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NBA star Steph Curry says he was recruiting Giannis for PUBG, not the Warriors

Who wouldn’t want to squad up with the 2019 NBA MVP?

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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - a player fires into the bed of a truck from an elevated position Image: PUBG Corp.
Austen Goslin (he/him) is an entertainment editor. He writes about the latest TV shows and movies, and particularly loves all things horror.

On Wednesday night, the Milwaukee Bucks visited San Francisco and beat the Golden State Warriors. After the game, injured Golden State superstar Steph Curry had a friendly chat with the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo. Fans were quick to accuse Curry of tamperingtrying to recruit last year’s MVP while he’s still under contract with his current team. Curry says he did in fact want Antetokounmpo as a teammate ... but only in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

The report that Curry — who has been out for most of the 2019-2020 season with a broken hand — was only looking for a new battle royale squadmate comes from Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, who talked to Curry about what went on.

“All he was doing was giving Giannis his gamertag,” Haynes says about Curry. “For an online game called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. He said he told Giannis, ‘Come see me on this game — we could team up and do some damage. Let’s do it, come on.’”

On the one hand, this seems like a pretty reasonable story! Who doesn’t want new battle royale friends to roam around PUBG with? Plus, NBA players are regularly faced with downtime during the day, and gaming is a popular hobby around the league. It seems only natural that some of the league’s best players might want to duo queue every now and again.

Of course, there is another game that Curry and Antetokounmpo could team up in to do some damage ... basketball. Giannis — who could opt out of his contract next year to become a free agent, leaving his future with the Bucks an open question — is probably the best regular-season player in the NBA at the moment. He’s the reigning MVP, and the favorite to win the award again at the end of this season. Who wouldn’t want Antetokounmpo on their team?

Curry probably didn’t walk up to the league MVP in the middle of the Warriors’ home court and ask him to join him. Maybe there wasn’t any thought of the two playing basketball on the same team at all, and Curry just wanted to prove that he’s as accurate in PUBG as he is with a basketball.

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