Just another date on a calendar.

But for the Warriors, June 25 was the day 10 years ago that changed the franchise forever. The day the organization set the pieces in motion for future dominance. The day they would establish the culture and tone of their franchise. The date of their birth announcement.

The day the Warriors drafted Stephen Curry.

On the evening of June 25, 2009, the world was still processing the death of Michael Jackson while the NBA gathered at Madison Square Garden for the league’s annual draft.

2009 NBA draft: How the picks surrounding Stephen Curry fared

A grinning Blake Griffin, a barely bearded James Harden and a mop-topped Ricky Rubio were there in New York. So was a baby-faced guard named Stephen Curry, from little-known Davidson College, who had morphed from an intriguing but undersized sharpshooter into a lottery pick.

“I just remember mostly being nervous,” Curry said. “’Cause that’s your life. You don’t know where you’re going to spend your next — hopefully — four years-plus. I was definitely nervous.”

His path had been far less obvious than for some young prospects. Out of little Charlotte Christian, he was offered just three Division I scholarships, none from a major school. Despite his pedigree as the son of longtime NBA guard Dell Curry, there were questions — about size, durability, position.

So many questions that at the Wooden Classic in December 2007, his mother, Sonya, decided to ask some of her own. Davidson was playing UCLA in Anaheim, a matchup that foreshadowed epic NBA battles between Russell Westbrook and Curry. But nobody could have known that at the time.

In the concourse, Dell and Sonya Curry ran into Steve Kerr. The two men used to guard each other in the NBA. Kerr, then the general manager of the Phoenix Suns, was scouting the tournament. Dell introduced Kerr to his wife.

“Just out of the blue, I said, ‘Excuse me? Do you think Steph can really play?’” Sonya Curry said. “I’m one that’s very direct. … A lot of people, especially in front of Dell, don’t want to say, ‘Your son can’t play in the NBA.’ I got the feeling about Steve Kerr that I could trust his answer.

“And he said, ‘Sure I do.’ And I was like, ‘Holy crap, he said my son could play.’ And that was kind of the beginning of when I realized the NBA was really looking at him.”

A few months later, Curry captured the March headlines when he led Davidson to the Elite Eight. By his junior year, more and more scouts were filling the stands, including Warriors assistant general manager Larry Riley. Riley remembers seeing Curry play against Purdue.

“Purdue had the philosophy that it was like a football game: We’re going to foul you a whole bunch and the referees can’t call them all,” Riley said. “We’re going to beat you up. … Curry didn’t have an outstanding game, but he proved to me that he was certainly tough enough. After that I threw all of the other commentary out the window.”

Davidson crashed to earth that year, not making the NCAA postseason. But the school did make the National Invitation Tournament and traveled to play St. Mary’s and Patty Mills, another point guard expected to declare for the NBA draft. It was Curry’s first trip to the Bay Area and he stayed at the Walnut Creek Marriott, a stone’s throw from where he would eventually raise his family. The St. Mary’s stands were filled with NBA types, including Warriors coach Don Nelson.

“I fell in love with him against St. Mary’s,” Nelson said. “He just had an outstanding game. They got beat, but — boy — I saw a superstar that night.”

With the season over, Curry, against his mother’s wishes, opted to skip his senior season and declared for the draft. The lottery was held in May and the Warriors wound up with the seventh pick. No one was particularly excited: The Warriors had a history of squandering high picks.

The franchise’s reputation as a perennial loser, rife with dysfunction, had made its way to the Curry camp. Advised by his father and his agent, Jeff Austin, Curry declined to work out for Golden State.

“Normally when you have a top draft pick, you send him to the teams that you wouldn’t mind drafting him,” Dell Curry said. “But if you don’t send him to a team to work out, you assume the message is that we would rather not have him there.

“It was one of our concerns, absolutely, that he could get lost in the circumstances surrounding the team.”

“Um, what’s the word? Turmoil?” Stephen Curry said. “Or a lack of identity in terms of where they were going. I’m sure that played a part in it.”

Curry also declined to work out for Minnesota, the team with the fifth — and, via trade, eventually the sixth — picks. He worked out for Charlotte (No. 12 pick), Sacramento (No. 4), Washington (which traded its pick to Minnesota) and New York (No. 8). There was no doubt that the Knicks were everyone’s first choice.

“The big city lights, the market, the draw or how that would make a difference in terms of my career prospects — at the time I didn’t really put that into perspective,” Stephen Curry said. “I was just thinking they play up-tempo style and (Mike) D’Antoni was the coach and that fit how I played.”

D’Antoni had come to the Knicks from Phoenix, where he had coached Steve Nash to back-to-back MVP seasons. Nash was the closest NBA match anyone could find for Curry’s talents.

Curry and his team weren’t the only ones who recognized that. In his general manager office back in Phoenix, Kerr was enthusiastic about the kid he had seen at the Wooden Classic.

“Right away Q (current Warriors assistant coach Bruce Fraser, then a Suns scout) and I could see the similarities between Nash and Steph,” Kerr said. “You could see the potential in the modern game. The skill was mesmerizing.”

Kerr worked out the details of a trade: the Suns would send All-Star Amar’e Stoudemire to the Warriors in exchange for Curry, after the Warriors had used the No. 7 pick to draft him.

“I’m picturing all these Steph jerseys all over the city of Phoenix,” Kerr said.

Dell Curry had a friend on Minnesota’s staff whom he called and told in no uncertain terms that Stephen did not want to play there. He thought the same message had been received by the Warriors.

But the day of the draft, Nelson called.

“I told him we’d rather not have him there, that the team was not very good, the locker room wasn’t the best and we thought that with Steph being an East Coast guy, we want him on the East Coast,” Dell Curry said. “And Nelson said, ‘Well, if he’s there we’re going to take him.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s your choice.’”

Austin, Curry’s agent, called New York and relayed Nelson’s message, saying, “Hey, if you really want him that bad, you better do something.”

“But New York didn’t make a move,” Dell Curry said.

The big day happened to be Dell’s 45th birthday. It was notable in other ways. As the family boarded a bus to Madison Square Garden they saw a billboard flashing the news that Jackson, the King of Pop, had been rushed to the hospital. Upon arrival at the draft event, everyone learned that Jackson had died. Actress Farrah Fawcett also died that day.

The auditorium was filled with Knicks fans. They were feeling confident, as was Curry’s mother.

“Of course, New York was our first go-to and desire,” Sonya Curry said. “I had no clue where Golden State was. So I didn’t even think about it.”

Curry wore a mocha-colored pinstriped suit with a pink tie. As expected, Griffin went first to the Clippers. UConn center Hasheem Thabeet went second to Memphis. James Harden and Tyreke Evans went third and fourth.

Then, in one of the most baffling draft sequences in recent memory, the Timberwolves took Ricky Rubio at No. 5 and Jonny Flynn at No. 6. Two point guards. Neither one named Stephen Curry.

“Obviously the competitor in me felt like they made the wrong decisions,” Curry said. “But I was still in the room and I knew New York was still at eight.”

Riley had received early word that Minnesota wouldn’t pick Curry. But he knew there are no sure things in draft rumors.

“We were scared to death,” Riley said. “I didn’t relax, because it was too good to be true. Oh, golly, I don’t know about the rest of the room, but I know what was going on inside me. I just couldn’t believe it. When things are too good to be true, often they are. But this one wasn’t.”

Now it was Golden State’s turn. Commissioner David Stern stepped to the microphone and made the announcement.

“With the seventh pick in the 2009 NBA draft, the Golden State Warriors select ... Stephen Curry from Davidson College.”

“That was a tremendously easy pick,” Riley said. “And it was a tremendous relief.”

The room erupted in boos, from disheartened New York Knicks fans who expected Curry to become a Knick. It was so loud that it prompted ESPN’s Stuart Scott to crack, “I didn’t realize that there were so many fans here who disliked the Golden State Warriors so much.”

Over at the Curry table, Stephen dropped his head for a moment. Sonya, just getting over her competitive annoyance that two point guards had been selected ahead of him, put her hand over her heart and smiled before hugging her son. Inside, she wasn’t so calm.

“When Golden State slipped in, I was stomach punched,” she said. “I thought, ‘What in the world just happened?’ The camera is on us, you need to cheer, and it’s such a blessing that your child is getting drafted. But, holy crap. Who is Golden State? It was always this underlying thing.”

Curry shared his mother’s thought.

“Well, I was a little shocked, to be sure,” he said. “When I heard my name, my first thought was, ‘Wait, that’s not the Knicks.’ And my second thought was, ‘Oh, my God, I’m in the NBA.’ And my third was, ‘This is unbelievable.’ That was all in a split second, those different reactions happening. … It’s kind of overwhelming. You don’t really know how you’re going to react.”

Back in Oakland, the Warriors were thrilled. In another draft room, a different team was also over the moon.

“Our room erupted,” Kerr said. “We thought, ‘Oh, my God, we’re getting Steve Nash’s replacement.’ I went to bed thinking Steph was going to be a Phoenix Sun.

“I’m glad he wasn’t.”

The family was whisked away. They stayed up all night and caught the first plane to California. They stayed in San Francisco, where, as Sonya recalls, it was cold and windy: “It’s California. It’s supposed to be warm. I was really confused.”

The family toured Oakland and went to dinner with Nelson and Riley. The team leaders were never concerned that their pick’s lack of desire to be a Warrior was going to be a factor.

“I had always seen Dell Curry as a player who was a standup guy and a professional,” Riley said. “We did take a risk with that. But we knew he was from a great family and has a good background.”

No demanding a trade or threatening a holdout. As Steph said, “No Eli Manning.”

Sonya Curry was still worried. She knew her son had innate leadership skills. But she also knew a lot about the NBA.

“Those guys making that amount of money, they think they’re grown, but their maturation level doesn’t match the income,” she said. “The biggest thing was he was that far away without family support. … Knowing that whole arena from Dell playing, it’s just cutthroat. I thought, Father, give him the strength to use the adversity to make himself better versus the adversity hardening him or changing him, making him think he needs to think the way they think or act the way they act and doubt how he has been raised.”

Privately, Curry found himself a little thrilled with being on the West Coast for the first time. He had begun dating a young actress from Charlotte who had relocated to Los Angeles. Her name was Ayesha Alexander.

“I was just happy to have an apartment on my own, to be away from the family for the first time,” he said. “I was growing up. All that stuff was exciting. And Ayesha was living in L.A., so for me that was the biggest positive. My personal life had a shot to work out.”

But all the negatives and reasoning behind not wanting to be a Warrior came roaring back on the first official day of the 2009-10 season. The team held media day on the first day of training camp. Traditionally, every team paints itself as a contender, speaking in glowing terms. Curry, looking about 12 years old, met with reporters and sounded excited to be there and to pair with shooting guard Monta Ellis.

At another table, Stephen Jackson, the team captain who had just signed an extension, was demanding a trade. And shortly after Curry’s session ended, Ellis arrived. The guard, who had been part of the “We Believe” Warriors, had a contentious relationship with the organization following his suspension the previous season after a scooter accident. But Ellis believed that, after Baron Davis left for the Clippers, he had been promised the starting point guard role. Ellis thought that the team would be put in his hands. The drafting of Curry changed those expectations.

When Ellis met the media, he immediately announced that the backcourt pairing “just can’t” work out.

“Can’t. We just can’t. Not going to win that way. Can’t do it.”

Later, the team’s media relations director Raymond Ridder grabbed Curry in the hallway as he was leaving and said, “You might hear something about what Monta said.”

“It was weird,” Curry said. “Thankfully I had people in my ear talking about all he had been through. But it was a rude awakening, to be sure.”

Back in Charlotte, Sonya was distraught.

“I heard what Monta said and I was like, ‘See, Dell?’ I wanted him to finish one more year of college, one more year for Mom from a maturity standpoint to take into the NBA,” she said.

Dell thought, “OK, here we go. This is one of the reasons why we had concerns about him coming here.”

But that first challenge was an early glimpse of who Curry is, the leader he would become. He didn’t let that unpleasant first day of work shake his faith.

“I was kind of naïve, but I thought everything would work itself out,” he said. “It was going to be a long process.”

One of his new teammates, Kelenna Azubuike, recognized that.

“It was all Steph, really,” Azubuike said. “His ability to be above the drama and not let things affect him. He’s just got this innate joy. … He makes everybody else feel better about the situation by his disposition and attitude. That’s just the way he is.

“He didn’t let it discourage him. He just went about the business of proving to everyone — to Monta, to the team — that he is an NBA player and a monster superstar.”

NBA draft prospect Stephen Curry, from Davidson, speaks to reporters in New York, Wednesday, June 24, 2009. The NBA basketball draft will be held Thursday June 25, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) NBA draft prospect Stephen Curry, from Davidson, speaks to reporters in New York, Wednesday, June 24, 2009. The NBA basketball draft will be held Thursday June 25, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Photo: Seth Wenig / AP Photo: Seth Wenig / AP Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Drafting Stephen Curry: How the Warriors changed forever 10 years ago 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Riley and Nelson have moved on. Kerr never got his phone calls returned after draft day; what he thought was a handshake deal was viewed by the Warriors as a trade only if Curry was not still available. After another year, Kerr left the Suns and in 2014 turned down a job to coach the floundering Knicks, instead accepting a job with the Warriors. He finally got his chance to work with Curry, which has gone pretty well.

Jackson was traded nine games into the 2009-10 season. Ellis was right, it would never work out: he was traded for Andrew Bogut in March 2012.

Curry would navigate the rough patches, the ankle injuries and turmoil and would last a bit more than the four-plus years he originally hoped; 10 years and counting. He has achieved things that no one sitting in Madison Square Garden a decade ago could imagine: three NBA championships, five straight trips to the NBA Finals, two league MVPs, one by unanimous vote.

The Knicks are still trying to figure it out.

“Be careful of what you ask for,” Curry said. “That’s the lesson of this entire story.”

Chronicle staff writer Rusty Simmons contributed to this report.

Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion