{"id":119401,"date":"2025-01-22T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=119401"},"modified":"2025-01-22T00:44:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T05:44:04","slug":"eric-paschall-stephen-curry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/22\/eric-paschall-stephen-curry\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Warrior Reveals Struggles of Playing with Stephen Curry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharing the court with four-time NBA champion and two-time MVP Stephen Curry<\/a> has required plenty of selflessness and an overall focus on winning, which can be especially difficult for a young player. After entering the league, the prerogative of most prospects is to make a name for themselves and contribute to their team statistically.<\/p>\n

However, the recipe to success for Curry and Golden State has not usually relied on world-beating, youthful players handling the ball and shooting at will, aside from some recent names like Jordan Poole<\/a> and Jonathan Kuminga<\/a>. This was the situation that Golden State’s former All-Rookie selection Eric Paschall<\/a> fell into as the Warriors’ No. 41 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, and his adjustment process was admittedly painful at first.<\/p>\n

Ex-Warrior\u00a0Eric Paschall\u00a0Details Struggles of Playing Alongside Stephen Curry<\/h2>\n

Eric Paschall Recently Spoke on Playing Within Curry’s System as a Rookie<\/h3>\n

As a 6-foot-6 power forward, Paschall entered the Warriors organization as a second-round draft choice with legitimate promise due to his role in winning a collegiate National Championship as a member of the Villanova Wildcats in 2018. With his size and frame, the agile and offensively gifted Paschall quickly received the moniker of, ‘Mini-Draymond Green<\/a>,’ though he looked to be the exact opposite once he stepped on the court. As a recent guest on the Entirely NBA<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>podcast on Sunday, Paschall dove into his mindset regarding his drive to score instead of passing up open shots to facilitate for his fellow Warriors, including Curry.<\/p>\n

“Y’all can look at me as ‘Mini-Draymond.’ I like to score, and my mentally at that point, I couldn’t do it…When I say I couldn’t do it, I was not wired to set a screen, pass up an open shot, if I’m open I’m shooting it.”<\/p>\n

As a rookie who ended up averaging 14.0 points on the way to earning All-Rookie First Team honors, Paschall remained focused on his individual efforts, even if it meant not helping to set up the NBA’s greatest three-point shooter for an open look.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t play with Steph early in the season, because I’m still thinking, ‘I’m going to do me, y’all saw what I did last year.’ That’s what I’m thinking, but I can’t do that because I’m on the floor with Steph all the time. That year, I ended up asking to come off the bench because I’m not good at doing this with Steph.”<\/p>\n

Paschall’s Realization<\/h3>\n

In the nearly five years that have passed since Paschall’s issues with setting up Curry and others, the 28-year-old now openly reminisces on how he learned the lesson that the NBA is a business and looks back fondly on the memories he made as a part of the Warriors organization.<\/p>\n

“It gave me a false reality of how the NBA works. I’m thinking, ‘My rookie year, I’m averaging 14 (points). You already know what’s about to happen, next year I’m averaging 17.’ That’s how I’m thinking.”<\/p>\n

“Being in that system, being in that environment was great in terms of just learning. Learning every single day (about) how to work, what to expect, what to look at. A few times, I’d just sit there and watch Steph work out…But that rookie year was good for me just to learn or gain my confidence, but it kind of f-ed me up as well.”<\/p>\n

Despite a short-lived three-year NBA career, Paschall’s humility and ability to talk about his previous misteps as a 23-year-old rookie show that he’s taken massive strides since his days as a Warrior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharing the court with four-time NBA champion and two-time MVP Stephen Curry has required plenty of selflessness and an overall focus on winning, which can be especially difficult for a young player. After entering the league, the prerogative of most prospects is to make a name for themselves and contribute to their team statistically. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4953,"featured_media":119445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,25,62],"tags":[409,48],"class_list":["post-119401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-warriors","category-nba","tag-draymond-green","tag-stephen-curry"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4953"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119446,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401\/revisions\/119446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}