Stephen Curry had great reason for wearing shooting sleeve he took off

Stephen Curry entered Game 1 of the NBA Finals sporting a new look he recently debuted, but he quickly ditched it when things weren’t working out. So much for trying to look like Allen Iverson.

At the start of the night, Curry was wearing a long compression sleeve on his right arm. He ended up taking it off early on and finished with 28 points in the Warriors’ blowout win over the Cavs. When asked after the game about the adjustment, Curry had a classic response.

Steph said he low key always wanted to be like @alleniverson pic.twitter.com/PovShfPGzZ

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) June 2, 2017

We think he was joking, but we’ll get to that in a second. When you look at the numbers Curry and Golden State put up pre- and post-sleeve, it’s probably safe to assume he won’t wear it for Game 2.

Curry with arm sleeve: 0-2 FG
Curry without arm sleeve: 11-20 FG, 6-9 3PT

The Warriors outscored the Cavs by 22 after Steph took it off

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) June 2, 2017

Was Curry really wearing the sleeve to look like Allen Iverson? Probably not. He has worn it on a couple of other occasions during the postseason, including Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals after falling on his elbow the previous game.

“It’s just a little bit of swelling, but has nothing to do with my performance,” Curry said at the time. “It doesn’t hurt or anything like that. So I don’t really think about it much. It’s just trying to control that. So we’ll see. It worked pretty well in Game 4 of last series.”

As long as Curry sticks to impersonating Iverson on the court and avoids some of the other stuff Iverson liked to do, the Warriors shouldn’t have a problem.