Now that LeBron James has found his newest version of joy with the Fanatics 76ers and the nation has finished chewing over all the ramifications thereof, be they ridiculous and absurd or merely improbable and stupid, the discourse cries out for a new main character in the hired-and-fired/signed-and-resigned marketplace. And there is only one name left that anyone finds appealingly rumormongerable: Stephen Curry.
As in: "Why didn't the Warriors get LeBron to help Steph win that last ring?" Or: "Why didn't the Warriors get someone, really, anyone to help Steph win that last ring?" And: "Since they didn't get anyone to help Steph win that last ring, why does Mike Dunleavy Jr. still have his general manager's job?" And also: "Since they didn't get anyone to help Steph win that last ring, is owner Joe Lacob an idiot, and if so, for what specific reason?" And finally: "Since they didn't get anyone to help Steph win that last ring, shouldn't they trade him as an act of basic human decency?"
This all puts Curry at the center of the story to an extent that raises an additional question, which is more or less, "Since they didn't get anyone to help Steph win that last ring, why isn't he demanding that signing/firing/trade?"
Those are a lot of questions, and only the first one has an easy answer. LeBron James saw rewards beyond salary in trying Philadelphia for size, and that choice was his to make. He's tried tax-free, high-gloss living (Miami), he's tried nostalgia (Cleveland the second time), and he's tried the entertainment world (Los Angeles). Seeing Philadelphia in any way other than "Huh?" is proof that James sees some achievable power there without the glass ceiling of being merely an employee. That invites all manner of speculation, but at bottom is no more complicated than that.
And now that LeBron is no longer at center stage, the vacuum cries out for some other recognizable star with a decision to make, even if the league's chattering classes have to thrust that status upon him. July and August are the most bereft times for NBA disturbances because free agency is done, trades aren't being made, coaches aren't getting fired, and Tom Dundon doesn't have anyone left to fire.
Thus, Curry. Even with no sign that he is going to be traded or wants to be, and at least a year from an unrestricted free agency that we don't even know he intends to exercise, Curry is taking LeBron's spot as the sport's gossip epicenter precisely because he is the player least likely to belong there.
Curry is perhaps the last athlete anywhere who found his ideal workplace with his first job, and while folks often bring up his age (38) and rings (four), they tend to gloss over his tenure with one team (17 years, seventh-longest in NBA history) and what that last number implies, which is contentment right where he is. He knows his place in the Bay Area just as firmly as he knows his place with his family and his reputation in the sport, and he knows that he has already gotten everything an athlete can get without visibly flexing his leverage. This all suggests that if Curry wanted to be somewhere else to finish his career, he would have made his position clear by now. He matters to the Bay Area as much as Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, or Joe Montana, and all of them either played elsewhere or eventually ended up elsewhere. Curry is theirs alone, unencumbered by divided allegiances or alien memories.
Moreover, he has been the region's golden child almost since the moment he magically healed his troublesome ankles and became a league-altering superstar. He knows no pushback here because he doesn't push first. The last time he didn't get what he wanted as an employee was when he spoke up for coach Mark Jackson right before Jackson got fired in 2014. He has since become the definition of his franchise, the reason for the new building and the 606 consecutive sellouts and everything else that freed the Warriors from the decades of sub-irrelevance which was their calling card. He is always in the room even if he's sitting at home, simply by virtue of being everywhere Warrior things are happening. Why would he leave? Why would anyone want him to go?
Nevertheless, here's the logic: Curry would leave because Golden State is aging out, and also interestingly because they couldn't land James and make the team even older. And they would trade him because he knows that they're aging out and the roster isn't getting better. This logic is unsupported by any evident fact but in what has already been the Summer of Giannis and Jaylen and LeBron. What else is there now that they're done with summer stock?
Staying with one team for one's entire career is no longer desirable or prudent as a career strategy, if only because doing so means you are in your late 30s by the time anyone notices, at which point your game has probably stretched out its elastic waistband. That, plus the fact that Curry is that rarest of commodities: a player great enough to be a bargain at any price who is also worth more where he is than any other team could offer. He essentially owns a share of the franchise even without the troublesome matter of collateral, and without him the Warriors are basically the arena's undercard to the Valkyries, even with Yaxel Lendeborg on hand as the future of the future.
As for Dunleavy's job security, his situation is standard for someone in his position, which is to say some folks want him to get Nico Harrisoned ASAP. The team has aged without improving in his three-plus years at the helm, and his bold attempts at keeping the road ahead properly paved and striped has taken a beating with Jimmy Butler's ACL injury and the empty calories of the Kristaps Porzingis deal. Even Curry sounded more wistful than perturbed about this in an interview with Marcus Thompson of The Athletic:
“The through line,” he said, “which is hard on anybody in this situation, especially with us keeping this thing together, is knowing that when Jimmy got hurt and Moses got hurt, the whole calculus of everything changes. How do you get through their absence and still stay at a certain level? And then how that goes into this year. It’s the same deal. So, I’m a realist on that.”
That sucks a bit of air out of the room where any trade speculation is concerned, but let us never forget that the internet is unbeaten because it does not have to honor anything but its own insatiable appetites. The Warriors need Curry more than he needs them, both on the court and in the suites, so it's his move to make, but all indications are that he seems to like them well enough not to test that premise. Dunleavy is not going to pitch such a deal because you can never get back equivalent value for such a player; Lacob may long for a post-Curry plan but is careful not to hint that "post-Curry" has a timeline. The man may spout the odd bit of Owner Nonsense, but he isn't fully nuts, emphasis on "fully."
So here's where we are. The Warriors are roster-locked—the return of Draymond Green at market price seals that deal—and Curry seems unwilling to test the scenario market, and LeBron is now off the freeform speculation market after tying together his own loose ends. Even the dying embers of the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown passive-aggressive spitfest could not hold the basketball discourse's attention for more than a few hours. The start of the regular season is months away.
And so we seem to be at a speculators' impasse, to the point where anyone searching for a new idea to flog is left to sift through the already cold ashes of the previous ones. We're tapped out, kids, but you go on and see what you can agitate anyway. A Curry-to-fill-in-the-blank rumor will always have lungs, even if it doesn't have legs.
