The Golden State Warriors are in a hopeless situation.
That is a unique sensation for this team. Every other Warriors team has had hope. Even the injury-riddled 2019-20 season had some hope; they were terrible, yes, but that season brought the Andrew Wiggins trade, the No. 2 overall pick, and a future first that became the No. 7 pick the following year - it was a one-year blip. It was hard to go through, but there was hope.
Even as the Warriors have wobbled in past seasons, losing in the Play-In Tournament in 2021 and 2024, those teams had Stephen Curry, and that brought them hope of putting things together and making a run. The preemptive loss was surprising, not expected by desultory fans.
The Warriors have no hope
Things have reached a nadir for the Golden State Warriors. Another matchup with a team clearly more talented and better constructed than the Warriors, another blowout loss. This time it was to the Boston Celtics; the 2022 NBA Finals feel a long way away after that 40-point home beatdown.
The Warriors followed that up with the Golden State specialty, taking a lead and then squandering it over the course of the second half, this time turning an 18-point lead into a six-point loss in Sacramento. Fans are sick, the team seems defeated, and the front office has no answers.
We recently wrote that if Stephen Curry wants to win another title, he will need to demand a trade to another team. While that still remains an unlikely path for the Warriors superstar to take, with each painful loss and listless step forward this roster takes, the odds begin to creep up. At some point the losing and hopelessness could become too much, and Wardell could step in Mike Dunleavy's office and have a hard conversation.
If that were to happen, and Curry asked the team to facillitate a trade to another franchise, it could be a win-win for both sides. A painful one, absolutely, and a sad recognition of how the front office has failed Curry during this twilight chapter of his prime. But it could afford Curry a shot at another title, enhancing his legacy among the all-time greats, and give the Warriors needed assets to rebuild the next great team in the Bay Area.
What could a trade for Stephen Curry look like? What kind of package can teams offer? We are going to assume that teams like the Charlotte Hornets would not be considered; while Curry did grow up in Charlotte and his family maintains close ties to the franchise, they are not in a position to compete for a title. The Warriors are going to work with Curry to ensure he lands with a team he wants to play for; he has meant too much to the franchise to do anything else.
Let's look at 3 trade packages for Stephen Curry and evaluate where the all-time great could land if he were to demand a trade this season.
*Note: There has been some confusion about whether Stephen Curry is eligible to be traded this season after signing an extension, but Blue Man Hoop has confirmed that he is indeed eligible to be traded this season
Trade No. 1: The Steph Replacement
One type of trade partner is a team that both has a team ready to contend with Stephen Curry on board and young talent that can go back to the Warriors and give them something to build around moving forward. Those teams are not plentiful, but they do exist, and the team at the top of that list would be the Houston Rockets.
No one expected the Rockets to be this good this quickly, but they are in second place in the Western Conference with a 29-14 record, eight games up on the Warriors. They have added key veterans like Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks to an incredibly talented young core and built a team that is really good ahead of schedule.
What Houston lacks is a bona fide offensive star, someone who can take the reigns and slot Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun into the right place in the pecking order. That player has been VanVleet, but he is limited in his offensive impact. Stephen Curry, on the other hand, could come in and completely transform their offense.
Defensively, the Rockets have plenty of athletes to spread around him, giving this roster tantalizing two-way impact if Curry were to come aboard. Here is what such a trade could look like:
The Rockets could have a starting lineup of Stephen Curry, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Amen Thompson and Alperen Sengun, with the likes of Buddy Hield, Tari Eason and Jabari Smith Jr. coming off of the bench. That team would have both room to grow and a lethality to it right away.
The Warriors, on the other hand, would get a trio of first-round picks to build up their draft capital for a rebuild, and they would be spaced out so as not to overload the Warriors' roster in one year. Reed Sheppard would be the crown jewel of the package, the No. 3 pick from this past year's draft, an elite shooter who could be molded by the organization that helped Stephen Curry become a superstar.
Cam Whitmore is a promising young forward who can join the mix, and VanVleet can either be used as matching salary in another deal, or he can become a free agent this summer and his money can completely come off the books. That provides this team a lot of flexibility to begin their rebuild.
Trade No. 2: The Olympic Team-up
Everyone wants to see an NBA team-up of LeBron James and Stephen Curry, the two biggest stars of the past two decades, especially after they led the United States to Olympic gold in Paris last summer. The Warriors inquired about trading for James at last year's Trade Deadline; could the two players team up in Los Angeles instead?
Any trade for Curry would need to happen with LeBron James and Anthony Davis staying with the Lakers; otherwise, why make the deal at all? Yet the problem that then occurs is that the Lakers would need to send out a colossal number of players to match the salary of Stephen Curry, at which point the Warriors themselves would need to cut multiple key players just to absorb the number of players coming to them.
What's more, the Lakers are nearly bereft of assets outside of the first-round picks they would need to send to the Warriors, making it extremely difficult to find other teams to take on contracts to lessen the burden on the deal. In the end, this is what a trade would need to look like between just the Lakers and Warriors:
That's a 7-for-3 swap, the kind of "well it technically works" machination that absolutely never happens in the NBA, and certainly not in the midst of the season when teams cannot exceed 15 rostered players.
Is the value even good enough for the Warriors here? The future first-round picks take on more value as the Lakers mortgage young talent to win in the short-term, but the cornucopia of long-term money here doesn't make sense for Golden State.
Finally, would the Lakers even have enough in place to compete this season? They would have to try and find minimum players to fill out the roster, trying to stretch those signings out as long as possible to reduce their payroll and make this deal legal under the first luxury tax apron. They would have a starting group of Curry, LeBron, Davis, Dorian Finney-Smith and probably Cam Reddish, with essentially no bench remaining. Bronny James would need to be in the rotation just to get through an NBA game.
This deal is DOA, at least during the season.
Trade No. 3: Breaking the Game of Basketball
Now we come to the trade we have all been waiting for. There are other potential trade suitors for Curry, from older veteran teams like the Milwaukee Bucks or Phoenix Suns trying to pry their way into the conversation, to younger teams like the Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons looking to leap forward.
The most intriguing deal that could possibly come together, however, is the pairing of last generation's game-breaking player with next generation's game-breaking player. That is, Stephen Curry teaming up with Victor Wembanyama.
Wembanyama is already a Top-15 player in the league and may be even better than that, the best defender in basketball who is also leveling up before our eyes as a shooter, a playmaker and a scorer inside. He is impossibly long, incredibly tall, and uniquely skilled. Putting Wembanyama and Curry on the court together might be a cheat code that breaks the NBA.
What's more, the Spurs have a couple of old friends for Curry to team back up with. He could join a rotation that includes Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes; add Devin Vassell and you have an intriguing starting lineup with a pair of Top-15 stars and two-way brilliance.
The Spurs also have plenty of future draft capital from a variety of trades that they could use to put something together. They may be inclined to keep those extra picks and trade their own, so here is what such a deal could look like:
Matching salaries while keeping Barnes and Vassell is difficult, but not impossible. Keldon Johnson and Zach Collins form the base of the salary match; Collins is dead money but only for one more year, while Johnson is positive value on his deal as a solid forward whose ceiling appears capped and shouldn't be a part of the Spurs' future plans.
Jeremy Sochan and Malaki Branham are the young prospects going to Golden State, and Sochan in particular would be an intriguing young two-way player for the Warriors to develop. Tre Jones gives the team someone to start at point guard and a player who could be a bridge during the Warriors' rebuild or a trade asset to flip to another team. Then, of course, come three draft picks, starting with the better of the Spurs and Hawks in the 2025 draft, plus two future Spurs picks.
The Spurs would need time to build a true championship rotation around Curry and Wembanyama, but in this construction they keep Stephon Castle as the long-term backcourt partner for Curry over the next few seasons. Wembanyama may just be so good that this team begins to break the league right away, but even as Curry starts to descend out of his prime he will have a palyer ascending to the top of the league beside him.
None of these trades are a slam dunk for the Warriors, but each offers a lot of upside and the ability to move on to the next era. If Stephen Curry decides to move on, these three teams may very well pick up the phone and try to make a deal.