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Players throughout the years have often said how different it is playing in the G League compared to being in the NBA. Of course, the salaries are significantly different and the travel accommodations are far superior in the NBA.
Teams often travel by bus from city to city and on those road trips where it is necessary to fly, players are taking commercial flights in standard seating versus being on private charter flights in the NBA. The hotel arrangements are also not quite five-star, either.
On a recent episode of the J.J Redick Podcast, Dallas Mavericks guard Seth Curry shared some of the details of playing in the G League when he was with the Santa Cruz Warriors and Erie BayHawks for the first two years of his career.
It was rough when I was there. I feel like they crafted it, in a sense, to where they don’t want you to get comfortable, it’s not like you’re there for an extended period of time. You go there and the travel is nuts. You’re getting on 5 a.m. flights playing some back-to-backs, commercial flights, bussing 6-7 hours at times. Playing in front of 100 fans or 1,000 fans maybe.
You just got to really love the game when you’re at that level. For me, I was having fun because I was playing 40 minutes a night, I had the ball in my hands the whole time. I was just figuring it out. Obviously, I wanted to get that shot at the NBA level.
Curry went undrafted out of Duke in 2013 and played the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons in the G League before receiving an opportunity to play with the Sacramento Kings the following year. In 81 games played between his two seasons in the G League, Curry averaged 21.9 points, 4.9 assists and 3.5 rebounds while he shot 42.5% from 3-point range.
Curry mentioned in the podcast that he knew once he received an opportunity to play with the Kings, he had to take advantage of it. He has since become a key contributor with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Mavericks this season, where is averaging 12.6 points per game.
Curry has the second-best 3-point percentage (.4432) in NBA history.
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