Under Armour's huge gains in the important basketball footwear category are largely attributable to one man: Stephen Curry.

Footwear sales for the Baltimore-based apparel company surged nearly 95 percent year-over-year in the last three months of 2015, and “much of this is due to the success of Curry's signature basketball sneaker, and the opportunities for growth are huge,” Motley Fool's James Sullivan said in a report this month.

But until 2013 — for the first four years of his NBA career with the Golden State Warriors — Curry was a Nike athlete.

Curry, the reigning league Most Valuable Player, said last year: “Under Armour has felt like family since day one.”

An ESPN report that came out last week says there's more to the story.

It quotes the player's father — former NBA player Dell Curry — saying a Nike official incorrectly addressed Stephen as “Steph-on” during a 2013 pitch meeting about extending the partnership.

The report also says a PowerPoint slide at the meeting featured the name of fellow Nike star Kevin Durant, “presumably left on by accident,” instead of Curry's name.

“In the meeting, according to Dell, there was never a strong indication that Steph would become a signature athlete with Nike,” the report says.

—?Jeff Barker