PHILADELPHIA — On the six-month anniversary of their wedding day Saturday, Damion Lee took his wife, Sydel Curry-Lee, to the 2,509-seat gymnasium where he first surfaced on NBA scouts’ radar.
Back on Drexel University’s campus for the first time since he graduated in 2015, Lee — a two-way-contract player for the Warriors — showed Sydel, Stephen Curry’s younger sister, his favorite cheesesteak shop and his go-to breakfast spot. In a hallway in the Daskalakis Athletic Center, Sydel found two huge pictures of Lee in his No. 14 Dragons jersey.
When those photos were taken, Lee was a mid-major star trying to prove wrong all the coaches who had told him he couldn’t make it at a big-conference program. Not much has changed. Now 26 years old, Lee still embraces the role of underdog — an undrafted guard who yo-yos between the back-to-back NBA champions and their G League affiliate.
Hours after watching the first half of Drexel’s blowout loss to Northeastern with Sydel, Lee made his case for Golden State’s 15th and final guaranteed roster spot. With Klay Thompson sidelined by right knee soreness, Lee scored 12 points on a career-high four 3-pointers, posting a team-high plus-13 in 26 minutes of the Warriors’ 120-117 win over the 76ers.
His three 3-pointers in the third quarter helped Golden State overcome a 12-point halftime deficit. After the game, head coach Steve Kerr lauded Lee’s aggressiveness. Seldom is Lee, who has used 34 of the 45 days with the NBA club allotted under his two-way contract, overwhelmed by the moment.
Much of his professional career, Lee has needed to make the most of his touches because more weren’t guaranteed. Now, with just 19 games until the playoffs, he is perhaps the front-runner for the Warriors’ open roster slot.
Golden State probably won’t fill that spot until just before the end of the regular season. However, Lee has an edge over any free agents the Warriors could bring in: He already knows the system and has built a rapport with teammates.
When not leading the G League’s Santa Cruz Warriors, Lee offers Golden State another bench scorer. In 21 NBA games this season, he has averaged 4.9 points on 46.2 percent shooting from the field, including 44.2 percent from three-point range. When Curry was out with a groin injury in November, Lee twice chipped in 13 points off the bench in a three-game span.
“I feel like he’s at a turning point,” said Michelle Riddick, Lee’s mother. “I tell him all the time: ‘You’re in a great position right now by being a two-way player. This is your audition period.’”
Many assume that Lee’s famous brother-in-law helped him land a chance with Golden State, but the organization had tracked him long before news of Lee’s relationship with Sydel went public.
The Warriors’ scouting department first identified him as a prospect his redshirt junior year at Drexel, when he ranked fourth in Division I with 21.4 points per game. Concerns about his level of competition in the Colonial Athletic Association were eased when Lee averaged a team-high 15.9 points for Louisville as a graduate transfer.
In December 2016, a week before NBA teams could start offering 10-day contracts, Lee tore his left ACL in a G League game with the Maine Red Claws. Lee — who had torn his right ACL as a junior at Drexel — knew the mental toll of rehabbing away from family and asked the Red Claws to trade him to Santa Cruz, where he could be close to his then-girlfriend, Sydel, in the Bay Area. Maine obliged.
Lee and Sydel had met briefly at an NCAA Tournament game in Philadelphia in March 2013 where Sydel’s older brother, Seth, was playing with Duke, but their relationship didn’t become romantic until Lee sent her a direct message on Instagram two years later. In Sydel, Lee had found someone with many of the same personality traits he loved about his mom: They both were bubbly, caring, funny and — perhaps most importantly — fiercely loyal.
It didn’t take long for Lee, who married Sydel at the Curry family’s church in Charlotte on Sept. 2, to find common ground with Seth and Stephen. Like both of his brothers-in-law, Lee leaned on his Christian faith in quieting numerous doubters.
As a sophomore at Mount Saint Joseph High School in Baltimore, he was on junior varsity when one of his coaches told him he’d be lucky to get a Division II scholarship. After earning all-league honors as a junior and senior at Calvert Hall High in nearby Towson, Md., Lee signed with Towson University (one of two Division I offers), only to attend prep school in Oakdale, Conn., for a year and land at Drexel.
Late in his redshirt junior season, months removed from coming back from his first torn ACL, Lee broke a bone in his right shooting hand. Less than a year later, he was thriving for Louisville when the Cardinals announced a self-imposed postseason ban amid an NCAA investigation over an escort sex scandal involving recruits. Lee had chosen Louisville largely for the chance to experience the NCAA Tournament.
Such adversity helped prepare him for life on pro basketball’s fringes. Before inking a two-way contract with Golden State in July, Lee was waived by the Celtics in preseason and signed two 10-day contracts with the Hawks.
Several tattoos serve as permanent reminders of the resolve he required to reach this point. “No white flags” is written on Lee’s right bicep. On his chest are the words, “Stay true,” with an infinity symbol. Young Simba from “The Lion King” adorns his right shin with the phrase, “Remember who you are.”
“I’m confident that I belong here and that I could be here for the next couple years,” Lee said. “From my viewpoint, I believe that I’m an NBA player.”
It doesn’t hurt that his new brothers-in-law can help him navigate the league.
Like Lee, Seth Curry went undrafted and toiled in the G League — including a stint with Santa Cruz — before establishing himself as a rotation player with Sacramento, Dallas and now Portland. Stephen, who worked out with Lee each of the past two summers, has been a sounding board for him this season.
Sidelined by foul trouble in the third quarter Saturday, Stephen twice jumped out of his seat, shouting encouraging words when Lee knocked down open 3-pointers.
“I think it’s no coincidence we’re in Philly where his Drexel days started,” Stephen said. “He took his wife over to Drexel to see where he came from, then showed out on the court tonight with an opportunity to help us win.
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