NBA Finals give Stephen Curry chance to reach celeb status

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry #30 signs autographs after practice before Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets, Monday, May 25, 2015, at Toyota Center in Houston, TX. Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry #30 signs autographs after practice before Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets, Monday, May 25, 2015, at Toyota Center in Houston, TX. Photo: Eric Christian Smith, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Eric Christian Smith, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 39 Caption Close NBA Finals give Stephen Curry chance to reach celeb status 1 / 39 Back to Gallery

Stephen Curry is so hot off the court these days that he was recently offered a starring role in a basketball movie. The offer, which his agent turned down, shows how the point guard’s image is transcending the sports world even before his Golden State Warriors vie for the NBA championship beginning Thursday in Oakland.

If Curry and the Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James — the international face of the NBA — in a matchup that ESPN has hyped as “David versus Goliath,” Curry won’t just have his first championship. He will also have an opportunity to become an A-list celebrity.

As Curry has risen from undersized point guard to this season’s Most Valuable Player, he also has grown into a marketable commodity within the league.

Not only has Curry’s No. 30 been the NBA’s top-selling jersey since the playoffs started — in 46 states, no less, according to Fanatics.com — one national survey that ranks celebrities puts Curry’s “influence” on the non-NBA world in the same league as that of George Clooney, Kelly Clarkson and Matthew McConaughey.

Last month, sports apparel company Under Armour applied to trademark six phrases it associates with Curry — like “Charged by Belief” — hoping to codify the value of its most valuable basketball ambassador. If the company has its way, you might have to consult a patent attorney before uttering the phrase “The League’s Most Unguardable Player.”

The baby-faced assassin (Under Armour requested a trademark on that moniker, too) became such a breakout star this season that his marketability, at least to sports fans, won’t even take a hit if the Warriors lose the championship.

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“He’s passed the stage where he has to win to be big,” said Jeff Goodby, the nationally respected San Francisco ad maker — and unabashed Warriors and Curry fan — who created the “Got Milk?” campaign and the NBA’s “I love this game” riff.

But Goodby said there might be a ceiling to Curry’s “well-scrubbed family man,” “guy you want your daughter to marry” likeability.

“Having that likeability,” Goodby said, “doesn’t necessarily make you a commercial commodity.”

Curry’s shoe endorsement deal is minute compared with the one enriching James, the Cleveland forward dubbed “King James,” who got a contract with Nike fresh out of high school. James’ jersey is still the league’s top seller over the past season, according to Fanatics. He earns a reported $20 million a year from his endorsement deal with Nike, which controls 95 percent of the sneaker market.

James sold $340 million worth of shoes for Nike in 2014, according to SportsScanInfo, and earns an estimated $44 million annually off the court, according to Forbes. A distant second is Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant, who makes $35 million away from the hardwood, boosted by the 10-year deal he signed with Nike last year that could be worth up to $300 million with royalties.

Curry’s multiyear endorsement deal with the much smaller Under Armour — signed in 2013 — is for a reported $5.5 million.

Going for laughs

For Curry to take the next step into off-the-court superstardom, Goodby suggested he should spoof his nice-guy image, much as Denver Broncos quarterback and fellow nice guy Peyton Manning has done on appearances on “Saturday Night Live” and ads on ESPN.

“We like funny people,” Goodby said. “Steph will have to prove that he has a sense of humor. Michael Jordan could make fun of himself. (Retired NBA stars) Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) and Charles (Barkley) could make fun of themselves. It makes you more approachable.

“Soon, he’s going to have an opportunity to do some things that show he’s a little bit edgier than we think he is,” Goodby said.

But David Carter, executive director of the USC Marshall Sports Business Institute, thinks that Curry shouldn’t mess with his everyman authenticity. At 6-foot-3, 190 pounds, he’s closer to the size of his fans than he is to the 6-foot-8, 250-pound James.

Unlike many NBA stars, Curry didn’t play college ball at a program known for producing pro stars. He played at Davidson College, which hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since he left and won only five before he got there. In 2009, he was drafted by the Warriors, long the Siberia of the NBA, a dysfunctionally run asylum where then-star of the team Monta Ellis welcomed the rookie by saying that they were too small to play together. Two-and-a-half years later, Ellis was traded and Curry began to flourish.

Slowly, he built his reputation as a masterful shooter and ballhandler and led the Warriors to the playoffs the next season. In February, Curry was the top vote-getter in the NBA All-Star Game, and on Thursday he will begin the quest to win his first championship.

“Shoe and apparel sales only tell part of the story,” Carter said. “Those who think he has to do more to take the next step might not understand the role of authenticity when it comes to marketability.”

Authenticity pays off

That authenticity is resonating, according to Repucom, a sports and entertainment analytics firm that uses online polling to regularly rank 3,700 celebrities on categories including awareness, appeal, aspiration, breakthrough potential, endorsements, influence, trend-setting and trust.

According to the latest ranking, Curry is near the top among NBA players in nearly every category except awareness, where James is known by 90 percent of the general public — roughly three times as high as Curry. Perhaps more interestingly, Curry ranks in the top 3 percent of all celebs in the “influence” category — which measures how someone “is an influence in today’s world” — alongside Clooney, Clarkson and McConaughey.

He also ranks high in terms of “aspiration,” which charts whether a celeb “has a life to which (others) would aspire to,” according to the company. Here, Curry compares to 85-year-old golfing icon Arnold Palmer.

“That’s not the kind of thing you see in guys like this who are just getting started,” said Peter Latz, executive vice president of Repucom.

After the Finals end, Curry will take a few weeks off, and then his agent, Jeff Austin, will present him with a package of options for how to add to an endorsement portfolio that already includes Degree deodorant, Muscle Milk, State Farm insurance and Express clothing. Curry insists that he must actually use and like a product before he will endorse it, Austin says. Last month, Muscle Milk donated $10,000 to Nothing But Nets, a U.N. Foundation campaign Curry has worked with since he was in college that fights malaria in Africa. Two summers ago, he traveled to Tanzania to deliver nets and visit a refugee camp.

Overseas appeal

Later in the summer, Curry will travel to China to try to tap into a basketball-crazy country where Austin is hearing that No. 30 jerseys are starting to pop up.

“But first, he’s got a really important project to take care of,” Austin said. “He and his wife are expecting their second child in July.”

Analysts predict that Curry will continue to be methodical about where to direct his off-the-court energy and his marketability will grow, albeit perhaps at a slower pace than others. “He’s not a fad, someone who will scoop up a ton of endorsements right away,” Carter said. “He’s different.

“In an era of where you pick up the newspaper and every day there’s a story of an athlete who has done something to discredit himself,” Carter said, “there might be room in this world for a nice guy who finishes first.”