Everything else, though? It was new territory for the quartet sitting together: Dell; Sonya; Stephen’s wife, Ayesha Curry; and the boys’ sister, Sydel Curry-Lee, 24, who is married to Golden State guard Damion Lee. (Callie Rivers, Seth’s fiancée and the daughter of Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers, was seated in a different location but is expected to sit with Dell and Sonya when the series shifts to Portland for Game 3.)

“I normally don’t get nervous at all,” Dell said on the half-hour drive to the arena. “Playing 16 years in the league, I thought all my nerves were gone. But this has changed that. I’m nervous.”

The Game Before the Game

Hours before tipoff, as the uneasiness was starting to set in, 54-year-old Dell was introduced to a new game. Sonya decided that a lunchtime round of rock-paper-scissors at Curry-Lee’s house in nearby Hayward, rather than a simple coin toss, was the fairest means to decide which hybrid jersey each parent would wear, since they both had two.

Only one problem. “That was the first time I ever played rock-paper-scissors,” Dell said.

After a false start or two, Sonya went rock. Dell opted for scissors. Curry-Lee then flipped a coin she prepared by taping a W on one side for Warriors and a P on the other side for Portland. When the coin landed on P, Sonya “won” the right to wear the jersey featuring the Blazers on the front.

[Read: The Warriors have the Splash Brothers. The Bucks have Splash Mountain.]

Yet it wasn’t until the second half of the actual game that the mood in the Currys’ row began to noticeably lighten. The family members spent the first half working through all sorts of emotions and imagined restrictions, especially once Seth checked in for the final 2 minutes 55 seconds of the first quarter and frequently guarded his brother.

Dell noted that it was the first time in their sons’ basketball lives that he and Sonya could not go “all-in for both kids,” who never played in a competitive game against each other until both were in the N.B.A. Sonya wondered aloud how strained the postgame conversations might be when “you can’t critique the other team because then you’re critiquing one of your sons.” Curry-Lee described the dynamic as “the whole world is watching and critiquing about who we’re favoring.”