Note: This article was originally published in the Toronto Star on February 26, 2015.

There wasn’t ever much “try” in the tryouts for the Queensway Christian College Saints Grade 7 and 8 boys basketball team. All you had to do was show up.

They were that desperate.

“We were the biggest rag-tag group of people ever. We were flat out terrible,” laughed Casey Field, who donned the mustard yellow Saints jersey 14 years ago when he attended the Etobicoke school with a student population of 200 max., K to 12. “We were not a basketball school.”

Then along came this skinny, baby-faced kid who was only five-foot-five, “with shoes on.” And he absolutely lit it up.

His name was Stephen Curry. Yes, that Stephen Curry — Golden State Warriors all-star, NBA MVP candidate.

“He was this tiny little guy, but when we put him on the court he was just unbelievable. He was scoring 40 points, 50 points a game, no problem,” gushed James Lackey, the history teacher who coached the Saints during their out-of-nowhere undefeated season of 2001-02. “No one even came close to us that year.”

Curry is, of course, the son of former Raptor Dell Curry — the smooth-shooting guard who played here from 1999 to 2002—who enrolled his son at Queensway before the kid went south to finish out high school in North Carolina.

Now 26, Curry is basketball’s monumental talent of the moment.

He has racked up more than 23 points and 7.9 assists per game while helping the Warriors, in town Friday to face the Raptors, to the best record in the West.

As if that wasn’t enough, he was crowned king of the long ball earlier this month when he won the three-point competition during the NBA’s all-star weekend in New York.

You can bet his old coach and teammates will be watching Friday night’s game at the Air Canada Centre.

“To know, wow, that’s the little guy we coached, and here he is on a national stage,” said Lackey, who also coached Curry’s little brother Seth, currently playing in the NBA D-League for the Erie BayHawks.

“As a teacher and a coach, that’s what you want to see.”

But back at the turn of the millennium, when Eminem was all the rage and pants were still baggy, the young Curry seemed like just another kid — except, of course, for his mind-blowing basketball skills.

“As soon as you got the ball in his hands, the things he could do with it,” Field reminisced. “It was just like an extension of him. I’ve never seen somebody more natural.”

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Video evidence still on hand at Lackey’s house provides more proof. In a game for fun with the Queensway players and Curry’s dad Dell, the star-to-be can be seen displaying some mean handles, dribbling eloquently up the court, driving with an accurate crossover, dishing out one-handed passes with confident swagger and pulling up to drain the three-ball.

“Just ridiculous plays,” Field said, describing a three-pointer Curry made as he was fading out of bounds. “Unbelievable passer, too. Behind-the-back pass across the key through two defenders and he’d put it right in your hands.”

Other teams obviously noticed the kid’s gargantuan game. Field remembers Curry, who would play shooting guard with his younger brother at the point, was triple-teamed on offence. He’d still score 40 points easy, but the hefty commitment to a single player would also open up Field for uncontested buckets. “I never had so many easy layups,” he said.

Field, who is also 26 and attending business school in Chicago, added that he can still recognize Curry’s Grade 8 style of play in the moves he pulls in the NBA: “The way he handled the ball, his go-to-moves, the way he would pull up for jumpers — it was the exact same . . . It’s incredible to watch him now.”

Looking back on that season, the big moment that sticks out for Field and Lackey is the final game of a tournament at Mentor College, a private school in Mississauga. The Saints were down by eight points with about a minute left in the championship game, an undefeated season on the line against Hillcrest Jr. Public School.

“They had multiple guys who were six-foot-plus, which in the eighth grade is pretty tall,” Field recalled. “Coach called a timeout.”

Huddled on the sidelines with his players, Lackey was exasperated. “I tell them: Guys, I think we’re going to lose. I am out of ideas. I have nothing left to give you on how to beat these guys.”

Then Curry piped up. “Give me the ball.”

“Coach goes, ‘All right,’ ” Field recalled, “‘just give him the ball.’ ”

Next thing you know, Curry hits a three, gets a steal, hits another three, Field hits a three, Curry hits another three. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lackey said. “We ended up winning the game. It was a 13-point swing-around and it was entirely because of him.”

After reading a story like that, you might be imagine the preteen ball protégé’s ego swelling. You’d be wrong. Lackey described him as “quiet and soft-spoken,” the kind of player who’d command respect even when playing exhibition games with the high school guys.

Looking back, that’s the big takeaway for Field. Though he didn’t play beyond Grade 12, he has these great memories from the year he shared the court with future NBA all-star.

“People talk about the basketball side a lot, but what for me stood out was that he was just a really down-to-earth, humble guy. He did not have any big head about it, even though he was clearly the best player in Ontario at the time,” said Field.

“He was then, and I’m sure still is, an excellent guy.”