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Stephen Curry has made it clear that he wants to remain on a competitive team in the twilight of his storied NBA career, and Curry recently reaffirmed that desire while invoking Kobe Bryant's name.
Bryant, who won five NBA Championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, had become accustomed to making it to the playoffs. After all, he and the Lakers reached the postseason all but once in his first 16 seasons in the league.
However, Bryant's career did not end with much team success; after tearing his Achilles during the 2012-13 season, Bryant never played in another playoff game as the Lakers fell to the basement of the NBA. The Bryant-less Lakers were swept out of the 2013 playoffs and would fail to post another winning record in the regular season until LeBron James and Anthony Davis led the team to their first championship in a decade.
Over the final three seasons of Bryant's career, Los Angeles went 65-181, including a franchise-worst 17-65 in the final year of his career.
Curry, whose Warriors missed the playoffs last season for just the third time in 12 years, does not want to finish like that.
“Competitive,” Curry said of how he wants to finish his career on The TK Show. “I’ve seen different scenarios. Everybody talks about Kobe and his last years. From my vantage point, I’m comparing it to guys that only played for one franchise. Dirk [Nowitzki], Tim [Duncan], Kobe in our era. You think about, like, you don’t want to be in a situation the Lakers were in those last three years. I know he came off the Achilles injury, but it was [that] they’re a lottery team and it was more just like how many points can Kobe score down the stretch of his career. I don’t want to be in that scenario.”
Curry did say that he wants to remain realistic and understand that there is “probably not a move or a scenario where you’re going to walk into a series as the perennial favorite.” Still, he wants to at least be competitive, which the Warriors are trying to do something about.
Golden State, which currently sits in a three-way tie for ninth place in the Western Conference, recently traded several members of their roster, including Andrew Wiggins, in order to acquire Jimmy Butler from the Miami Heat. Additionally, the Warriors gave Butler a new deal, which keeps him under contract at more than $50 million per year until 2027. Curry is also under contract until 2027, when he would be 39 years old.
