Stephen Curry celebrates after hitting his 4000th career 3-point basket in the second half as the Golden State Warriors played the Sacramento Kings on March 13, 2025 at Chase Center in San Francisco. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle)
Through the television, on March 10, 2025, one of Stephen Curry's trusted collaborators began to root for him to miss. This had been a quiet night, against the Portland Trail Blazers, until Curry ripped off a side-step three from the wing and the floodgates opened in the third quarter. Two minutes later came another, and 27 game seconds later came another, and Gotham Chopra began mentally begging for Curry to stop ticking the till. No, no, Chopra thought, watching another Curry Flurry unfold. Don't do it. The plan was simple, and yet hung by a whisper-fine thread. For the entire 2024-25 season, Chopra, a longtime sports documentarian, had been trying to circle a game date to rig up more than 20 IMAX cameras around the Chase Center for a film documenting Curry's process. They settled on the Golden State Warriors' March 13, 2025 tilt against the Sacramento Kings, and fate began to align the approaching shoot with Curry's approach of 4,000 career 3-pointers, a milestone previously incomprehensible to the mortal mind. Curry sank a twirling triple with three minutes left in the third quarter, on March 10, for 3,998. Chopra tensed. And then opportunity struck, as Curry didn't hit any of his four attempts in the fourth quarter in a win over Portland. "Which was kind of amazing," Chopra said, in an interview with the Chronicle. "Just because, it's Steph Curry. He's going to hit two 3-pointers in a game." And he did, with Chopra's cameras there for every angle March 13, as TNT announcer Kevin Harlan bellowed on the broadcast: "Truly, the portrait of an artist." A year and a half later, Chopra's ensuing film - titled "Portrait of an Artist: Stephen Curry" - has now been slated for exclusive release in IMAX theaters Oct. 9. The roughly 70-minute documentary, though, is not a simple portrait of grandeur. By Curry's standards, that March game against Sacramento was a stinker: a mere 11 points on 4-of-9 shooting. As Curry walked into Chase Center that night, Chopra, over a headset, heard the Warriors star tell a trainer that his back was giving him trouble. It made him nervous, from a narrative standpoint. Curry wound up hitting just two 3-pointers, and nothing more. It occurred to Chopra, once the camera rigs disassembled, that this particular slice of not-so-greatness he'd just captured was actually good. "I literally texted him, maybe that night or the night after, like, ‘Hey, actually, Steph, this might've been - no offense - better for us,'" Chopra said. "Because we just witnessed the greatest shooter in the history of the game struggle. "And when you talk to great artists about what it's like to create great art, none of them ever say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was super easy.' No. It's all hard. It's all hard. And it's torture, in some ways. And we kinda witnessed that." The ensuing film, produced by Chopra's Religion of Sports production company alongside IMAX and Curry's Unanimous Media, specifically shies away from re-trodding Curry's well-trodden story, as Chopra told the Chronicle. Instead, it will dissect Curry's process akin to that of an artist's, alongside interviews and commentary from such figures as actress Viola Davis, music producer Rick Rubin and director Christopher Nolan. Chopra - a longtime sports filmmaker and the son of author Deepak Chopra - began a relationship with Curry during the 2018-19 NBA season, chronicling Curry's life for a Facebook series called "Stephen vs The Game." Two summers ago, Curry approached Chopra for his advice on an ensemble documentary film featuring several characters, himself included. Chopra pitched him a different idea, with a concept Curry hadn't quite considered before: He was not just an athlete. He was an artist, at this point. "Things that you do are things that other people, other great artists do," Chopra said, describing a conversation with Curry. "And he just was like, ‘Yeah, let's do it.' He loved it. I think he intuitively picked up on it." Chopra's documentary, now, falls as the latest in a building string of side-career forays into the creative space for Curry, who is entering his 18th NBA season while working through the machinations of a potential two-year, $137.6 million contract extension with Golden State. There was 2024's "Mr. Throwback," a Peacock mockumentary series featuring Curry in a starring acting role as himself. There was "GOAT," the 2026 animated film produced by and starring Curry. On Monday, too, Curry premiered his new short film "The Baddest Speechwriter of All" at the University of San Francisco, premiering on Netflix in December. The documentary, a look at Martin Luther King Jr.'s speechwriter Clarence B. Jones, will mark Curry's directorial debut. Curry wasn't directly involved in the day-to-day creation of "Portrait of an Artist," as Chopra said. But Chopra would occasionally send him clips of conversations he'd find about the artistic process in research. And the process behind Chopra's film, at least, has directly advanced Curry's connection between his own craft and the arts. "You can hear it in his story," Chopra said, asked if he believes Curry has come to think of himself as an artist. "Like, he does understand. I don't know if he understands or … if he considers himself an artist, but he definitely, intuitively, understands the journey of the artist. And that comes through." Subscribe There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢. This article originally published at 4,000 3-pointers, 20 IMAX cameras and one question: Is Steph Curry an artist?.