Matthews’ journey continues

We know what happened with Matthews.

“Of course we are competitive,” Matthews said. “We’re trying to beat each other. If someone had a better day than the other one then we would say alright man, hey after, lets get these shots back up.”

The two are friends and have the same agent. They both exchanged jabs via text in the lead up to the 3-point contest.

“It’s nice to see him here representing that journey,” Curry said. “I don’t know how many people thought he was a shooter like that coming out of college. And now he’s in the 3 point shootout. So it’s pretty special to have seen him and have been together before our rookie years.”

“We started together,” Curry said. “It’s going to be fun tomorrow. We’ve been talking a lot of smack during this 3-point shootout.”

But of course, Matthews journey as a shooter wouldn’t have happened had it not been for his time with the Utah Jazz. Matthews was brought into training camp without a guaranteed spot.

His teammate at the time and competitor Saturday night, Kyle Korver, remembers it well.

“They brought him into training camp and we started to think, ‘Wes is a good player,’ ” Korver said. “He works hard. He’s really strong. He was trying to be a better shooter, he asked a lot of questions about defense.”

Matthews has credited the work with then Jazz assistant and current Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek multiple times for helping him with his shot.

The night before the competition, Matthews didn’t do anything different. As he often does before big events, he had a sit down dinner at the end of a busy day of appearances with his mother and grandmother.

And although he was most worried about getting overexcited, he said he would stick to his pre game process: a cup of coffee, shooting sleeves, everything as close to game situation as possible.

In Wisconsin, D.C., Utah and Portland, Matthews’ sticktoitiveness and stubbornness has always shown through to get him to Saturday in New York.

He simulated conditions back in Tualatin, Ore., including the techno music that they used in the shootout.

And as he competed against in the best field of all time, he didn’t finish the way he wanted.

Matthews sat down and enjoyed the experience alongside his good friend Curry, who won with a riveting 27 points in the final round.

“Pissed off, mad,” Matthews said after the contest. “It was good, it was fun, it was a great experience and hopefully you know I can do enough work next season to come back here.”

And Matthews lept off the bench to give a chest bump to his old friend after the performance that had the Barclay’s Center a gasp.

Matthews insists that his turning point is yet to come and he will go to Wisconsin to enjoy the comforts of home before returning to the grind of the season.

But although he did not get his preferred result, the fact that he was here at all may have been more impressive.

“To see where he is now and the shooter that he is, who would have thought then that Wesley Matthews would lead the NBA in 3-pointers made?” Korver said. “Like you would never have thought that back in that training camp or how ever many years ago that was.”