Stephen Curry Has Until June 30, 2027

The seventh annual Workday Charity Classic was played on Monday at the Palo Alto Hills Golf & Country Club. It raises money for Eat. Learn. Play., the foundation Stephen and Ayesha Curry run, which invests in children in Oakland. Mike Dunleavy was there, and Kirk Lacob, and Kirk's younger brother Kent, who left the front office last summer after a decade in it. Steve Young and Joe Thornton played.

Curry had become eligible two days earlier to extend his contract, and Dalton Johnson of NBC Sports Bay Area asked him about it there.

"There's no question I want to be here the rest of my career, and I'm pretty sure that's going to happen," Curry said.

Then: "The deal and the contract stuff will happen at the right time, and we're not letting it be a distraction from our preparation for the season, and the fact that the team we're coming back with has a lot of familiarity."

And: "The goal stays the same. Extension stuff, we'll figure that out at the right time. But I'm ready for Year 18."

There is no date anywhere in that. Nothing about the calendar he is standing on requires there to be one.

Saturday#

He became eligible on Saturday, August 29. Anthony Slater had the date at ESPN on August 11, eighteen days ahead of it, in the same piece where Dunleavy said he expected Curry to finish his career here.

The contract underneath it pays him $62,587,158 for the coming season, which is the figure on Spotrac's Golden State cap sheet and which everyone rounds to $62.6 million. It is the largest annual salary in the league. It is the eighteenth season of his career and the last year he is under contract for anything.

The most he can add to it right now is two years and $136.7 million. That ceiling is not a negotiating position, it is arithmetic, and it reproduces exactly: five percent more than this season is $65,716,516, eight percent more than that is $70,973,837, and the two together are $136,690,353.

The reason the ceiling is two years and not four has a name. The NBA's Over-38 Rule will not let him be under contract for more than three years total, counting the season he is about to play. He was born in Akron on March 14, 1988. He is 38 now and turns 39 in March, and there is a provision in the labor agreement with his age in the title of it.

The menu#

On September 1, on ESPN's Hoop Collective podcast, Slater described how the club is handling the thing it has spent all summer saying it wants.

"They're adamant they're not negotiating with Steph Curry right now," he said. "They are saying, 'You can do this, you can do this, you can do this. If you want the one-year max, if you want the two-year max, if you wanna wait. Here's your menu. Pick off your menu.'"

He added: "I do expect him to want to make a decision relatively soon. But also, from what I've been told from the Warriors' side, (there's) no rush, and he's eligible all the way until June 30."

Dunleavy had put it less colorfully and on the record three weeks earlier, in a virtual availability Slater covered on August 11. "Ultimately it's his call, his decision, whether that's allowing his contract to run out and move on," the general manager said. "Look, if he comes to me and wants to be moved, [controlling owner] Joe [Lacob] and I will talk it through. We wouldn't love it. But he's earned the right to do what he wants."

Nick Friedell reached the same place from the outside in late August, in a piece at The Athletic. Hoops Rumors' account of it, published August 28, is that the overwhelming likelihood is he re-ups, and that the ball is in Curry's court because the team will likely give him whatever structure he asks for.

Put those three together and the interesting question changes shape. If the club will write whatever he wants, then one year against two is not a reading of a front office's cap position. It is a reading of what a 38-year-old intends to do with the end of his career, and he is the only person who has that information.

What waiting is worth#

Here is the part of the calendar that does not behave the way a deadline behaves.

His eligibility to extend runs until his contract expires, on June 30, 2027. Those are the same day. There is no date in between the two, which means there is no point between now and then at which the option in front of him gets worse, and no moment where a clock runs out and something is lost.

Past it, by Slater's reporting, the option improves. If Curry declines to extend, reaches free agency in July 2027 and signs there instead, he can sign for three years rather than two. Golden State projects to carry more than $100 million in cap room that summer. That is the club's flexibility rather than his, and it is why nothing about him waiting is a problem the club needs solved.

So the silence since Saturday is not evidence of anything, in either direction. A man with ten months of runway who says the deal will happen at the right time has described the situation accurately. Two of the calls on this site's board turn on the same fact and disagree with each other: one says he signs a one-year extension, resolving on opening night, and Jamie Silva's says nothing is signed at all when Golden State opens on October 21. They cannot both be right and they can both be wrong, which is roughly what ten months of no pressure produces.

Four weeks#

There is one clock in this that he does not set.

Curry played 43 games last season. He has played fewer only twice in seventeen seasons, five games in 2019-20 and 26 in 2011-12. He was out for more than two months with a case of runner's knee that he has described as a new norm. He averaged 26.6 points, the fifth-best figure of his career, and was named to a twelfth All-Star Game, and Golden State finished 37-45, won a play-in game in Los Angeles and lost the next one in Phoenix. He has appeared in 1,069 regular-season games.

"Hopefully we can be healthy and just have a chance to show what we're capable of, myself included, missing so many games last year," he told Johnson on Monday.

He was four weeks from training camp when he said it. Golden State opens the season on October 21 at the Lakers. Between now and June 30 there is an entire season. It is the one thing on this calendar that will not wait for either of them, and it is where the answer to what those two years are worth has to come from. A guard who plays 70 games in his eighteenth season is a different proposition from one who plays 43, and nobody, including him, knows which of the two is coming.

Johnson wrote that Steve Young and Joe Thornton were not ready to see Curry trade the hardwood for a golf course yet, and that Ayesha Curry shares it. "Of course," she said. "Steph is the hardest-working man in the room. He has no days off. He hasn't stopped since last season ended. He's ready. He's ready to get out there. I think we're going to be in for some fun surprises over the next couple of years."

Called Shots#

One: Stephen Curry does not sign a contract extension with the Golden State Warriors on or before June 30, 2027. He uses the whole window and signs nothing inside it. Price: +250.

This is not the timing call already on the board. Silva's row scores a 53-day stretch that ends on October 21; mine scores all 305 days. A signature in November would make his right and mine wrong, which is the test that they are different questions. It is against the grain and it is meant to be: Slater expects a decision relatively soon and the account of Friedell says the overwhelming likelihood is that he re-ups. My reasoning is the structure rather than the sentiment. Nothing about waiting costs him anything, the season is the only new information either party is going to get, and the free-agent route at the far end pays a third year that the extension route cannot. Falsified by any extension signed or reported signed on or before June 30, 2027. Resolves July 1, 2027.

His contract ends on June 30, 2027. The window to extend it closes on the same day. There is no date in between the two.

On Monday he was at a golf course in Palo Alto, raising money for children in Oakland, and he said the contract would happen at the right time. He did not say when that was, and nothing on the calendar asks him to.

Curry's quotations and Ayesha Curry's: Dalton Johnson, NBC Sports Bay Area, published August 31 at 2:43 p.m. Pacific and datelined Palo Alto, from the seventh annual Workday Charity Classic at the Palo Alto Hills Golf & Country Club that Monday, August 31. The $62.6 million salary, the Over-38 Rule, the two-year and $136.7 million maximum and the 43 games are from the same piece; the exact salary of $62,587,158 is Spotrac's Golden State cap table, read September 2. The August 29 eligibility date and the Dunleavy quotations: Anthony Slater, ESPN, August 11, from Dunleavy's virtual availability that Tuesday. Slater's Hoop Collective remarks of September 1, including the menu, the June 30 outside date, the three-year free-agent alternative and the 2027 cap room: Luke Adams, Hoops Rumors, September 1. Nick Friedell's read: Rory Maher, Hoops Rumors, August 28, which is that outlet's account of a piece at The Athletic. Birth date and the 1,069 career games: Basketball-Reference. The 2011-12 and 2019-20 games played: ESPN's player stats page, which agrees with Johnson. The October 21 opener at the Lakers: the Warriors' own schedule release of August 11.