Curry will soon be the NBA's all-time three-point leader, driven by a history of severe injuries

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry needs two more three-point shots to become the NBA's all-time leading three-point shooter.

After hitting five threes against the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, he has scored 2,972 three-pointers, one behind Ray Allen.

Curry seems destined to hold the three-point basketball crown, but although he is on the verge of cementing his status as the NBA's three-point GOAT, it could easily have never happened.

His early professional career was plagued by severe ankle injuries, but Curry attributes that painful period to pushing him to this pinnacle.

"One narrative is that it almost destroyed my entire career," Curry told ESPN, "but it also gave me the resources I needed to make everything work."

Nine years removed from the orthopedic nightmares that sidelined him multiple times during his first three years in the league, he appreciates how that difficulty challenged him to work harder and smarter.

"The ankle situation was a hidden blessing," Curry says. "It gave me a new kind of approach to the work I put in, so it's kind of crazy."

Had it not been for his first ankle surgery and rehabilitation process in 2011, Curry likely would never have met the training partner who helped him get here.

Making more threes than any player in NBA history requires a combination of shooting skill, creativity, and durability. The first two skills came with him from Davidson in 2009, but the young point guard practiced relentlessly. In his second season with the Warriors, Curry suffered repeated ankle injuries that led to his first surgery. After working with Payne during his rehabilitation, Curry returned for the 2011-12 season but played only 26 games before re-injuring his ankle, leading to a second surgery.

The summer of 2012 was a turning point for the big-dreaming lottery pick. In his first few years in the league, Curry spent as much time in rehab as he did playing under the basket.

Payne recalls Curry telling him, "I can't even remember what it's like to play basketball without rehab."

During his first three years in the league, Curry averaged 124 three-pointers per season. Over his 18-year career, Allen averaged 165 per season.

Allen reached 2,973 3s partly because his body held up. He played over 46,000 minutes in 1,300 regular-season games during his exceptional career. Allen never missed 40 games in a season. Curry did that in his third season, and to fully appreciate what he has just done, you have to look back at the doubts that swirled around his potential less than a decade ago.

In 2012, Curry signed a four-year, $44 million contract with Golden State that would last through the 2016-17 season. In retrospect, that deal became the league's biggest bargain of the century.

By the end of that four-year contract, the ankle problems were gone; he had become a two-time MVP; he would change the sport -- and all for $11 million a year.

It has been more than nine years since he signed that contract with the Warriors, but the value of Curry's contract provides undeniable proof that few, if any, NBA executives saw it coming.

(ESPN)
In the summer of 2011, while Curry was rehabilitating at Architech Sports and Physical Therapy in Charlotte, North Carolina, he had a chance encounter with Brandon Payne, a local trainer who worked with other NBA players.

"One random day I'm in there, and B-Payne comes in and sits down front and says I have some exercises while you're in rehab," Curry says. "You don't have to be on your feet, I can keep your ball-handling sharp, we can work on things around hand-eye coordination, and you can just sit in a chair the whole time."

Neither of them knew it at the time, but that waiting room encounter sparked a partnership that fueled a decade of aggressively innovative offseason training that helped Curry ascend to the NBA's three-point mountaintop.