Seth Curry Taking Advantage of Chance to Step Outside Brother Stephen's Shadow

The spotlight only shines so bright at the NBA's Las Vegas Summer League, but it's helping Seth Curry step out of the shadows.

The 24-year-old is a prolific scoring guard, but basketball fans know him more for his other labels: brother of MVP Stephen, son of former big league sniper Dell, uncle of habitual spotlight-stealer Riley. A torrid run through Sin City isn't going to change that, but it could help kick-start a career that's been so close to taking off before.

Curry's summer-league run hasn't finished, but he has already impressed to the point of closing in on a guaranteed contract from the New Orleans Pelicans, according to Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times:

This is exactly what Seth's basketball story needed—a reminder that he's so much more than his last name.

He spent his final three collegiate seasons under Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, growing from a spark-plug reserve to a featured starter and second-team All-American selection by Sporting News. During Curry's final season with the Blue Devils, he averaged 17.5 points per game and buried 43.8 percent of his long-range looks.

He has bounced around the hoops world since. He's been signed by five NBA teams but only suited up for three of them: the Memphis Grizzlies, Cleveland Cavaliers and Phoenix Suns. He's played four regular-season games for a total of 21 minutes in his career, so most of his professional damage has come at the NBA D-League level.

Season	Team	PTS	FG%	3P%	AST	PER
2013-14	Santa Cruz Warriors	19.7	43.7	37.2	5.8	17.5
2014-15	Erie BayHawks	23.8	48.4	46.7	4.2	20.7

Curry was an All-NBDL third-teamer as a rookie in 2013-14 then a first-team selection last season when he ranked first in free-throw percentage (92.6), second in perimeter shooting (46.7) and third in scoring (23.8).

The talent has always been there, and it's become even more apparent during his wildly productive run this summer with the Pelicans. He has stuffed virtually every category on the stat sheet except for the one most often associated with his last name.

Curry has been uncharacteristically cold from three-point territory, but that might actually be a good thing. It's hard to paint him as a specialist marksman when he's excelling at everything other than shooting.

Date	MIN	PTS	FGM-A	3PM-A	REB	AST	STL
Averages	32.5	25.2	48.7%	18.5%	4.2	2.2	3.5
July 10	33	30	9-17	2-7	1	4	2
July 11	34	25	9-23	1-9	7	1	5
July 13	33	20	8-17	1-6	6	2	3
July 16	30	26	12-21	1-5	3	2	4

"He's a great shooter, got a good DNA in that area, but we wanted to see more," Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry said, per NBA.com's Shaun Powell. "And he has done more."

Curry leads all summer leaguers with 25.3 points per game. His 3.5 steals also pace all players with multiple games under their belts. The 6'2" guard has corralled more rebounds (4.3) than 6'6" swingman Justin Anderson (3.8) and hyper-athletic 6'5" floor general Emmanuel Mudiay (3.5).

Curry's NBA calling card is likely as a designated floor spacer, but his ability to impact the game in other ways—popping and dropping pull-up jumpers, making plays off the bounce, causing havoc at the defensive end—has hinted at promising answers to his biggest question marks.

"Two concerns about his game have prevented the younger Curry brother from sticking on an NBA roster: Can he create off the dribble? Can he defend?" wrote ESPN.com's Tim MacMahon. "Not coincidentally, those are the two facets of Curry's game that have most impressed Gentry in Vegas."

Curry looks as good as he ever has. While summer-league outbursts can be deceiving, this one feels worth trusting.

He isn't some unknown commodity stringing a few nice outings together. There's a track record that can attest to these skills, a resume that suggests what we're seeing isn't an anomaly. Rather, this is the result of Curry's internal growth and favorable external circumstances.

Fit and opportunity can play such a critical role in someone's success—especially for an undrafted player like Curry—and both are finally falling in the right spots.

Gentry's uptempo offense, currently being handled by assistants Darren Erman and Robert Pack, has allowed Curry to aggressively seek out shots without straying away from the system. The fluorescent green light he's been given looks awfully similar to the one Stephen had last season when Gentry engineered the Golden State Warriors offense as Steve Kerr's lead assistant.

New Orleans' roster also needed a primary scorer to emerge.

The last Pelicans draft pick who still resides in the Big Easy is Anthony Davis (the first overall selection in 2012). Since there are no in-house prospects to develop, the stage is perfectly set for someone like Curry to grab the reins.

"I have a great opportunity with the Pelicans in front of me, playing in a system that benefits my game," Curry wrote in an essay with DLeague.com's Brian Kotloff. "I've enjoyed going out here in Vegas and putting on a display of things I've gotten better at, especially in playing well defensively."

Curry is surely opening some eyes, but New Orleans has kept nonchalant about what's transpiring. That's because the Pelicans don't see their leading scorer as a surprise star.

"His stock has risen around the league with his play here in Vegas," Erman said, per Steve Carp of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We know he's good enough."

John Locher/Associated Press

Curry won't get his hopes up yet. This isn't his first time knocking on the NBA door, and he knows all too well how hard it is to get both feet inside.

The Pelicans like him, but "nothing is finalized or is for certain yet" in terms of a contract, sources told John Reid of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As Erman put it in cold but accurate business terms, "I think it's going to come down to numbers," per Carp.

The Pelicans could use another lead guard behind the oft-injured Jrue Holiday and Norris Cole (assuming he returns in restricted free agency). Jimmer Fredette, Gal Mekel and Toney Douglas (who has a non-guaranteed contract for 2015-16) all underwhelmed in that role last season. Fredette and Douglas were supposed to stretch the floor; they shot a combined 14-of-66 (21.2 percent) from three instead.

Curry is not a great playmaker, a role that his size says he probably needs to fill. Neither strong nor explosive, he carries some fairly significant defensive limitations too. But he's a professional scorer and a dead-eye shooter. That's what talent evaluators need to focus on.

"What actually hurts him is probably the thought that he is what he is," one scout told Sporting News' Sean Deveney. "... A guy who has an obvious skill like this guy, really a very good shooter, can't get a spot because everyone's talking about what he can't do."

There isn't a lot of mystery with Curry, only oversized expectations due to his bloodlines. Rather than focus on the security he could add as an instant-offense scorer, teams have locked in on what he isn't: a natural table-setter, a lockdown defender and, perhaps most punishing, his MVP sibling.

But Curry's strengths should dominate the current conversations. He's racking up points so rapidly, his critics don't have time to form their arguments against him.

Even if they do, at least they'll be talking about him as an individual and not simply a member of the Curry clan.

Fortunately, the expectations we attach to the name across the back of his jersey aren't ones he places on himself. 

"That's for other people to deal with—shadow and things of that nature," Curry said, per Reid. "I just go out and be who I am, play the way I play and control what I can control and let everything else handle itself."

He's certainly acing that test right now.

For everything we know about Seth as the brother, the son and, of course, the uncle, it's been refreshing to view him solely as the player he is. This is the best chance he's had to step outside his family's shadow, and he's masterfully seizing the opportunity.

Unless otherwise noted, statistics are courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com.