š My name is Hareem, and Iām on the EPD team at Pave! Every week, I send a weekly reflection to our engineering team here. I thought Iād share the reflection I sent out to the team this week to the universe. Let me know what you think!
Hey team,
Happy WARRIORS DAY! For this weekās engineering reflection, I had to keep it on brand. Obviously, last night was a huge night for the Warriors, but if youāve followed at all, you know thatās especially true for the one and only Steph Curry. And just in case you havenāt been following āĀ besides being one of the greatest to play in general ā he has had just an absolutely dominant, world-class performance this season (especially in the Finals).
So what makes Steph Curry who he is? Hereās three lessons we can learn as an R&D team from one of the best of all time.
P.S. Do you know how foreign it feels being in a city that won a championship? Iām from Maryland - the Wizards were all we were working with over there. Tickets were like $3 a game.
Lesson 1: He makes everyone want to win for him
One of the most impressive things about Steph is everything you hear about who he is off the court, sometimes, even more than who he is on the court. Heās described as āthe guy that keeps everyone together in the locker room, the selfless star who plays without the ball and makes room for others to shine.āĀ
The crux of great players - and great leaders - is exactly that. When youāre great at something, itās easy to shine. Itās a much harder skill to make others shine. It is taking a bet on yourself to shoot the ball, itās taking a bet on others to pass the ball.Ā
Itās also an incredibly special thing to be as talented as Steph and somehow not dominate a locker room in a way thatās demotivating. Have you ever really thought about that? Imagine a world where you can sink 43 points in a game and still be described by everyone as āthe ultimate team playerā.
Lesson 2: Thereās no shortcuts to excellence
Itās easy to imagine the heroes we have in sports, academia, life and otherwise as larger than life because they had some sort of natural god-given talent. It is much harder to reckon with the reality that for so many of these people ā the single biggest lever they had in becoming world-class was far less glamorous: practice.
Steph is a shining example of how becoming great at something is an exercise in showing up for yourself and your team every single day. For better or worse, itās the invisible, not-sexy, rigorous regimen thatās the āsecret sauceā in cultivating greatness.Ā
Lesson 3: Hold a high bar for yourself, and measure what matters
Steph Curry averages about 24 points per game, and he scored 43 points this game. 43 points in an NBA Finals game - one of the most competitive, difficult sporting events in basketball, without home-court advantage. In fact, reading about the stats he was averaging this point in the Finals was pretty phenomenal - he had totaled about 137 points over the four games in the finals ā twice as many as any of his teammates.
But how does he measure success after one of the most phenomenal performances weāve seen from him to date?
āI donāt measure performancesĀ ā just win the game.ā
So my final observation ā though I could go on! š ā is that Steph is a master class at holding himself to a high bar, and constantly orienting himself around the outcome that matters: winning the game. His performance is in service of the team winning a game, which is all that matters. Forget that he just had one of his best performances in a playoff game ever. Forget that he is lighting up the court compared to his peers on the court. His focus is singular, and itās not about himself: itās about the outcome. All that matters is winning the game.
Okay. I know this was long. Thanks for reading ā and have an amazing long weekend! As always, let me know if you have any thoughts!
Hareem