Steph Curry strengthened his ties to his alma mater Monday, helping to create an eight-figure fund to support the Davidson basketball teams and also taking on a role as an assistant general manager for the college.
Curry will continue his career in the NBA, where he is a towering figure — a two-time Most Valuable Player and four-time NBA champion. But he also will be available in a volunteer advisory capacity to Davidson’s men’s and women’s basketball programs.
“The Davidson experience is top notch,” Curry said in a statement provided by the school. “My journey from when I got to Davidson in 2006 to now demonstrated that I had the opportunity to play basketball at the highest level, got a great education, an amazing network through the Davidson alumni and continue to wave the Davidson flag. I want very talented, high-character student athletes to have that same experience.”
Curry, who played three years for Davidson from 2006-2009, is thought to be the first active player on a major American professional sports team to also take on an administrative job with an NCAA team.
The eight-figure fund was created by Curry, his wife Ayesha and longtime Davidson College supporters Don, Matt and Erica Berman. It will be called the Curry-Berman fund.
Matt Berman, who played soccer at Davidson for three years and roomed for a year with current Davidson head men’s basketball coach Matt McKillop, will also become an assistant GM for the basketball teams. Matt Berman and Matt McKillop have been close friends since they were 11 years old, while Don Berman and former Davidson coach Bob McKillop are also contemporaries and have been friends for decades.
“Davidson really got a win today,” Matt McKillop said in a phone interview Monday.
Davidson has also promoted Austin Buntz to become the general manager for the basketball teams. Buntz, a former member of the global basketball sports marketing team at Under Armour, and has been on the athletic fundraising team at Davidson since 2021.
Said Curry, who turns 37 years old later this week: “The goal for this is to invest in the next student athlete that’s coming into Davidson today. They don’t have to take cuts on what the market says they deserve to be part of the brand of what it means to be a Davidson scholar-athlete with integrity in your academic experience. The commitment to a four-year graduation process provides countless opportunities professionally in sports or as a game changer in life. And that leads into my role as an assistant GM with Matt Berman — our ability to be a resource and a sounding board for the program, but also support each student athlete, to develop personal relationships with each of them to help guide them every step of the way through their Davidson experience.”
“This is going to make an incredible difference to our program,” Matt McKillop said, “and we are just so grateful to the Curry and Berman families.”
The Davidson men’s basketball team is 16-15 this season and finished 6-12 in the Atlantic 10 conference. As the league’s No. 12 seed, Davidson begins conference tournament play in Washington, D.C, on Wednesday against 13th-seeded Richmond and would have to win five games in five days to make the NCAA tournament.
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 10:40 AM.
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Columnist Scott Fowler has written for The Charlotte Observer since 1994. He has earned 22 national APSE sportswriting awards and hosted The Observer’s podcast “Carruth,” which Sports Illustrated once named “Podcast of the Year.” Fowler hosts the online series and podcast “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” which features 1-on-1 interviews with NC and SC sports icons. He also writes occasionally about non-sports subjects, such as the 5-part series “9/11/74,” which chronicled the plane crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 in Charlotte in 1974.