The Warriors and Stephen Curry discussed a contract extension last offseason, when Curry was eligible to tack on three years to the two seasons still left on his deal. However, the two sides ultimately didn’t reach an agreement, opting to put those talks off for at least another year, as president of basketball operations Bob Myers told Tim Kawakami of The Athletic.
“It was just one of those things, let’s just talk about it,” Myers said. “It was such a rushed season and preseason … and with what was going on and dealing with Klay (Thompson’s Achilles injury) and all the things we had going on. … We just very congenially said, ‘Let’s talk about it next season.'”
As Kawakami notes, when the 2021/22 season begins, Curry will be eligible to add four seasons to his remaining one. That extra year could be important to the two-time MVP, who recently turned 33.
“In his mind, the length matters,” Myers said. “It wasn’t contentious. Nobody was upset. It was just, ‘Hey, let’s talk about this at the end of next season.’ And I think that probably meant everybody feels good about the situation. No one was feeling badly about it.”
While it’s no guarantee that the Warriors will offer Curry four fully guaranteed maximum-salary years when they revisit talks this offseason, such a deal would be an incredibly lucrative one, worth more than $215MM over four seasons.
Myers touched on a few other topics of note during his conversation with Kawakami. Here are some of the highlights:
On whether he expects Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber to continue approving massive payrolls and tax bills:
“I’ve been fortunate enough to work for Joe and Peter, where winning has always been the No. 1 goal and the No. 1 mission in how we’ve moved forward in all our decisions. But at the same time, it’s not ‘spend recklessly.’ This year, we haven’t or didn’t use the ($9.3MM disabled player exception), haven’t used it yet. Didn’t find a reason to use it, didn’t feel like it was worth it to use it.
“Joe has always (said) to me, when the question has been asked, ‘Do you want to do this?’ The response from him has been, ‘Does this help us win?’ We’ll see when the time comes, if it’s a move that Joe thinks makes a lot of sense and economic ramifications are there but worth it, he’ll usually do it. But again, not to no end, not to a $400MM payroll or something of that nature.”
On Kelly Oubre‘s comments suggesting he wouldn’t want to come off the bench next season if he re-signs with the Warriors:
“Obviously, (head coach) Steve (Kerr) had to speak to (Andre) Iguodala about coming off the bench, a very, very accomplished player. And when you win, everybody seems content and happy. But I have no problem with players that want to start. They all want to start and they probably should feel that. I don’t think that’s an issue. I don’t think that prevents a guy from signing, if he wants to be in a certain situation, if he feels the money is fair, commensurate with what he deserves.”
On the Warriors’ 2021 draft strategy, and the top-three protected Timberwolves first-rounder the team controls:
“If we do end up getting a couple picks and the Minnesota pick does convey, that’s going to be an attractive thing in a trade or an attractive thing to look at. Because it’s rare that you have, if we do get the Minnesota pick and our pick, to have picks kind of in that high range, multiple picks. We’ll see. When that time comes, we’ll look at drafting, we’ll look at trading, we’ll look at everything on the table.”
