Stephen Curry has proven himself yet again to be an enemy of the proletariat and an implacable foe of the Third American Dream. And this time, the cost to him and his burgeoning empire was a mere $20,000,000 (give or take the odd day trip to Monte Carlo), the difference between what he could have made over the next two seasons, $136.7 million, and what he’ll get. What a sap.
Curry just re-upped with Golden State The Corporate Name, formerly GSW Sports LLC, for two more years plus a player option that he would be a monumental berk not to exercise ahead of the season he’ll turn 41. His 2026–27 salary of $62.6 million will drop to $55.7 million in 2027–28, and $60.2 million in the optional 2028–29 season, in an act that upholds two mostly discarded myths about team/player contracts in the modern age: one, that there is such a thing as a hometown discount, and two, that money can be left on the table without psychic damage to the payee.
Curry’s motivation, as he has stated too many times for cynical hyenas like you, is to leave the boys upstairs some salary-cap room to improve the level of his playmates. This is known as the Reverse Kawhi Leonard, in which someone does work for less money as opposed to doing less work for more money, and also the Backwards Ballmer, in which the salary cap is a thing to be heeded rather than used as loo roll. It’s such an old-fashioned play that they may as well move the franchise to Hooterville Junction and make all the customers leave their shoes at the door.
Before you get too diabetic about this, let us make clear that this is not proof that Curry is better than all the rest of us. He made a choice that he prefers, not a sacrifice. Per Spotrac, he will have made $649 million in total NBA earnings by the end of that optional third season, making him the league’s all-time leader in that category and the first player ever to crest the $600 million mark. That means his eight-figure magnanimity is the equivalent of a three-percent tip. But it is proof that he is better than most of us, because we know how many times we’ve stiffed the waiter at Red Lobster.
Still, we imagine that at some point he will stop making jump shots from the lobby for our amusement and will be welcomed into the boardroom at Golden State Corporate if only out of shame, as he more than anyone else is responsible for an enterprise whose owners bought it for $450 million in 2010 having increased in value roughly 24 times over since then. He’s owed that, and much more besides.
But even if you total that with his array of sponsorships and his ownership in Unanimous Media, Curry isn’t close to having enough scratch to become, say, an NBA governor, which is to say he won’t own controlling interest in anyone’s team barring the bursting of the sports bubble, at which point why the hell would you want controlling interest in any team? One supposes he could make a run at owning the Lakers, since they’re up for sale every Fourth of July or so, but he’d have to take in partners to do it, and they would have to buy in at such a price that none of them would want a piece of an operation that someone else gets to run.
All this means that Curry can’t buy enough of any NBA team to be the boss, which blows any number of holes in his grand plan to become a member in good standing of the elite Titanium Exploiter class. He could get in at the Gold Level, which means buying the Las Vegas Aces or Charlotte FC, but then he wouldn’t be able to put his feet on other employees while sitting suiteside.
Too bad too, because for all the laudatory things that can be said about Curry even with this much money at his command and these many accomplishments on his CV, he has not yet managed the one leap that would make him a true monolith: membership in the Oppressor/Bastards club. For that, you need to be, well, an, ick, owner. If that’s the reason he kicked back that stray $20 mil, to keep his soul where he can reach it in difficult moments, then he really is better than the rest of us.
But it’s early yet. The mean age for sports owners is the mid- to late-60s, and most haven’t become full-fledged thieving weasels until their mid-50s. In other words, he’s got a decade and change to turn. We neither assume nor project anything either way.
In the meantime, what we have is this. If all it costs for us to still think nice things about Stephen Curry is a three-percent tip on his career earnings, the cost of two midsized mansions or one of the Canary Islands, well, few better bargains have been struck.
Recommended