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By Megan Armstrong
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"The Baby Faced Assassin" just turned 38 and is four years removed from his fourth NBA title, but Stephen Curry must feel like it was ages ago that his Golden State Warriors were the league's crowned dynasty.
Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and head coach Steve Kerr led the Warriors to four straight NBA Finals appearances from 2014 to 2018, winning three, including back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018.
Now, the Warriors are 34-38 and set to play in their third Play-In Tournament in as many years as the Western Conference's 10th seed. Curry hasn't played since Jan. 30 with patella-femoral pain syndrome/bone bruising, commonly known as "runner's knee."
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The Warriors said over the weekend that Curry "continues to make good progress" and would begin live action and team practice this week. Curry is supposed to be re-evaluated soon, now that the Warriors' six-game road trip ended on Tuesday.
Regardless of whether Curry plays again this season, FS1's First Things First co-host Nick Wright predicts "a quiet close" to Curry's era in Golden State — assuming LeBron James doesn't join the Warriors next season.
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Wright cited 36-year-old Jimmy Butler coming off a torn ACL suffered in January and the low odds that Golden State lands Giannis Antetokounmpo. (Golden State reportedly aggressively pursued Antetokounmpo at the February trade deadline.)
"I think this is the happier way to view these last few years for Steph and the Warriors," Wright said. "Their last moment — and by the timeline of basically every small player ever other than John Stockton before Steph, it would've been really their last moment — was the title four years ago. That was the — 'Oh, man! They had one more great run in them!' That was it."
Wright added, "By the way, Steph was 34. That's old for NBA guys his size. The fact that he was still 28 [points] a game when healthy this year is a remarkable testament to who he is. But the Warriors didn't handle the [Jonathan] Kuminga, [Moses] Moody, [James] Wiseman assets properly to try to be able to somehow have a third or fourth phase of this, and so it's going to go out with a whimper. That's what it is.
He's a great player, one of the greatest players ever, but that's how it ends."
Pre-injury, Curry averaged 27.2 points, 4.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds, and 1.1 steals across 39 starts.
The Warriors drafted Curry seventh overall in 2009. Since then, he has become a 12-time All-Star, an 11-time All-NBA player, a two-time NBA MVP, a two-time scoring champion, and a member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.
Per Spotrac, Curry's current contract with the Warriors runs through the 2026-27 season.
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