Can the Warriors MAXIMIZE the end of Steph Curry’s career? 👀 It’s what they’ve BEEN doing – Bontemps

Can the Warriors MAXIMIZE the end of Steph Curry’s career? 👀 It’s what they’ve BEEN doing – Bontemps

I love to shoot the ball. Something I’ve been doing since I was, you know, three years old. Curry from half court. Everybody talks about the greatest shooter ever. It’s Curry for the record. It’s good. And there it is. Comfortable saying that now. And now I can push it to a number that nobody can reach. The wind [Applause] tough. You can see it in the one they watch. You can see it in their face. If their hands get the moving, it’s the time and the place. The greatest shooter the game has ever seen. Steph Curry entering his 17th season and he sat down with Complex, talked about how much longer he plans on playing. Take a listen. I do know I’m kind of just taking it in two-year chunks just to know like you have to give yourself something and some motivation to kind of go after for us like I talked to all the guys who have been in this situation where they’ve extended their prime and you know there there are more ungraceful endings than there are sure you know I tip the cap and I like that type of thing. I just want to be in a position where I’ve accomplished or I put myself in a position where I can say I’ve done everything I can to, you know, get everything out of this game. And hopefully I have, you know, my my health and my the choice to say I’m I’m I’m good. I don’t I’m not nowhere close to that, though. For sure. So, we got some more years from you for sure. Oh, man. Well, Steph fans will love that. The rest of the Western Conference, maybe not so much. Welcome to NBA Today. I’m Vanessa Richardson and of course for Malikica Andrews joined here today in our LA studios we’ve got senior writers Ramona Shelburn and Tim Vonimpson. We are also joined by Anscapes David Dennis Jr. DDJ you’ve been around Curry for over 20 years. What does Steph’s last stretch of his career look like? So so here are two things I could say about what the end of Steph Curry’s career is going to look like that’ll sort of be a testament to the greatness that I expect. One is no matter if this is two years, three years, four years down the line, when Steph Curry gets hot in a given quarter, it’ll always be the greatest show in basketball, maybe the greatest show in sports. It’ll be something that people will always be calling about and saying, “Hey, Steph is catching fire and he’s raining threes, no matter when that happens in his career.” The other thing is that at the very last game, important game that he plays again, whether it’s three years, four years, whatever, when he crosses half court, he’s going to get double team because he will always be a guy who strikes fear in defenders uh until he, you know, walks away from the game. He will always be somebody who will be a versatile offensive dude. And all respect to my guy Steph, he’s never quite relied on athleticism and explosiveness and all that stuff. So, he doesn’t have to worry about that. uh falling by the wayside. The shot will be there, the ball movement will be there, and he will be somebody who will be part of a team that can be at least making noise in the playoffs just by virtue of having him on that team. You hear David saying three years, four years. Tim, Steph turns 38 in March. So, how can the Warriors maximize the rest of his career? I mean, I think it’s what they’ve been doing, right? They traded for Jimmy Butler last year. They’ve gone out and tried to get, you know, they’ve talked about getting LeBron James and obviously some things that are more fantasy trades and real trades in the past and they’ve made other moves to try to get better. We’ll see what happens the rest of the summer once they get the Jonathan Kaminga situation sorted out. I think it’s likely that Al Horford winds up there at the Anthony Melton who was there last year before he tore his ACL could wind up there too. The Warriors are going to try to straddle a couple things right there. If they can get a move where they can go all in to get another star at some point, I’m sure they’ll try to do that. Joe Lacob and Mike Dun Levy and the Warriors front office has always been extraordinarily aggressive in trying to maximize how good this team can be. But Steph Curry also understands as he said there that he has chosen to finish his career with the Warriors. He wants to play his whole career there as he should. And so the goal is for everybody involved to try to have the Warriors be as good as they can be the for the rest of Steph’s career and for Steph to finish his career as a one team player and go down like Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant and Derk Nitzky and some of these all-time great players who have the the I think the special way their career played out where they get to win a title and spend their whole career playing for one franchise. He said I’m going to take this in two-year increments. And I think what’s great happened last year when they traded for Jimmy Butler is they finally have clarity now. This is what they’re doing. They’re maximizing the Steph Curry next two years. But he also said I can see myself playing for three or four years. And so I don’t know what happens after those two years. Um but I do know they they have picked the lane. There was this there was this two timeline era for a while. They were kind of trying to bring along Kaminga and some of those other young guys and say you guys are going to be the torch. You’re going to pass the torch to those. That’s not happening anymore. This is now Steph Curry’s allin. We’re just gonna keep making trades and trying to maximize these two years. At the age of 37 in just over four months, Steph is the eighth oldest player currently on an NBA roster. Now, he will go down a spot when Al Horford inevitably signs somewhere. Steph trails a group that includes CP3 and LeBron James. And just in case you were wondering, the oldest player since 1950, how about this name, Kevin Willis? You guys remember him? He ended his career in April of 2007 at the age of 44 years and 224 days. LeBron would need to play on opening night of the 2029 2020 30 season to pass Willis. So in a league that seems to be getting younger and younger and younger, LeBron and Steph continue to just really push that needle, both making all NBA second team last season. DDJ, do you think Steph and LeBron have one more title run in their careers? Look, the last thing I’m gonna do is sit here and count Steph Curry and LeBron James out. I’m not doing it. And with the parody in the league, uh, who knows what’ll happen in the next few years. They can slide in, injuries have for other teams, things like that. Who knows? I’m not counting those dudes out. But what’s the most fascinating thing about this is the LeBron side of this. Steph, as we said, we kind of know what these next few years are going to be like. He’s going to be a Warrior. They’re going to retool in a couple years. They’re going to figure this out. LeBron James at the beginning of February, we felt like we knew what the end of his career was going to look like. He’s going to play with the Lakers for a couple years, try to get a championship, and that’ll be it. The Luca Dantes thing, adding him has changed the trajectory of the Lakers, and it’s changed the trajectory of LeBron James’ career. Now, we know, I can imagine he’s going to finish this year with the Lakers, despite all the stuff them and Rich Paul have said, and everything’s happened the offseason. But the year after that, I have no clue what the that year of LeBron’s career looks like. The Lakers don’t know. LeBron doesn’t know. I don’t know if he’ll be a Laker. I don’t know if he’ll end up at another team with another contender. This is probably the most question marks we’ve had about LeBron and his career since the beginning. The guy plans out everything now. So much is up in the air and that leaves a possibility of a championship run or who knows uh as he close this thing out. Yeah, I mean obviously the LeBron James situation will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next several months and over the next year as we see where he plays next season and how this season plays out. presumably his final year with the Lakers. But I think when you look at where the league is sitting right now, we had a team last year that won 68 games, won the title, had two players over 27 on the roster, and their oldest player was 31. And they just gave the three stars on their team who are all in their mid20s or younger about a billion dollars it felt like combined in long-term contracts, right? So, they obviously need some health. Obviously, see the Oklahoma City Thunder raising the Lar Bryant trophy there. They need some health and some luck to be able to continue on and be the team that ends this era of parody that we’re in. But if you look at how the playoffs played out, you saw the Pacers in the championship. Brown with the Thunder, another young team with depth. You saw the Knicks, a pretty young team with a decent amount of depth. And Minnesota Timberwolves, again, another team with a young group, a young nucleus led by Anthony Davis. I think we’re seeing the league trend towards younger teams, deeper teams being able to hold up in the physicality and the intensity and the pure athleticism you need to succeed in the league right now. So, we’ll see about teams like the Warriors and the Clippers and the Lakers that are more built around veteran players, older older teams, but I think we’re seeing a bit of a sea change. And I think the Thunder finally are positioned to be the team to end this era of parody we’ve been in and create the next dynasty in the league. So, I could have sat here last July and said a very similar thing about the Celtics. I think I probably did in in July. And then the year before that, I think we said the same thing about the Nuggets who had won a championship and had this young core that seemed like they had just hit their prime at the right time. And we just keep having new champions. Like each year we think somebody is destined to go be the next dynasty. There is another they they seem built for success in the in the long term and each year it doesn’t happen. And so as much as I agree with you Tim, that the the Thunder are extremely well positioned. They finally broke through. it seems like they could win for the next five years. All evidence in the NBA for the last six, seven years has been that somebody else is going to win. And when you go, what now it’s 27 year olds winning and this year it was obviously 25 year olds winning. Well, what if it swings back and it’s the old teams winning? What if it’s just the healthiest team winning? And so I I I’ll never count LeBron and Steph out because those guys still are playing at all NBA levels. And I think, look, if you say who’s better positioned this year, probably the Warriors because they’re just they have clarity. They’re not trying to save for Luca Donis’ next five years. They’re just in it for the next two years with Steph. Yeah, David, we’ll give you the last word on this one. I was talking about Yeah. Yeah. I was talking about LeBron and Steph next couple. I think I’m with Tim on this. This this year though, this year is OKC’s year. I think that um the only way that an old team wins is if the OKC adds like a guy who’s 155 years old to that bench to raise sort of the average of their team cuz this team um is built sort of differently, right? I I did that in my head. I had a calculator. Um I think um it’s a little different than the Nuggets and the Celtics in the fact that there was so little margin of error. You look at the Nuggets, they lose a guy like Brown, they you lose some of those people, the Celtics who deal with the injury or two and that knocks them off. The Thunder are just built with these waves of guys and this depth and this youth that they can overcome this in a different way. This is the last dynasty. This is the final dynasty in the NBA and it’s a lot of that because of resilience, because of the fact that they have the depth. You they had JD was injured all through the playoffs and they still won the championship. I just think it’s hard to imagine anybody usurping OKC this year, but I’m not counting LeBron to step out. Maybe in the future if something else goes haywire.

On NBA Today, David Dennis Jr., Tim Bontemps and Ramona Shelburne react to Stephen Curry’s interview and discuss what the final years of his career could look like. Then, they ponder if Curry & LeBron James can contend for another title before they decide to call it a career.

0:00 Steph Curry interview
1:37 The finals years of Steph Curry
5:00 Can Curry & LeBron contend again?
7:35 Can an older team win a championship?

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