How Stephen Curry Got The Best Worst Ankles In Sports

How one unorthodox trainer helped Stephen Curry turn the injuries that cursed the start of his NBA career into his greatest blessing.

- Pablo S. Torre

STEPHEN CURRY DIDN’T KNOW IF HE’D WAKE UP OWNING A DEAD MAN’S TENDONS. 

It was April 25, 2012, and inside the Southern California Orthopedic Institute in Van Nuys, a renowned surgeon hovered over a baby-faced, decreasingly conscious Curry. In the vast majority of the ankles operated on by Dr. Richard Ferkel, who’s cut thousands of holes into hundreds of NBA players since 1983, he knew precisely what he’d find well before the anesthesia started pumping—structural damage, scar tissue, etc. But here in this fourth-floor operating room, something wasn’t adding up with his 185-pound patient. As the clock ticked and the Curry family prayed just down the hall, Steph went to sleep a mystery.

Before the drugs hit, Ferkel had explained a range of potential outcomes. Less than a year before, in Curry’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, a specialist had already sliced open that same right ankle and rebuilt two ligaments that had stretched apart like a rotting sweater. The worst-case scenario now? Total re-reconstruction, meaning that everything rebuilt in Curry’s first surgery would be reattempted. If that proved necessary, they’d use better parts—specifically, tendons from a cadaver—and the projected recovery time would be at least six months. But such an operation would also be extreme enough that no one would be sure how the new hinge would hold up on the court. One near certainty: With Curry’s rookie deal expiring in six months, on Nov. 1, 2012, his future with Golden State would be that much hazier. His agent would likely need to negotiate an extension before the undead ankle could appear in a game.