LeBron James and Steph Curry have a lot in common.
Both are MVPs, leading All-Star vote-getters, NBA Finals participants, and pose greater all-encompassing threats to defenses than perhaps any other players in basketball. These guys are already well on their way to the Hall-of-Fame, and one of their legends will grow even larger once their first ever postseason meeting is completed.
But the connection between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors superstars was established long before both emerged as basketball royalty. James and Curry, amazingly, were born at the same hospital: Akron General Medical Center in Northeast Ohio.
Fun Fact: @StephenCurry30 & LeBron James were born in the same hospital in Akron, Ohio. #NBAFinalshttps://t.co/nbgNVoWq0s
— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) May 30, 2015
The humble Akron beginnings of James are well-known. Not only has he long called his native city home during the offseason, but the 30-year-old’s affinity for the area served as the driving force behind his decision to return to the Cavaliers last summer.
Curry’s ties to Akron, meanwhile, are much more fleeting. The 27-year-old spent his formative years in Charlotte where his father, Dell, played for the Hornets, and still considers North Carolina home – enough that some fear he may eventually spurn Golden State for Charlotte in free agency.
The Curry family spent less than a year in Akron after Dell was snatched by the Hornets in the 1988 expansion draft following one season with the Cavaliers. It just so happens that he and his wife, Sonya, welcomed their first child during that brief stop in the early stages of their marriage.
As Dell told NBA.com’s Shaun Powell in a must-read story on this awesome coincidence, that basketball’s biggest stars hail from the same hospital is close to unbelievable.
“When you think about two players from the same place,” said Dell Curry, Steph’s father, “it’s one of those strange things in life that you couldn’t even imagine.”
38 months and 14 days is all that separated the births of James and Curry at Akron General. And nearly three decades later, the pair is divided by something bigger – the quest for this year’s Larry O’Brien Trophy.
