanted was 30. “Growing up, that No. 30, nobody really wanted to wear it, to be honest,” Seth Curry said in March 2026, standing on the floor of the Spectrum Center in Charlotte while the Hornets raised his father’s jersey to the rafters. “Now, it’s iconic, mainly because of the blue and yellow.” The joke had a target and everybody in the building knew who it was. His older brother had made the number the most famous in basketball. Seth, who wore it at Duke and in the NBA, was the one still explaining that it had been their father’s first.
He was born August 23, 1990, in Charlotte, into the middle of Dell Curry’s sixteen-year NBA career, most of it with the Hornets, where he became the franchise’s all-time leading scorer. Sonya Curry had played volleyball at Virginia Tech. Steph was two and a half years older; Sydel, who would play volleyball at Elon, came after. Dell brought the boys to the arena and let them shoot during warmups, and the backyard court in Charlotte produced the two most accurate shooters of their generation and the occasional fight their mother had to break up. The last time the brothers were in the same actual game before 2026 was at Charlotte Christian, Steph’s senior year and Seth’s sophomore year. “My mom was in the stands,” Steph said, “she probably didn’t have any more memory on her phone.”
By the time Seth was a senior at Charlotte Christian, averaging 22.3 points and 5 assists on 52 percent shooting, his brother was taking Davidson to the Elite Eight and the country had learned the family name. It did not help. The recruiting services gave him two and three stars. Duke did not call. Neither did any other major program, and he went to Liberty, in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he led every freshman in the country in scoring at 20.2 points a game, made a school-record 102 threes, scored 707 points, the sixth most in a Big South season by anyone, and was the conference’s Freshman of the Year. On March 24, 2009, he announced he was leaving. “This is a difficult decision that I have reached after close consultation with my family,” he said. Ritchie McKay, his coach, was gracious and precise about it: “There is a level of disappointment with Seth’s decision. I don’t fault Seth for his decision to pursue a school in a higher profile conference.” Duke, which had just lost Elliot Williams to a transfer, called quickly this time.
At Duke
He sat out the 2009-10 season under the transfer rules, and the team he could only practice with won the national championship. He wore No. 30 and waited a year. On the All the Smoke podcast in 2022 he described what he had signed up for: “He gon’ push you. I mean, every year, he was bringing in blue chips, five-star recruits.”
The first blue chip was Kyrie Irving, who arrived the same fall Curry became eligible and was the best freshman in the country for eight games. Then a toe injury took Irving out for the rest of the regular season, and Curry, who had started the year on the bench, started 19 games and made 43.5 percent of his threes for a team that went 32-5, won the ACC Tournament and reached the Sweet Sixteen. Irving came back for the tournament and went first in the draft. As a junior Curry started 32 games, averaged 13.2 and led the ACC in free-throw percentage at 87.3.
The senior year is the one that says the most about him, and the least of it is the 17.5 points a game. He played the whole season on a leg that would not heal, a left shin injury that kept him out of practice for months. “I’ve never had to do this in my whole career, in 38 years,” Krzyzewski told Sports Illustrated that March, “where a kid really has been hurt the entire season.” Curry’s cardio came from a trampoline park in Durham called Chain Reaction. “It gets you a good workout, but it doesn’t put a lot of weight on your legs,” he said. “They’ve given me a lot of leeway and put a lot of trust in me. For a guy to not be able to practice, but to have the role I have on this team, that’s a lot of trust.” Mason Plumlee, asked how a man who never practiced could shoot 43.8 percent from three: “That’s natural. That’s genetic for him.” His father texted him that spring: “I’m really proud of how tough you are mentally.” Duke went 30-6, beat Albany, Creighton and Michigan State in the tournament, and lost to Louisville, the eventual champion, in the Elite Eight. The coaches voted him first-team All-ACC and the Sporting News named him a second-team All-American. His career three-point percentage at Duke, 42.0 over 106 games, trails only Trajan Langdon and Christian Laettner in program history.
In June 2013 the NBA held its draft, sixty picks, and nobody used one on Dell Curry’s son.
After Duke
The Warriors signed him on his 23rd birthday, played him in six preseason games, and waived him. He went to Santa Cruz in the D-League, where his backcourt partner was Mychel Thompson, Klay’s brother, while their younger brothers were becoming the Splash Brothers an hour up the road. In his first game there he scored 36. What followed was the long version of an NBA career: a game in Memphis before a release, a ten-day contract in Cleveland that became nineteen games, Phoenix, the Erie BayHawks, and finally Sacramento, where he got real minutes for the first time. Dallas signed him the next summer, and he was in the league for good.
Portland, in 2019, gave him the Western Conference finals, and the opponent was his brother. It was the first time two brothers had faced each other in an NBA playoff series. “It’s a dream come true for both of us,” Seth said before it started. “I know my mom is a little stressed out. My dad, he’s always calm. She can look at the bright side: one of us is going to the Finals at the end of the day. So there’s no losers.” Dell and Sonya flipped a coin before each game to decide who wore which jersey. Golden State swept.
Back in Dallas the next winter he scored a career-high 37 against Miami on 13 of 15 shooting, 8 of 9 from three. In Philadelphia under Doc Rivers, who would become his father-in-law, he had the two best seasons of his career, 15 points a game on 49-42-87 shooting, and was traded to Brooklyn in the James Harden deal. Then Dallas a third time, and two seasons at home in Charlotte, playing for his father’s franchise. In 2024-25 he led the whole league in three-point percentage at 45.6. For his career he is at 43.3 percent, seventh in NBA history, on a list where the man at the top of nearly everything else is his brother.
He married Callie Rivers, Doc’s daughter and Austin’s sister, on September 14, 2019, which means his Duke teammate is his brother-in-law and his old head coach in Philadelphia is his wife’s father. They have three children.
Where Is He Now
It finally happened on April 6, 2026, at Chase Center, with 6:19 left in the second quarter of a game against Houston, when the Warriors put both Currys on the floor at once. Steph, playing his first game since January after 27 out with an injury, scored 29 in 26 minutes. Seth had 6 in 13. The Warriors lost by a point and nobody in the family cared. “That was a dream come true, to be honest,” Steph said. “To have that moment coming out of a timeout talking about our matchups, I was having flashbacks to Charlotte Christian High School, my senior year, his sophomore year. Basketball has been a part of our whole lives and it’s what we love to do.” Seth had one thing on his mind coming off the floor, which was his brother’s jersey. “I said, ‘As soon as the game’s over, I’m gonna get my hands on those.’ That’s going in the man cave at home.”
It had taken a while. He signed with Golden State on September 30, 2025, was waived on October 18 in a roster-count move with the understanding he would be brought back, re-signed on December 1, and then hurt his lower back and missed most of three months. He played ten games all season, 13 minutes a night, and shot 48 percent from three and 91.7 from the line in them, which is what he does. “I played well when I was out there,” he said in July, “but I missed three months with my back injury, came back, got hurt again. It was frustrating not to be able to help the team because I knew I would have a big role if I didn’t get hurt.”
Two weeks before the two of them shared a floor, the family had been in Charlotte for the jersey. Dell, who is from Grottoes, Virginia, and said so from the microphone, told the crowd, “You wrapped your arms around me when I was a 24-year-old kid. And you’ve supported me and my family ever since.” Steph posted from the road: “The originator is in the rafters forever. Congratulations, Dad.” Seth was there in person, making the joke about the number.
As of September 2026 he is a free agent, 36 years old, still rehabbing the back and still, he says, looking. “I got a lot of love for the organization, the fans, first class,” he said of the Warriors. “At this point in my career, just trying to find a perfect situation for me.” He has played for ten NBA franchises, and the last of them was the one that let him go first, in 2013, six preseason games in. He came back to it, waited out a waiver and a bad back, and got his thirteen minutes next to his brother. Then he took the jersey.