Two things can be true:
1) Stephen Curry has no intention of leaving Golden State. He wants to finish his career there.
2) Curry, heading into his 18th NBA season at age 38, still wants to — and believes he can — compete and win at the highest level with the Warriors. Curry discussed that today on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio.
“You could ask me, you could ask Steve Kerr, you could ask Draymond (Green), we still believe that we can be that team. I think our challenge now is to reimagine what that looks like. And, you know, we have a veteran team. We need health on our side… You can’t just roll the ball out and be like, ‘Oh, we’re the Warriors. We’re gonna win.’ Nah, it’s let’s embrace the challenge of figuring out what this team needs to do to win. And as long as I’m on the squad, Draymond, Steve, I feel like we all have that shared mentality.”
Curry dealt with the health concerns personally last season, playing in just 43 games, and it wasn’t just Curry who had injury issues in Golden State last season, De’Anthony Melton (49 games), Al Horford (45) and Kristaps Porzingis (15) missed significant time. That doesn’t even get into Jimmy Butler (ACL) and Moses Moody (torn patellar tendon), who missed time last season and will each miss a chunk of this season, too.
Smith also asked Curry if he thinks about Father Time and being near the end of his career.
“Oh, I’m close to it. Look, Father Time is undefeated. We know that. And there’s an idea of how far can I push this high level of play that I got, what expectations I have for myself. What it really means at this point is it just changes the way that I prepare and my mindfulness of everything that I do to put into my game. I do train differently than I used to. There’s a different mentality of off season, in-season, all the things that need to go into me playing at the highest level…
“I think about the end of the road every day. I think that’s okay. I think that’s a motivator, right? Like, it’s an idea that…you can’t just not get whatever you need to do out of every single day and not have the most fun and joy when I’m out there playing because wins and losses, I’m the most competitive guy in the room, I wanna win every game, but I also wanna enjoy myself and what I’m doing. And I can only enjoy myself if I’m prepared for what I need to do out there on the floor. So it all kinda goes hand in hand. And if I don’t acknowledge the end, I think I won’t appreciate the now, if that makes sense.”
The rest of us need to heed that advice and savor watching Curry for the dwindling years we still can.
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