Brandon Payne calls it “The 57” drill. It’s a complicated shooting drill, one of his grueling tactics designed to push the seemingly limitless bounds of Stephen Curry. Payne’s genius is coming up with hyper-particular drills for hyper-specific goals, and sometimes even he wonders if he’s taking it too far.
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The 57 drill has seven areas on the floor: corner, wing, slot, top, slot, wing, corner. For this drill, the wing is basically the free-throw line extended. The slot is the space between the wing and the top. Starting in the corner, Curry has to make five shots in seven attempts to advance to the next area. If he fails, he goes back to the previous area.
Here is where it gets tough. To prevent Curry from taking consecutive shots in the same spot, which almost never happens in the game, the 57 drill requires alternating depths. So the sequence beginning in the corner area is for him to take a floater, then a midrange jumper, then a 3 — and repeat until he makes five shots. Remember, he only gets seven attempts, so that’s twice through and one last floater if he needs it. Then it’s on to the wing, for the same floater/midrange/3 sequence.
When he gets to the slot, the sequence changes: deep 2, a 3 and a deep 3. It changes again at the top: a 3, a deep 3 and the deepest 3, which is essentially standing on the edge of the logo at half court. After completing the top, he continues through the opposite slot, wing and corner. That’s 35 makes from varying depths. Getting through each station without having to go back requires a minimum of 71.4 percent shooting. And the drill still isn’t complete until he’s made a half-court shot for punctuation.
Curry has done this drill before. But on this evening earlier this week, he was struggling. Still, he was determined to conquer the challenge. His competitiveness wouldn’t allow him to leave the court until he finished the drill designed to torment him.
It normally takes him four minutes. This time it took him nearly 18.
“I was just throwing the passes and I was ready to give up,” Payne recalled in a phone interview on Thursday. “He just kept grinding. We had to climb the hill. Some days it goes like that. Some days it’s just not as smooth as you would like for it to be. But when you’re as tough as he is, and when you’re as competitive as he is, you can work through that. He was a hell of a lot tougher than I was during that drill because I was getting sore. But that’s just how he is.”
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Payne, Curry’s trainer for about a decade now, never worries about the mental toughness and professionalism of his top client. What he saw from Curry on the eve of Thanksgiving underscored his overarching point that Curry is the last one on the Warriors to worry about.
The dynamic of the Warriors has changed drastically. Conventional wisdom suggests Curry will need one of his greatest seasons to get the Warriors into the playoffs in the loaded West. And he must do so without his stalwart backcourt mate for the second season in a row.
Also, Curry is 32 years old. He’s played in only five real NBA games in 17 months. He hasn’t shot better than 44 percent from 3 in four years, including a career-low 24.5 percent in last season’s small sample size. But Payne has worked with Curry closely for the better part of the last five months and he isn’t worried at all about Curry’s ability to produce this season.
“I have every reason to believe that he’s going to be the same Stephen Curry that he’s always been,” said Payne, founder of Accelerate Basketball. “Every year, teams have found different ways to try to defend him. And every year, he’s had an answer. I don’t think that this year will be any different. I really don’t. What he sees might be more complex than what he’s used to just because teams can get that way with him. But I think you’re eventually going to see the answers to all the problems.”
It’s been a tricky road through what is normally a seamless and regimented offseason for Curry. First, he needed to fully recover from the nerve damage he suffered when he broke his left hand last November. Payne says Curry is all healed now and his ball-handling looks as fluid as ever.
Curry’s prolonged lack of game action was also a different wrinkle. His offseason work included more 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 action than ever. Curry even arranged his own 5-on-5 games, which included Jeremy Lin among others, to compensate for playing so little basketball since the 2019 NBA Finals.
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Then, they got the curveball with the December start of the season. Payne had mapped out an offseason regimen based on the 2020-21 season launching on Martin Luther King Day in 2021. But the league and the NBPA agreed on a Dec. 22 launch. As refined as Curry’s offseason prep is, a month sooner is significant. So Payne ramped up the work.
Throw in Curry’s social justice efforts, business commitments and golf side hustles — all in a pandemic — and it’s created a wholly unique offseason prep for the two-time MVP. But per his trusty trainer, it also revealed the strength of Curry’s that is most overlooked: fortitude.
The challenge of a shortened season, of coming back from missing significant time, and of bearing the burden of the Warriors’ expectations will require a mighty resolve. He’s the lone reliable playmaker. With no Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant long gone to Brooklyn, Curry is again the undisputed epicenter of the offense. He might have a rookie starting center in James Wiseman with him. He’s got two wings in Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre Jr. who are expecting to feast off of the gravity Curry creates. He is also the most experienced on the roster. Add Draymond Green, who hasn’t shot 30 percent from 3 in two seasons, and Curry could be looking at a congested half-court setting.
But if it’s about mental toughness, if it’s about accepting the challenge and being ready, Payne always feels good about Curry’s chances. The work he’s put in this offseason bolsters that confidence.
Conditioning is never an issue with Curry. He stays in tip-top shape and keeps his weight within about a four-pound range between 188 and 192. So Payne was able to focus on enhancement despite the long layoff.
Skill work is never an issue either because Curry gets a little stir crazy without hoop. His attention span starts craving the relentless sensory overload of basketball. He’s always down for the developmental minutia. That’s why in July, when 22 teams were in the bubble and the Warriors’ season was over, Curry was going hard with Payne. That’s why even when they eased off the gas, Curry was still doing Zoom workouts. He set up a laptop at half court so Payne could see, had the shooting machine pass him the rock while Payne gave directions from a virtual workout he crafted.
“Not enough athletes are that determined to get the work in,” Payne said. “I’ve tried to do it with some other young guys in the league. It’s just not there. They’re not there yet in their level of professionalism. That doesn’t mean they can’t get there. But they just don’t quite understand how important this daily touching on details is. When we would do these Zoom workouts, they wouldn’t be these marathon two-hour sessions. They would be 45 minutes or 30 quick minutes I think those are going to definitely pay dividends for him this year.”
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Eventually, Payne will turn Curry over to the Warriors for training camp in early December. When the season begins on Dec. 22, they’ll know a lot more about how teams are guarding him and how Steve Kerr uses him. In the meantime, they’ve built on the foundation they’ve already developed: strength, efficiency of movement, decision-making under duress, explosiveness, proper balance and mechanics in just about every situation.
Curry couldn’t necessarily work on a particular weakness or acquire a specific strength because it’s hard to tell what this campaign will warrant. It’s not like in past years when they knew he would be off the ball quite a bit in Kerr’s offense, which often ran through Durant or had Green running point and took advantage of Curry’s gravitational pull. They spent multiple offseasons getting Curry’s body ready for the off-the-ball battles. But will Curry play more on the ball this season since he is the lone proven playmaker? Will he play more minutes than the 32-34 per game that Kerr likes to keep him at?
Guessing what might happen violates Payne’s efficiency doctrine. The goal is no wasted motion, no unnecessary movements, no errant energy. Practicing for an eventuality that may not come to pass would have been the kind of waste they would regret. Instead, they worked on the core elements, stacking skills and enhancements onto the established repertoire. Payne sought to make the workouts harder. That’s how Curry would prepare for this crazy season, by getting him comfortable under the most pressure, facing the most grueling tasks. If he’s ready for daunting, he’s ready for anything.
The best example is perhaps in the “Two in a Row” drill. It’s basic, per Curry’s standards. It has five spots around the arc. He has to make two in row from each spot as he works his way around the arc. Then he has to make his way back around and finish in the corner where he started.
But Payne added a hell of a twist. Before moving to the next spot, Curry has to make two in a row from the same spot on the opposite half court. So after making two 3s from the left corner, he has to sprint down the sideline and make two from the opposite corner. Then hustle back to hit two 3s from the wing before running to the opposite court and make two from the other wing. Curry continues that pattern until he makes it around both arcs. When he finishes that, he works his way back around to arc to the corner where he started, sticking just to the original half court on the second pass-through.
Normally for this drill, Curry stays on one court and has to two minutes to complete it. But since Payne added the wrinkle of the other court, forcing Curry to shoot on the run, extra time was added to the goal. A full 15 seconds more.
“It’s pretty impossible,” Payne said. “There’s no margin for error. You can’t miss. You’ve got to make everything.”
Of course, Curry completed it. No other option was acceptable. It’s that mindset that makes Payne so confident in Curry.
(Photo from February: Noah Graham / NBAE via Getty Images)
