STEPHEN CURRY'S WARMUP routine has always been worth the price of admission. It is a ridiculous, but deliberate, mix of dribbling and shooting antics that could seem unserious if it were anyone but Curry performing them.
With earbuds in and longtime assistant coach Bruce Fraser running him through, Curry entertains himself and the gallery that shows up to watch him every night. Most of the shots, regardless of length or difficulty, still go in.
It was the afternoon of April 12. Hours before tip, Curry took to his proceedings at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles before the final game of the regular season against the Los Angeles Clippers. It was a meaningless contest, with the Golden State Warriors already locked into 10th place in the Western Conference.
Curry was just a week into his return after missing 27 games with knee pain that had lingered far longer than anyone, including him, had anticipated.
On the floor, the moon shots and 30-footers, those that for years had energized him and the team, this time seemed to be doing the opposite. At one point Curry was breathing so hard he paused to wipe sweat off his brow and catch his breath.
Then, without warning, Curry broke into a dance just outside the right elbow. It was more than a shimmy but less than a twerk. He smiled.
Then, Curry spotted injured forward Jimmy Butler walking to the court and zipped the ball over to him. Butler's right knee, still wrapped tightly with a brace after surgery to repair a torn ACL in early February, caught the pass out by the 3-point line.
The shot was on target. The arc was good. For a half second it seemed like it might go in. But like so much in this star-crossed Warriors season that finally came to an end Friday night with a loss to the Phoenix Suns in the play-in tournament, the shot fell well short of the basket.
It was an air ball.
Curry and Butler doubled over in laughter. It was all they could do.
The season-ending injuries to Butler and Moses Moody, the giant heating pack Curry needed just to get through games. The miserable 37-win season that somehow still gave them a puncher's chance at earning a playoff berth. The very real possibility that this decade-long dynastic run might finally be over.
"Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong this year," said forward Draymond Green. "And yet we still have a chance. ... Because when you have a leader like Steve Kerr, who always knows the right thing to say, and a leader like Steph Curry, that you can always rally around ... anything is possible."
Three nights later, Curry showed, again, what is still possible after all this time, scoring 35 points in 36 minutes in their play-in, elimination win over the Clippers, while Green stifled Kawhi Leonard in the fourth quarter, securing a win Kerr called one of his favorite wins of the entire era.
"For one night, we're us," Kerr said. "We're champions again."
Two nights later, their season ended at the hands of an upstart, younger Phoenix Suns team. The Warriors lost 111-96. It wasn't competitive. Curry scored just 17 points, on 25% shooting.
It was the Warriors' third consecutive appearance in the play-in tournament, and their second time in three years missing the playoffs entirely. Inside the organization, they've long known that, despite stretches of play that remind everyone of their game-changing past, like that fourth quarter against the Clippers, this team, with two aging icons on the wrong side of the actuarial table, is nowhere near good enough to win a title.
As their season came to a close, the trio of elder statesmen still fighting for it gathered on the sideline, perhaps for the final time.
"I don't know what's going to happen next," Kerr said Friday night. His right arm was on Green's shoulder, his left on Curry's. "But I love you guys to death."
KERR PURPOSELY DIDN'T seek an extension last summer and said he was comfortable coaching out the final year of his deal. After Friday's elimination, Kerr said he will take some time before reconvening to discuss his future with controlling owner Joe Lacob and general manager Mike Dunleavy.
Kerr placed a timeline of about one to two weeks, which is in alignment with management's desired urgency. Team sources said they'd like to give Kerr the necessary time, but need to get the coaching situation settled quickly before pivoting to other pressing roster and strategic matters.
If Kerr returns, they will discuss staffing and what management believes is a need for philosophy tweaks, team sources said, focusing on diversifying the offensive attack and winning the analytically friendly possession battle more often. There has been a feeling internally that they were too reliant this season on 3-point variance.
Those aside, there's also overarching organizational disappointment about the 13-15 start when the Warriors were healthy, the late-game inconsistencies, the incessant turnover problem and the fact that they won only 37 games in a season in which one-third of the league was tanking.
"We didn't find it earlier in the season," Kerr said Friday night. "We were blowing some games we should've closed out. I could've done a better job. But when Jimmy got hurt, it felt like we were finding it."
After their inauspicious start, they'd won 12 of their next 16 games. Still, the charge had barely moved them in the Western Conference standings, going from No. 9 to No. 8.
If Kerr departs, the front office is expected to open up a wider search that would include several external candidates -- perhaps even exploring the college ranks, though there has been an acknowledgment about the complications of delivering Curry, Green and Butler an inexperienced head coach in their final years, team sources said.
But a Kerr exit could also signal the start of a much deeper, sweeping shift. That path has been described by several team sources as an "organizational reset" and could lead to further notable changes to the roster and coaching staff.
The contracts of many of Kerr's current assistant coaches are expiring, and one of his trusted front-of-the-bench voices, Chris DeMarco, already left to take the New York Liberty head coaching position. Willie Green, the former Pelicans head coach and one-time Kerr assistant, is a possibility to return to the staff, league sources said.
Curry and Green have voiced both publicly and privately a preference for Kerr to remain.
"I want Coach to be happy," Curry said. "I want him to be excited for the job. I want him to believe he's the right guy for the job. I want him to have an opportunity to enjoy what he does, whatever that means for him. Everybody's plan is their own. He knows how I feel about him."
Kerr is 60. He has lived a charmed and, in many ways, complete NBA existence. He has maintained to those around him that he enjoys the job, but there are times those close to him theorize he's burnt-out. There are other times they say he is scouting and teaching and conversing about basketball with as much passion as ever.
The Warriors won four titles, set an NBA record with 73 regular-season wins and made six Finals in his tenure, but the dynasty days are long gone. They've missed the playoffs four out of the past seven seasons, failing to advance past the second round since 2022.
Kerr told ESPN in the season's final week he genuinely felt it was somewhere around 50-50 whether he'd ultimately remain or depart, believing that the postseason time away from the grind and conversations with Lacob, Dunleavy and Curry would be influential.
His Friday night news conference made public many of the conflicting thoughts he has been sharing in private.
"I still love coaching, but I get it," Kerr said. "These jobs all have an expiration date. There is a run that happens, and when the run ends, sometimes it's time for new blood and new ideas."
More than anything, team sources said, Lacob will want to hear Kerr express a hunger to continue executing the nitty-gritty details of the daily job, not a reluctant acceptance that he should continue coaching purely out of loyalty to Green and Curry and the sentimentality of riding out this era.
That's why, if Kerr decides he wants to return, there's a desire from management for him to sign a multiyear deal, team sources said, instead of setting up a last dance farewell tour that would feel more about emotion and nostalgia than wins.
On the management side, the Warriors are committed to Dunleavy and he remains committed to them, despite external noise about Chicago's front office vacancies. Dunleavy quietly signed an extension in recent months, team sources said, and has multiple years left on his deal.
There's an internal belief that Dunleavy has drafted well, and despite a no-nonsense and at times harsher approach than his predecessor, Bob Myers, he has gained the trust and ear of the figures that matter -- Lacob, Kerr, Curry, Green and Butler, who have all only talked well of him.
IN EARLY MARCH, Curry was on a search for information about why his right knee still wasn't healing. He had been out for weeks. MRIs continued to confirm no structural issue, but it kept hurting and swelling whenever he cranked up his court activity. He flew to Los Angeles to see a specialist.
While he was there, he visited Butler, who himself was a month removed from surgery. Butler was spending his weekends at home in San Diego and his weeks rehabbing at a facility in Los Angeles.
So there the two were on a March afternoon in the middle of an NBA pennant chase -- $113.7 million in combined salary, 46.6 combined points per game, 18 combined All-Star appearances -- performing tedious recovery work. There was Butler, advancing in his recovery to toe raises. And there was Curry, trying to figure out how to run and cut without his knee "blowing up," as he termed it.
This, those in the facility said, was a dark yet poetic encapsulation of a season and perhaps an era fading from view. While the two increasingly close friends -- Butler, 36, and Curry, 38 -- commiserated about the physical challenges ahead, the leftover rotation -- loaded with second-rounders, undrafted rookies and two-way players -- was piling up losses during a particularly helpless 3-11 stretch, tumbling down to 10th in the conference standings.
"Jimmy's injury changed everything," Kerr said. "[It] derailed us. When you look at the rest of the West, the league, teams are loaded."
The optimists in the Warriors organization like to point out that the team had the fourth-most wins in the league from when Butler joined the team in a trade from the Miami Heat in February 2025 to his ACL injury in mid-January of this year.
In other words, the thinking goes, if Butler can come back in the middle of next season and rejoin Curry and Green, the Warriors still have the backbone of a contender.
The pessimists might point out that Curry, Butler and Green constitute nearly 80% of the team's payroll next season, leaving little room, beyond the margins, for dramatic change to a roster that needs significant regular-season help, considering the age and questionable availability of their core.
Curry has one season and $62.6 million left on his current contract but is eligible for an extension of up to two seasons this summer.
Curry said after Friday's elimination that he intends to play "multiple" more seasons and "for sure" would be interested in talking extension. Team sources indicated a plan to discuss an extension with Curry later in the summer.
Butler, meanwhile -- who will be on the final season of an expiring $56.8 million deal -- isn't eligible for an extension until next February, which is around the time he could be returning from his ACL tear. There's an expectation that he will focus on rehabbing, rediscovering his form and then sorting out his NBA future the following summer.
Green's contract is more pressing. The 36-year-old has a one-year, $27.6 million player option for 2026-27. It is anticipated that he will either exercise it or, if the Warriors agree, do a decline-and-extend, lowering next season's salary figure in exchange for more years of security.
Some in the organization have pointed to Green's concerning offensive splits this season (109.4 rating when he's on the floor, 114.7 when he is off), but management maintains a belief in his high-stakes defensive impact and several in the organization have praised his attitude, approach and leadership through an adverse season.
Green was in trade talks at the deadline for Giannis Antetokounmpo and could be again this summer for salary matching purposes. Still, team sources insist there is no desire or mandate to trade Green and, if a decline-and-extend helps the front office add to the roster in a useful way, it is something they'd discuss.
"I'm not retiring from basketball," Green said. "I still love to play. I still think I'm pretty decent. But this league is interesting. You don't really control everything. For me, I hope I've done enough to be here. If I ain't done enough, I don't want to be here. I don't ever want, 'Yo, we just going to keep him around because of what he's done before.' What can I still do?"
TO THE OUTSIDE world, the night of Feb. 4 was one of humility and acceptance for the Warriors.
Acceptance that their vigorous pursuit of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo was over -- at least until the offseason. Humility in acknowledging that the painful, awkward standoff with disgruntled former lottery pick Jonathan Kuminga ended with flipping him for Kristaps Porzingis, who hadn't been able to stay on the court for most of the past year after a mysterious viral illness.
There had been more beneath the surface. Besides Butler, they'd again failed in what they'd publicly stated for years was their mission: landing big fish to better maximize their title chances with Curry. Just in the past two years they'd tried to acquire LeBron James, Paul George, Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Antetokounmpo.
And then there was Kawhi Leonard.
Ambition flickered inside Warriors headquarters as the trade deadline approached. They were waiting, league sources said, for word from the Los Angeles Clippers on a trade concept involving Leonard.
The Warriors had called about his availability a handful of times over the years and been quickly rebuffed. But the Clippers had signaled a possible sea change when they traded James Harden and engaged with multiple teams, including the Warriors, on what became a trade with the Indiana Pacers for Ivica Zubac.
The Clippers hadn't given much oxygen to the Warriors' pursuit. But they hadn't given an outright rejection, either, and it gave the Warriors hope they might be able to hit one more big shot in an era defined by them. The Clippers brass brought the idea up top to governor Steve Ballmer for discussion.
By morning the Warriors had their answer. It was a no.
Each side has their version of how serious the talks were. Golden State believes the Clippers were at least considering it, which team sources said included strong draft capital and multiple players the Warriors valued. But this story has been told before. The Warriors also believed the Clippers were considering a free agency sign-and-trade pitch for Paul George in the summer of 2024, despite the Clippers having a wildly different opinion of how the talks went and the value of the package offered.
Some within the Warriors organization believe a Leonard trade was close. Others were skeptical. On the Clippers side, it was a steadfast no from Ballmer, who wields the ultimate hammer.
Either way, sources said there's an expectation the Warriors could reengage the Clippers on Leonard's availability this offseason, compile another offer for Antetokounmpo and test the waters again on soon-to-be free agent LeBron James. They could also bring back Porzingis at a lower price than his $30.7 million expiring contract or negotiate a way to use him as a building block in a sign-and-trade for another big name.
What is perhaps more relevant to their transformation is lottery night. This turbulent season delivered them the 11th-best odds, giving them a 9.4% chance of jumping up in the top four of a loaded draft and a 77.6% chance of remaining 11th, where there should still be plenty of talent available.
Lottery luck isn't typically the plotted path for a team in its contention window. It's preserved for those in the growth stages of a rebuild. But that is the Warriors' current reality. In the late stages of Curry's career, they are in the construction zone, rebuilding while employing a franchise legend. One league source compared it to Kobe Bryant's final seasons with the Lakers.
"I've only been in one locker room for the last 17 years," Curry said. "Before you win the title, you're building the foundation for what a championship team looks like -- even though you have no idea what that really meant. Then you accomplish it. Then everything else is based off of that. It's been that way since 2015.
"I think we can reshape the narrative, knowing in the back of our mind that [a championship] is the ultimate goal. But we have to get back to the basics of what makes a good basketball team, a competitive basketball team every single night, realize how hard it is to win in this league. Can we rethink how we do things with the foundation that we've established?
"We don't have to keep saying 'championship, championship, championship' every day, even though we've experienced that. Can we build the foundation again?"
