Cyrus Saatsaz
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Creative Commons
Remember when Steph Curry shared his doubts about the Moon landing in 2018 and then did a full 180 days later? In his newly published cover interview with Rolling Stone, the Golden State Warriors’ point guard reveals that the change of heart came on direct orders from former leader of the free world Barack H. Obama.
The story begins with a 2017 golf game between Obama and Curry, during which the two had a light-hearted conversation about conspiracy theories, including top-secret knowledge of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. (“You won’t believe what the aliens look like,” the 44th president of the United States apparently joked to the NBA star.)
A year later, however, Obama took exception to Curry’s comments on the Moon landing, which were aired Monday, December 10, 2018 on the second episode of the Vince Carter-hosted Winging It podcast. “That night, I got an email… a pretty stern, direct one from President Obama,” Curry tells Rolling Stone’s Matt Sullivan. “‘You’ve got to do something about this.’”
Curry quickly followed the ex-president’s command. “Obviously I was joking when I was talking on the podcast,” he told ESPN two days later. And over the weekend, he went live on Instagram with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly to clear the air.
On January 3, 2019, he took his support for science a step further, wearing a pair of cratered and American flag-adorned Moon Landing sneakers in a game against the Houston Rockets. He went on to sell the shoes for $58,100 on eBay and donate the proceeds to STEM programs at Bay Area schools.
Curry has become more politically active in recent years. He’d already refused to attend a proposed White House championship ceremony in 2017, drawing the Twitter ire of then-president Donald Trump. And in 2020, he recommitted to his position, endorsing Joe Biden for president in 2020 and speaking on the importance of voting with his wife Ayesha at that year’s (virtual) Democratic National Convention.
In the Rolling Stone interview, Curry discusses the factors he considered before making the speech. “We weren’t sure, more so from a faith perspective, especially around abortion,” he tells Sullivan. “When you endorse a president, you have a lot of noise comin’ at you: ‘Daughter killer! Baby killer!’ . . . That’s the fine line of knowing the beast of politics, where, especially when we’re talking about presidential elections, being active is more important than the understanding that, with every candidate, there’s not a full, down-the-ballot agreement on everything that they do.” When asked more directly, he declines to pick a side in the abortion debate.
Elsewhere in the article, Curry discusses his relationship with Kevin Durant, who left Golden State after their 2018 championship season and in late June requested a trade from his current team, the Brooklyn Nets, before deciding to stay put. He says he discussed Durant returning to the Warriors with his younger brother Seth, the Nets shooting guard, saying he’d be open to the move despite past differences.
“The idea of playing with KD and knowing who he is as a person, from our history in those three years, I think KD’s a really good dude,” he tells Sullivan. “I think he has had certain things happen in his life that hurt his ability to trust people around him, in a sense of making him feel safe at all times. So all of those things, I understand, having played with him and gotten to know him. I love that dude. And if you said, ‘Oh, KD’s coming back, and we’re gonna play with him,’ I had so much fun playing with him those three years, I’d be like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”