© Tom Szczerbowski | 2018 Nov 29
After staying relatively silent on the topic for two days, Stephen Curry told ESPN Wednesday that he was joking when he said he didn’t believe man had ever been to the moon, during a conversation on a podcast. The comments went viral, and led to NASA inviting Curry to their lunar lab in Houston, and invitation Curry still plans to accept.
“One thousand percent,” Curry told ESPN on Wednesday of accepting the invite. “One thousand percent. Obviously I was joking when I was talking on the podcast. I was silently protesting how stupid it was that people actually took that quote and made it law as, ‘Oh my God, he’s a fake moon landing truther,’ whatever you want to call it, yada, yada, yada. So I was silently protesting that part about it, how the story took a life of its own.
“But in terms of the reaction that I’ve gotten, I am definitely going to take [NASA] up on their offer. I am going to educate myself firsthand on everything that NASA has done and shine a light on their tremendous work over the years. And hopefully people understand that education is power, informing yourself is power. For kids out there that hang on every word that we say, which is important, understand that you should not believe something just because somebody says it. You should do your homework and understand what you actually believe. But I’m going to go to NASA and I’m going to enjoy the experience whole-heartedly.”
Steph’s original comments took place during a guest appearance on Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore’s Winging It podcast.
“Curry: ‘We ever been to the moon?’
“Multiple responders: ‘Nope.’
“Curry: ‘They’re gonna come get us. I don’t think so, either.’”
The Warriors guard was asked again by host Annie Finberg:
FINBERG: You don’t think so?
STEPH: Mm-mm.
Curry also told ESPN he was surprised at how big the story became.
“This one got me,” Curry said. “This one got me. Because of the setting that I was in when I was talking. If you actually listen to the podcast we were talking about all sorts of wild stuff. We went from Trae Young comparisons to what sound does a dinosaur make? To what’s your favorite brand of golf club to conspiracy theories. And literally out of an hour-and-10-minute podcast that five-second comment of me asking, ‘Did we land on the moon?’ was the only thing people got out of that so that was — again part of why I just kind of let it sit out there is just because I was like, ‘What is this?’ There’s way more serious stuff that’s going on in our world that this doesn’t necessarily deserve that much attention. But again, I got a NASA invite out of it and I going to enjoy it.”
