NBA Hater Report: Stephen Curry is suffering from the ego of a sequel-obsessed owner

Some Golden State Warriors fans can be funny. They go from rooting for one of the worst organizations in basketball to a full-on dynasty and still their greatest joy in life seems to be tweeting about how dumb the people in charge are. Among their many gripes ...

• They've botched the development of young players.
• They've allowed Draymond Green to get away with murder. 
• Steve Kerr has become micro-ball obsessed. 
• The two-timeline plan is an ongoing debacle.
• They all but refuse to trade any draft capital. 

And the chief complaint, as a result of all this, is of course that the Warriors are wasting what is left of Stephen Curry's championship equity. Rather than pushing all in for a guy who clearly remains capable of captaining an honest contender, they're seemingly content to sit back and wait for him to die on the superstar vine. 

Stephen Curry's championship window with the Warriors has probably closed, one way or another

Brad Botkin

Full disclosure: I'm a Warriors fan. Grew up on Run TMC. Fell back in love with We Believe. I have levied every one of these critiques at one point or another, often in the form of firing remotes off the wall, and in most every case, once I'm removed from the throes of competitive passion, I can admit to how stupid and spoiled I sound. Four titles is three more than any Warriors fan could've ever dreamed of. All good things end. 

But when people become this invested in a story, they care about the way it ends. And when it ends. The latter can be a thin needle to thread. Call it quits too late and you risk ending up like the Bucks. They should've traded Giannis a year ago. Maybe even two. But, instead, in an act of sheer desperation, they paid Damian Lillard $113 million to go back to Portland so they could give another $100 million to Myles Turner in an effort to extend a story that was clearly over. 

The Warriors have done the opposite. They've spent the last half decade prioritizing post-Steph plans largely at the behest of Joe Lacob, the venture-capitalist owner who likes to see himself as the author of this whole thing and is desperate to prove himself capable of writing an equally successful sequel. 

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that 80% of [everything the Warriors have achieved] is [because of] Steph Curry," Andre Iguodala has posited. "I know Joe doesn't like when I say it that way, but it's the truth."

Joe doesn't like it when I say it that way. 

In other words, Joe wants credit. And he knows anything that happens while Curry is still on his team is going to be credited, rightfully, to Curry. It smells of the late Bulls GM Jerry Krause saying: "Players and coaches alone don't win championships, organizations do." 

It's true, good organizations matter, if only because bad organizations can screw up great players. But let's not get it twisted: the Bulls were a dynasty because they had Michael Jordan, and Krause didn't like that sentiment. He wanted to believe the Bulls, this great organization, could win after Jordan, too. They haven't come close. 

Lacob wants his story -- not the Warriors' story, but his story -- to end differently. And so, while Curry was busy winning another championship in 2022, Lacob had already set about casting new characters for his little "Light Years" script two years earlier. From Logan Murdock of The Ringer:

In recent years, Lacob's grip on basketball decisions has clouded Golden State's future around Curry. In 2020, he grew enamored of James Wiseman after a predraft workout, pushing the team to draft the 6-foot-11 center instead of flipping the no. 2 pick for an established player. 

The following year, [Lacob] pushed his front office to draft Jonathan Kuminga over Trey Murphy III, whom many on the staff pushed for, seeing the 18-year-old as a potential star who could both help Curry in the short term and then fill the seats of Chase Center long after Curry was gone. 

This is the problem when rich owners get close enough to the cool kids: they think they can be one of them. Jimmy Johnson walked away from a Cowboys dynasty because Jerry Jones wanted to play GM, and now the Cowboys are the only NFC team who hasn't qualified for a single conference championship in the last 30 years. 

The lesson? Stay in your lane. Sign the checks. Let the basketball people make the basketball decisions. But no, Lacob thinks he's an NBA scout now. Give Curry an established player for the Wiseman pick and Murphy III over Kuminga and there's a good chance he has five titles by now with time to still catch Jordan's six. 

That's why fans are mad. Because unlike Giannis and the Bucks, the Curry story should not be ending yet. The Warriors had all the ammo to continue arming him with a top-shelf roster, but Lacob doesn't want to fire any of his post-Steph bullets. The only reason they traded for Jimmy Butler was because it didn't cost them any future draft picks, as the future is where Lacob plans to shine. 

The funny thing is, Lacob thinks he's just going to find his next franchise player in the draft when, in fact, those players hardly exist in the first place, and even when they do, the Warriors have no recent history to indicate they are even capable of identifying who they are. 

• 2021: The Warriors don't just take Kuminga over Murphy III, they take him over Franz Wagner. And then, with a chance at a re-do seven picks later, they take Moses Moody at No. 14 when Murphy III was still on the board, as were Alperen Sengun and Jalen Johnson, both of whom have become All-Stars. 
• 2020: The Warriors can draft anyone not named Anthony Edwards. That list includes, among many others, LaMelo Ball, Tyrese Haliburton, Tyrese Maxey, Devin Vassell and Deni Avdija. But Lacob watches a Wiseman workout and thinks he's just found the next David Robinson. 
• 2018: The Warriors draft Jacob Evans, whose NBA career lasts less than two full seasons, five picks before Jalen Brunson. 

Of course, everyone knows the draft is a crapshoot even when experienced basketball minds are making the calls. Which is to say, it's not so much that the Warriors whiffed on these draft picks (a lot of other teams did, too), it's that when it became apparent that they had missed they waited too long to admit their mistakes. 

That's because, in large part, they were Lacob's mistakes. That's almost certainly why this Kuminga saga has gone on this long. That was Lacob's baby. Him and Wiseman. To sell early on those guys would've been a hit straight to Lacob's ego, which is determined to keep a post-Steph renaissance in play. 

That's the impetus of the two timelines when the reality is, whenever Curry is actually done, the Warriors will have max money and a premium franchise brand to go sign their next superstar or two. It's not to suggest they should do anything desperate. Even Curry has said that publicly. He believes superstars have an obligation to leave their franchise in good competitive standing rather than demand the type of cupboard cleanings that LeBron James is known for. That's commendable. 

But that doesn't mean Lacob doesn't have and hasn't long had, his priorities backward. Curry should be the focus. He's the reason for all this. The four championships. Your $10 billion franchise. And he remains a world-class player the likes of which you will never stumble into again in your life, even as, in 2017, Lacob reportedly had to be talked about of low-balling Curry on his next contract. 

From Marcus Thompson II:

Warriors owner Joe Lacob was considering offering Curry a contract below the max, even though Curry has been one of the most underpaid players in all of sports over the last three seasons. Warriors general manager Bob Myers kept Lacob from bringing a reduced offer to the negotiating table, but it was enough of a thing that Myers reassured Curry of the franchise's commitment.

Seriously. That was a real thing. Joe Lacob didn't want to offer Stephen Freaking Curry a max contract in 2017. On some level, he has always believed this to be his story. 

"[Owners] really do be thinking it's them [responsible for the championships] and not us [the players]. Joe, too," Iguodala has said. "They think they're going to build another [championship team] right after us…they think it's like 'oh we about to do it again'… We gotta wait six years to come be like I told you."

Lacob might not realize the "I told you" moment is coming, but it is. Only because Curry is so great were the Warriors able to add that accidental 2022 championship banner to the rafters. By that point, Lacob figured it would be Wiseman and Kuminga starring in his show. Meanwhile, it's still Curry. It's always been Curry. And Lacob's desire for recognition notwithstanding, it will always be Curry until he's officially done, at which point Lacob will long for these moments he should've been more focused on maximizing.