Thirty-five minutes after the Golden State Warriors’ 2023-24 season ended in a 118-94 defeat to the Sacramento Kings, Stephen Curry is among the last players in the visitors’ locker room, fully clothed and ready to get out of Dodge. After small talk with reporters, he puts on his backpack, opens an 11-ounce bottle of Stella Artois, and begins his journey into the night.
Walking down a corridor of Golden 1 Center, he shares pleasantries with team staffers and the remaining Warriors travel party.
“Amazing season!” he yells as Kevon Looney approaches, before taking a swig of his beer.
It’s a discombobulating scene. The loss in the 9 vs. 10 play-in game marks the earliest a Curry-led team has been eliminated from playoff contention since 2012, his third season, when the Warriors finished tied for the league’s seventh-worst record. Golden State has since won four titles in 10 years, building one of the greatest dynasties in professional sports. But this season was defined by suspensions, injuries, and ongoing questions about the team’s future. As Sacramento pulled away on Tuesday night, those championships felt far away. Even last year’s first-round victory over the Kings felt like a long time ago. Golden State is mortal now.
“This is awkward as hell,” Curry tells me. “The schedule is weird, just thinking about not having any games to play. It’s a different experience, going to be a volleyball dad next week instead of preparing for a playoff series. It’s freaking weird.”
The Warriors are now entering the most uncertain summer of Curry’s tenure. Next season will be Curry’s 16th. Klay Thompson, Curry’s longtime Splash Brother, will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason. And the league’s new collective bargaining agreement includes severe financial and team-building restrictions for the most expensive teams. In the moments after Tuesday’s loss, Curry insists his mindset hasn’t changed.
“I want to win,” he tells me. “Plain and simple. It’s not my job to make all of those decisions, but it’s my job to hold people accountable, and say I want to win and I’ll give my input, but I just want to win.”
Now, the Warriors will try to chart a path back to contention. To help make sense of their options, we asked and answered six big questions that will define this critical offseason.
Will the Warriors’ core four be back next season?
Curry has long maintained that he wants to play out his career alongside Draymond Green, Thompson, and Steve Kerr. “In a perfect world, we all finish this thing the way we deserve to finish,” Curry told me in February. In other words, together. “Whether that’s winning or not, you can’t control that,” he said.
Curry’s current contract runs through the 2025-26 season, when he will be 38. Green signed a four-year, $100 million extension last summer and, despite an erratic season, is still squarely in the team’s plans moving forward. And this February, Golden State agreed to terms with Kerr on a two-year, $35 million extension that is timed to end at the same time as Curry’s deal.
That makes Thompson the lone member of this quartet who isn’t locked into a long-term deal. Thompson reportedly turned down a two-year, $48 million extension last offseason, opting instead to bet on his ability to earn more in his second full season back from Achilles and ACL tears. What followed has been an up-and-down, at times emotional campaign for the 34-year-old: He endured a shooting slump to start the season, was relegated to the bench in February, and then experienced a shooting renaissance over the past three weeks. With the season on the line Tuesday night, he finished with zero points, missing all 10 of his shots, including six 3-point attempts.
Despite Thompson’s importance to the franchise, he will be hard-pressed to match or beat last summer’s offer, at least from Golden State. Thompson has repeatedly signaled that he would prefer to stay in the Bay Area, even if it means a reduced role in the future. But that won’t stop other teams from trying to pry him away from Golden State on a more lucrative short-term deal. The Magic are reportedly interested, and these playoffs could turn up other potential suitors desperate for perimeter shooting and veteran leadership, testing Thompson’s resolve to go out with his buds into the sunset. Following Tuesday’s loss, Curry was asked about the future of playing alongside Thompson and Green.
“I can never see myself not with those two guys,” he said.
Which current Warrior is most likely to be gone next season?
League sources believe Andrew Wiggins will be included in trade talks this summer as the Warriors look to improve their roster. During the 2022 title run, Wiggins was arguably Golden State’s second-best player, averaging 16.5 points and 7.5 boards in the playoffs and producing timely shots and great defense in the Finals. The Warriors signed him to a four-year, $109 million extension that fall, but his Golden State tenure has been frustrating since the ink dried.
Wiggins missed an extended period last spring to tend to a personal matter, and this season, during training camp, coaches privately expressed disappointment in his conditioning, which was compounded by a dismal start to the season. “I feel like I came into camp all right,” Wiggins said in February when I asked about his slow start. “I feel like I wasn’t out of shape or nothing like that. I just feel like once the games started, just finding my rhythm, for some reason it wasn’t there, but sh*t happens.”
Although Wiggins’s game has picked up since the trade deadline, he’s been made somewhat redundant by the emergence of Jonathan Kuminga (who is expecting an extension this summer, which we’ll get into below). Games like Tuesday night, in which Wiggins finished with just 12 points and a team-low minus-25, simultaneously highlight the Warriors’ need for an upgrade and the reason Wiggins may not fetch much in a trade.
League sources also identify Chris Paul as a key player in the Warriors’ offseason. Paul has been a valuable veteran voice in the locker room and helped Golden State finish with the third-best bench-scoring unit in the league. The Warriors’ young players in particular have raved about Paul’s leadership; earlier this season, Kuminga told me that Paul taught him “just how to be a professional. How to take care of your body, and stuff like that … just little things on the floor.” But in his 19th season, Paul’s durability was an issue, as he missed nearly two months due to a broken left hand. He has a non-guaranteed $30 million salary for 2024-25, so the Warriors could flip him in a deal to bring back younger pieces or waive him and make him an unrestricted free agent.
“I loved coaching Chris,” Kerr said Tuesday night, “and I really hope we bring him back next year.”
Are the Warriors low-key bringing back the two-timeline plan?
The departures of Jordan Poole and James Wiseman last year seemed to mark the end of Joe Lacob’s infamous plan to prolong the Warriors dynasty with a transfusion of young talent. But 2023-24 saw the emergence of several youngsters who have played their way into the Warriors’ long-term plans.
The most important was Kuminga, who just wrapped up a career year and is eligible for an extension this summer. Kuminga’s potential to build on his breakout 2023-24 campaign—in which he averaged 16.1 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 2.2 assists in 74 games—is one of the Warriors’ most realistic avenues toward raising their ceiling as a team. But for as much as Kuminga’s athleticism provides a necessary jolt to the Warriors’ beautiful game, his decision-making occasionally leaves the coaching staff scratching their heads or opting to turn to Wiggins in crucial moments. The Warriors brass has valued Kuminga highly in recent years, but extension negotiations will be telling, as his public complaints about his playing time earlier this season suggest that he and the Warriors may not see eye to eye about his role. Some analysts believe Kuminga could fetch more than $30 million per year on the open market, a figure that would make him the second-highest-paid player on Golden State’s roster.
Moses Moody, Kuminga’s draft classmate, is also eligible for an extension but will likely accept a qualifying offer from Golden State, should the Warriors extend one. Moody averaged just 8.1 points and failed to consistently break into Kerr’s rotation. On Tuesday evening, Moody was one of the lone bright spots off the bench, scoring 16 points in 15 minutes.
Rookies Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis had promising debut seasons. When Paul was out of the lineup, “Podz” became a regular rotation player, averaging 9.2 points and 5.8 assists, while leading the league in charges. Meanwhile, Jackson-Davis supplanted Kevon Looney in Kerr’s rotation, providing season-defining defensive stops in home wins against Boston and Milwaukee.
But the key difference between now and Lacob’s former two-track vision is that these players don’t project to have the upside to take the baton from Steph, Draymond, and Klay. Each of them can play a role on a retooled Warriors roster in the years to come, but general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. may also need to look outside the organization to fortify his roster.
Who could the Warriors get?
Fundamentally, the Warriors need more talent. The 2023-24 version had clear weaknesses, such as a leaky perimeter defense and a rail-thin frontcourt. But to get back to contender status, Golden State will need to do more than tinker around the edges of its roster.
This offseason’s free agent class is underwhelming, but several competent wings could be available via trade, including Portland’s Jerami Grant, Toronto’s Bruce Brown, and Washington’s Kyle Kuzma. Golden State’s front office has also long kept an eye on Karl-Anthony Towns, who, depending on Minnesota’s playoff fortunes and projected luxury tax bill, could be available this summer. There is one major obstacle to adding such players, however …
How much is team owner Joe Lacob willing to spend?
After two years of astronomical tax bills, this is perhaps the most consequential question of the Warriors’ offseason. In February, Lacob stated his desire for the Warriors to get under the luxury tax threshold this summer, which is projected to be around $172 million. As of now, Golden State has $174 million in salary committed for next season. The line for the über-restrictive second apron will be around $189 million.
Lacob has talked about cutting costs before, but in the end, he’s been willing to spend if he feels like a championship is within reach. Following the Warriors’ last title, he re-signed Poole and Wiggins to nine-figure deals, hoping to go back-to-back. Last summer, after the Warriors’ second-round loss to the Lakers, he inked Green to a multiyear extension that included a player option. Even this year, days after declaring his desire to maneuver under the tax, Lacob kicked the tires on a potential trade for LeBron James. But after a 10th-place finish and a play-in loss, will Lacob be willing to pour even more money into the team, especially as the harsher penalties of the new CBA take effect?
If the Warriors intend to get both cheaper and better, they’ll be attempting to pull off one of the most difficult balancing acts in the modern NBA.
Can the Warriors build another winner around Steph?
This season, Curry showed his usual signs of brilliance, along with occasional bouts of fatigue carrying Golden State’s offense. On Tuesday, he scored a team-high 22 points, while no other starter scored more than 12, highlighting his need for more offensive firepower. Curry will turn 37 next season and will still be playing in a Western Conference full of young upstart teams. There’s little precedent for a player his age winning the title as the top dog. Kareem won three titles in his late 30s with the Lakers but played second fiddle to Magic Johnson. LeBron won in 2020, at age 35, but that was after an extended layoff amid a global pandemic. Now in that age range, Curry will have to learn how to extend his championship window on the fly.
“I was just thinking about that,” he tells me. “There’s not many answers that come to mind. I know that I might not be in the middle of my prime, but I’m really close to the level that people expect, that I expect in terms of winning at the highest level. I don’t know how many people have been in that position—obviously Bron.”
The Warriors have two broad paths available to them: One path requires a total reimagining of the team around Curry, which could require moving on from Thompson or Green. The other, and more likely, path would be keeping one of the greatest hoop touring acts of all time together and hoping that more marginal upgrades, player development, and home run draft picks can breathe new life into their dynasty.
Both paths come with drawbacks. The first would require breaking up the greatest Warriors team of all time, which Steph has never wanted. The second risks more premature endings like Tuesday night—and Steph surely doesn’t want that either.
But at the end of a trying season, Steph still believes title contention is on the horizon—and that the Warriors have avenues to get there.
“I’m always going to believe that,” Curry says. “But I know there’s a lot that goes into being serious contenders. Because this league has changed dramatically. We’re two years removed from the last championship, but we have to do better. Whatever that means, it should be a collective effort with the powers that be in this franchise to make it happen.”
