Stephen Curry Has No Reason to Think About Free Agency
Stephen Curry is going to get paid.
For most of us, making $11.37 million a year sounds like a dream come true, but for Curry, it’s an absurdly low salary. The league MVP is only the fifth highest paid player on his own team?
But in 2017, Curry becomes an unrestricted free agent, and, barring a catastrophic injury, is going to get paid — probably in excess of $30 million a year.
Still, the prospect of hitting the open market and starting a bidding war isn’t all that appealing for Curry.
“Free agency isn’t really appealing to me because I love where I’m at, love the organization I’m playing for and the Bay Area is home for me and my family,” Curry told Sporting News.
All indications are that the Warriors will do everything they can to retain their MVP, so it is unlikely that Curry would jump ship for more money; however, superstars (cough — LeBron James) have been known to take their talents to teams in better situations, meaning a better roster and perhaps a bigger market.
But this is not a concern the Warriors should have. Curry’s situation in Golden State, home to the defending champs, is already close to perfect.
January 14, 2015; Oakland, CA, USA; Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) celebrates with guard Klay Thompson (11) against the Miami Heat during the first quarter at Oracle Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Curry’s Splash Bro, Klay Thompson, is the best possible backcourt-mate for the MVP. Thompson’s big frame and tremendous footwork allow him to guard the opposing team’s top scorer, often relieving Curry on the defensive end. And on offense, Thompson’s elite shooting and underrated slashing ability prevents other teams from simply focusing on stymying Curry; unlike many elite defensive wings (see Tony Allen), Thompson is also a lethal scorer.
The Warriors have already locked up Thompson and Draymond Green through 2019 — both on favorable deals with the new cap — and the Warriors look to have their young core in place for a long time. Certainly Curry is essential to everything the Warriors do, but it works both ways: the Warriors, and their system, also allow Curry to thrive.
One of the prevailing arguments for LeBron James, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, or Anthony Davis as last year’s MVP — and not Curry — was that, in each scenario, the star was tasked with visibly carrying his team throughout the season. And, in each case, it is almost certain that the team would have been monumentally worse — likely one of the worst teams in the league — if they didn’t have their star. It seemed like a superhuman effort by each of the mentioned stars to turn their team into a winning squad. With Curry, many argued that the Warriors would still have been a playoff team (albeit a much lower seed) without him.
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Certainly the Rockets without Harden would have been significantly worse than the Warriors without Curry, but the Rockets with Harden were significantly worse than the Warriors with Curry, so I’m not sure that this argument really proves anything about the merits of the two players. And the differences in their two styles — Harden and the Rockets’ isolation heavy ball versus the Warriors quick ball movement — offers the greatest reason that Curry should stay a Warrior.
With one of the best supporting casts in the league, the Warriors don’t need Curry to be an isolation machine; moreover, the Warriors have the personnel to put Curry in a situation where he can thrive offensively while not having to create his own shot every possession. With capable scorers and passers in Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes, Green…(the list goes on) Curry is in a rather unique situation where he is the unquestioned superstar while not always having to act like the stereotype of one.
Michael Jordan’s iconic buzzer-beaters coming off isolations are still shown on TV; today, this type of hero-ball is often seen with Kobe Bryant taking an isolation fadeaway at the buzzer of any close game. These players are what we think of when we think of superstars. But the Warriors’ deep, versatile roster allows Curry to be a different kind of superstar, a star who commands great attention and lets his teammates capitalize upon it themselves, a star who doesn’t often hold the ball for the majority of the possession.
And as the Warriors showed this year, a star like that can be pretty effective.