Fort Defiance, Virginia Tech hoops great Dell Curry made his NBA debut 40 years ago this month

On Oct. 31, 1986, Fort Defiance High School graduate Dell Curry made his NBA debut with the Utah Jazz. It certainly wasn’t something to write home about as the Jazz lost by 26 points to the host Dallas Mavericks.

Curry, who was born in Harrisonburg and grew up in Grottoes, came off the bench and played for 11 minutes and made three of five shots from the field. He missed his only shot from three-point range – but he would end his NBA career by connecting on 1,245 shots from downtown.

Curry’s NBA debut came a few months after he was drafted in the first round as the 15th overall pick out of Virginia Tech.

“A lot of people told me that when I came out of high school, I wouldn’t get the publicity here,” Curry told The Washington Post a few weeks before he was drafted about hoops in Blacksburg. “But I wasn’t worried about that.”

Curry picked the Hokies over Maryland and West Virginia, among others. While in high school, then-Maryland head coach Lefty Driesell was in Harrisonburg to see Fort play at Eastern Mennonite High School. Also at that game was Terry Holland, then the University of Virginia head coach.

NBA scouting guru Marty Blake told The Post that Curry might be the first guard drafted. That wasn’t the case, as Duke’s Johnny Dawkins went 10th overall to the San Antonio Spurs.

Mark Price, a guard out of Georgia Tech, went 25th overall in the first round to Dallas.

The draft, however, is known as the one in which Len Bias of Maryland was picked second overall by the Boston Celtics – but the forward died of a drug overdose a few days later.

The starting lineup for Utah in Curry’s first game was Mark Eaton, Thurl Bailey (North Carolina State), Bob Hansen and future Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone.

Stockton missed all six shots from the field, while Bailey, who grew up in the Maryland suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., was 2-of-13.

Other reserves for the Jazz were Marc Iavaroni, drafted out of Virginia by the New York Knicks in the third round in 1978.

The Dallas starters were James Donaldson, Mark Aquirre, Derek Harper, Rolando Blackman and former North Carolina star Sam Perkins.

Reserves for the Mavs included guard Brad Davis, a star at the University of Maryland – then in the ACC.

Curry missed his first three shots from three-point range in his NBA career, and it wasn’t until his 32nd game in the league, on Feb. 1, 1987, that he made two such baskets in one game.

He shot just 28 percent from long range in his rookie year – but he ended his career with a percentage of 40 percent from downtown, averaging 11.7 points per contest while scoring 12,670 points.

Curry, who spent most of his career with Charlotte, led the NBA in three-point shooting percentage in 1998-1999 in his only season with the Milwaukee Bucks. He averaged a career-high 16.3 points per game in 1993-1994 with Charlotte and was a top sixth man for several seasons.

All of this before he became more famous as the father of NBA MVP Steph Curry.

Perhaps the second-best player to come out of Grottoes is Justin Kier, the former Spotswood High star who played in college for several teams, including George Mason.

Kier is now playing in the top pro league in Germany with Ludwigsburg and averaged nearly 17 points per contest in a recent five-game stretch.

The year 1986, in addition to the debut of Curry, was a very good one for Augusta County athletics: