For Steph Curry, Watch Collecting Is a Family Affair

Welcome to Watches of the Week, where we’ll track the rarest, wildest, and most covetable watches spotted on celebrities.

Steph Curry has really come into his own as a watch collector over his career. And so if there is a thin, nearly indiscernible silver lining to the shoulder injury that will keep him from bombing three pointers for a few weeks, it’s that he should continue to bring the fireworks on the bench. The evidence? He showed out again last week when he was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year, wearing a Rolex Day-Date II in yellow gold to the event. 

While the Day-Date II didn’t necessarily resonate with a larger audience—Rolex only produced this model for seven years, between 2008 and 2015—it did seem to find a fanbase in the NBA. Damian Lillard also owns a version of this more obscure Day-Date. The originalDay-Date has already established itself as one of the most popular watches among NBA players, but there’s an easy explanation for why this short-lived model might have caught on with the likes of Curry and Lillard: measuring in at 41 millimeters, the Day-Date II was made specifically for larger wrists.

Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images

Wearing a Rolex to celebrate life’s biggest accomplishments seems to be a tradition in the Curry family. When Steph won the NBA Finals this June, a Rolex-filled celebration followed. His father Dell was spotted wearing a Rolex GMT with the black-and-blue “Batman” bezel, while wife Ayesha wore a Rolex Deepsea Sea-Dweller. (Brother Seth also wears a GMT in the red-and-blue “Coke” colorway.) Steph continues the trend with this Day-Date. 

ANTHONY WALLACE/Getty Images

Zoe Saldana’s Panthère de Cartier 

These wrap watches are starting to surface on celebrity wrists more frequently. Anne Hathaway recently coiled Bulgari’s Serpenti around hers. Now, while promoting the new Avatar, Saldana wore what looks like a Panthère de Cartier with a triple wrap. If you subscribe to GQ’s new watch newsletter Box + Papers, you’ll have read all about a special breed of watch-plus products: tie bars, money clips, letter openers, and lighters that used to come embedded with watches. Like those items, these Serpentis and Panthères are hybrids, more bracelets than they are watches. 

Chelsea Guglielmino

Simu Liu’s Tag Heuer Formula 1 

Credit where it’s due: Tag Heuer finds every possible way to lean into its automotive racing roots. Earlier this year, the brand brokered a partnership with Porsche over the pair’s shared connection to the infamous Carrera race from the ‘50s. Tag then followed that up with a Mario Kart collaboration that appealed to people more comfortable with virtual driving. Liu, meanwhile,  is wearing a version of the Formula 1 model, a nod to Tag’s long history sponsoring racing teams. Team Ferrari wore Heuer—before it merged with Tag—throughout the ‘70s. 

FRANCK FIFE/Getty Images

Didier Deschamps’s Hublot Big Bang Tourbillon Sapphire  

No one does cooler work with sapphire than Hublot. The brand uses the material to make translucent watches in syrupy purple and bright orange. But the watch world has been dominated by color recently, so French team manager Deschamps is zagging: he broke out Hublot’s colorless Big Bang for his squad’s match against Morocco. Sunday’s head-to-head between French and Argentina will spotlight a difference of styles between managers, too. While Deschamps wears show-off pieces like this Big Bang, Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni sticks with the simple Apple Watch.