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Stephen Curry meets ICU nurse that wore his jersey while working during COVID-19 surges

Ryan Young
·Staff writer
·4 min read

Just more than a year after he FaceTimed her and her colleagues at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, ICU nurse Shelby Delaney finally got to meet Stephen Curry.

Delaney, along with her husband, were gifted courtside seats for the Golden State Warriors’ SCORE win against the Sacramento Kings at the Chase Center on Sunday. After the game, Curry stopped by to talk with the couple and signed his jersey for them before taking off.

“It’s really nice for our organization to be able to honor people who have helped so much during the pandemic,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, via The Associated Press. “I think that’s one of the most important roles that our organization plays in the community is to honor those who deserve to be honored, so it’s a great way for that to happen, especially because we’ve got plenty of fans out there who have been on the front lines during the pandemic. So, the more we can honor the better and it’s a nice thing to be able to do.”

Curry, catchphrase inspired ICU nurse during COVID-19 fight

Delaney, like countless other healthcare workers across the country, struggled at times over the past year while treating COVID-19 patients. That task, especially during the peaks, was anything but easy.

So, she got creative.

A massive Warriors fan, Delaney started wearing her Curry jersey to work and wrote his motto from the Bible, “I can do all things” on the collar. She posted a photo of her in her hospital protective gear and the Curry jersey to Facebook, and it quickly went viral.

Days later, Curry FaceTimed her and her coworkers to thank them.

“I can’t thank God enough for what you’re doing,” Curry told Delaney and her co-workers. “Just the sacrifice, selflessness, the way that everybody is coming together, thank you so much for just what you do, your heart, and the inspiration y’all are providing for everybody.”

She wore that same jersey to the game on Sunday night.

“I’d always dreamed of talking to him, mostly to thank him, because he really has made such an impact on my life and how I carry myself,” Delaney told The Associated Press before the game.

“It kind of helped me, the whole ‘I can do all things,’ but also the way he believes that and the way he lives his life is through that, with joy and love. So he really inspired me. Watching him when I started nursing, in my early 20s, which is a hard time to be alive, when you’re in your early 20s it’s difficult, but doing it in the ICU, I was always like, ‘I can’t do this,’ so he carried through that and stuff I had going on personally with my family.”

Looking back on that call, Delaney is so grateful not only for the morale boost it gave the hospital, but for the critical protective gear it ended up bringing in.

“It really uplifted a lot of folks, like all the other nurses, the other staff members, everyone got a lot of joy out of that,” Delaney said, via The Associated Press. “People told me, they actually said that helped boost morale around here a lot, and it got us a lot of donations. And, it got us a lot of donations. It got us a lot of face masks, a lot of surgical masks, it got us a lot of food. And enough food that we were able to share with everyone in the hospital. ... Everyone got to feel loved and feel appreciated because everyone is putting their lives on the line, not just the ICU nurses.”

Shelby Delaney, right, an intensive care unit nurse at Oakland's Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and her husband

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