Before Steph, There Was a Barn in Grottoes
Before he became one of the purest outside shooters the league has ever produced, Dell Curry was a kid in Grottoes, Virginia, walking to his coach’s barn after school to practice his shot.
Before he was Steph Curry’s father, before he was the Charlotte Hornets’ all-time leading scorer, before sixteen seasons in the NBA built him into one of the purest outside shooters the league has ever produced, Dell Curry was a kid in Grottoes, Virginia, walking to his coach’s barn after school to practice his shot.
Born in Harrisonburg, Raised in the Valley
Wardell Stephen Curry was born on June 25, 1964, in Harrisonburg. He was raised in Grottoes, a small Augusta County town in the Shenandoah Valley floor, roughly halfway between Harrisonburg and Waynesboro along the South River. It wasn’t exactly a basketball factory when Dell was growing up there.
What it had was space, and a barn. Dell attended Fort Defiance High School in the Augusta County community of the same name, and the story that follows him out of that chapter is simple and specific: he used his coach’s barn as a private shooting gym, going there daily to work on the mechanics that would eventually make him one of the most accurate perimeter shooters in NBA history. He left Fort Defiance as the school’s all-time leading scorer and a McDonald’s All-American in 1982, one of the top high school players in the country that year and a two-sport talent good enough that the Texas Rangers drafted him out of high school in baseball.
Two Sports, One Decision
Even though the Rangers’ drafted him, Dell passed on the opportunity. He chose Virginia Tech instead, playing four years for the Hokies and developing into the kind of precise outside scorer that gets NBA scouts interested. The conference recognition came: Metro Conference Player of the Year in 1986, three first-team all-conference selections. Virginia Tech retired his number 30 after he graduated. He was selected 15th overall in the 1986 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz, and his professional career began.
What followed was a nomadic few seasons, a year with the Jazz, a year with the Cleveland Cavaliers, before Dell landed in Charlotte in 1988 when the Hornets expansion team claimed him. He would stay for a decade, becoming the franchise’s cornerstone outside shooter, winning the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award in 1994, and retiring as the Hornets’ all-time leading scorer with 9,839 points. Charlotte eventually retired his number 30. He has worked as a television analyst for Hornets broadcasts since retiring from playing.
Charlotte Is Home Now
Dell Curry has said plainly that Charlotte is home, and has been since 1988. The Virginia connection is his roots, even though it’s not his current address: he grew up here, developed here, and launched from here. The Shenandoah Valley isn’t exactly an NBA factory, though. Dell Curry is the Valley’s most prominent contribution to professional basketball, and his story tracks the trajectory that serious athletes from small Valley communities often follow: you get good enough to leave, and then you stay gone.
The Valley that shaped him is still here. Fort Defiance High School still fields a basketball team in Augusta County. The barn his coach owned may or may not still be standing. And somewhere in the career of Steph Curry, the best shooter of his generation, you can trace a line back to a kid working on his mechanics every afternoon in a Grottoes barn, building the muscle memory that would pass, in some form, to the next generation.
The Curry Basketball Family Tree
Dell and his ex-wife Sonya raised their children in Charlotte, and the basketball thread continued. Steph Curry has won multiple NBA championships and MVP awards with the Golden State Warriors; Seth Curry has played for multiple NBA franchises; daughter Sydel played college volleyball and married NBA player Damion Lee. The family’s basketball lineage is by now well-documented. But its Virginia origin point, Harrisonburg, Grottoes, Fort Defiance, a barn in Augusta County, tends to get marginalized in the national narrative about the Currys. This is where it started.