Steph Curry wants to remain a Warrior for life.
The only exception to that, he said, would be if Golden State eventually sunk to the bottom of the Western Conference and became a tanking team.
"It’s tough, right? I’ve always said I want to be a Warrior for life," Curry told Andscape's Marc J. Spears in a recent interview. "At this stage in my career, I feel like that’s possible. And you can still be a competitive, it doesn’t mean you guaranteed the championship. It doesn’t mean winning. Winning is always a priority, but obviously you’re realistic.
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" ... Let’s put it this way, it’s a longwinded way of saying that if it is a situation where you’re a bottom feeder and it’s just because you want to stay there, I’d have a hard time with that. But I don’t think that’s going to be the reality."
Warriors owner Joe Lacob also would like Curry to remain with the only NBA organization he's ever known. But after the emotional and franchise-altering departure of Klay Thompson, eyes have been opened and anything can happen.
But Lacob didn't take Curry's words to Spears to heart, and he certainly wasn't surprised by them.
"From what I've heard, all he said was what you'd expect, which is, 'I want to win.' And if we were a really bad team, I guess he would rethink whether he really wanted to finish his career here," Lacob said on "Audacy's The TK Show." "But that's not the case and he didn't expect that to be the case.
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"And certainly from many conversations I've had with Steph, and I'm pretty close to Steph, we talk a lot and we have a great relationship -- I think he's very comfortable with the path of the franchise and how hard we do try to put as good of a product out on the court as we can."
After winning their fourth title as a unit two seasons ago, the Warriors were bounced from the second round of the NBA playoffs the following year and failed to make the playoffs this season.
Curry certainly isn't showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon, but the clock still is ticking on the 36-year-old's future -- prompting that narrative for Lacob, general manager Mike Dunleavy and the Warriors organization to not "waste" Curry's final remaining years.
"I got to be honest -- I don't really think of that that way," Lacob said. "It matters to me every bit as much as it matters to our fans or for Steph. I don't ever want to be not trying or be bad. We're trying to win. I think people -- I hope -- understand that we as a group who bought this team 15 years ago have tried to be competitive as much as we can. It's really hard these days. It's gotten harder, I think we'd all agree. It's harder, but I'm pretty proud of the fact that we've been competitive most of the time.
"Our first few years, of course, took a while to build it up and then we had a great run and then we had those two horrific injuries. Won in 2022. And I think the last two years we were competitive but it was a really incredible year where the West was so good, we thought we'd win 50 games or so. If Draymond [Green] didn't get suspended, we think we would've done that.
"So we're trying to be as good as we can and same thing with this summer. We've made great improvements to the team and we're going to continue to do that at all times."
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