Steph Curry scoffs at ‘Warriors are too old to win 2026 NBA title’ narrative originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
The Warriors hear it all, no one more than Stephen Curry. Small ball no longer succeeds. The NBA has passed them by. They need to reset their roster. And then there is the strong undercurrent beneath the pessimism:
Their core is too old to win a championship.
Curry is 37, will be 38 when the 2025-26 playoffs arrive. Jimmy Butler will be 36, as will Draymond Green. The pessimism is fair, as no team with such a venerable core has won an NBA Finals.
Yet Curry has a response.
“We’ve heard it for even before the ‘22 championship,” he told NBC Sports Bay Area in South Lake Tahoe, where he was co-defending champion at the American Century Championship Celebrity golf tournament.
“We heard it, so to the point like it’s all it all comes down to health. I mean, if you look at every team . . . [Oklahoma City] had a relatively healthy run. And that’s what you need. Like, vets get through a regular season. Try to be in a position where we’re not chasing anything down the stretch.”
That was the case last season, when it’s reasonable to believe a furious pursuit of a playoff berth in the final two months caught up with the Warriors. They finished seventh in the Western Conference, landing in the play-in tournament they’d hoped to avoid.
After slipping past Memphis in the play-in game and taking a 3-1 series lead over the young, physical Rockets in the first round, the Warriors fumbled their chances for an extended break by losing Games 5 and 6. Winning Game 7 at Houston sent them into the conference semifinals with one full day to recover before Game 1 against the Timberwolves.
A Game 1 victory at Minnesota was tarnished by a hamstring injury sustained by Curry in the second quarter. Golden State was swept in Games 2 through 5.
“I know I got hurt,” Curry said. “But you just want to build off that for another year to build chemistry with Jimmy. You know Draymond will do his thing. Hopefully, some of our young guys are able to take another step. That’s every-year process. Just take what we did great, know we’re going to have to elevate that and do it more consistently for a whole year.”
If Curry seems optimistic to the level of fantasy, it’s significant to comprehend his mentality. He believes when others do not. He was too small to thrive at a major college, too delicate to thrive in the NBA and too susceptible to injury to have a long career.
He became a certified star as a sophomore in college, leading tiny Davidson College (generally about 2,000 students) to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Entering the NBA draft after his junior year and drafted seventh overall – behind two other point guards – in 2009, Curry won his first MVP award in 2015 and topped it the following season with the first unanimous vote in league history.
“It’s been that way my whole career, pretty much through high school,” Curry said of being doubted. “But those narratives take a life of their own. I just want to win. That’s it.”
Curry, who will be entering his 17th season in October, is a four-time NBA champion and the most influential basketball player since Michael Jordan.
Ever mindful of skeptics, he has built a Hall of Fame career banishing their lack of faith. After all he has accomplished, might he still be motivated by the doubters?
“At this point?” he replied. “It is white noise because I’m self-motivated enough. I don’t really need any outside motivation to the point where, like, I still love to play the game. And if I have that and I have great teammates and I have a great culture and organization, then I can just be in that space.
“I don’t really need any outside noise to motivate me.”
The oddsmakers generally place at least eight teams ahead of Golden State in the race to the 2026 championship. Five of those teams are in the West: The defending champion and still very young Thunder, the Denver Nuggets, the Rockets, the Timberwolves and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Even the Atlanta Hawks, perpetually mediocre in the vastly inferior Eastern Conference, are generating better odds than the Warriors.
All of which warms Curry’s heart.
“We’re excited about the opportunity,” he said. “You know. being in that fight . . . there is nothing like it. And we’ve kind of kicked away for the time for a long, long while. So hopefully we do it for another couple years.”
Before writing off the Warriors – or Curry – it might be worth remembering that early in his career, during the leanest of times, he vowed there would be a prosperous future. And delivered.
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Steph Curry scoffs at ‘Warriors are too old to win 2026 NBA title’ narrative
The Warriors hear it all, no one more than Stephen Curry. Small ball no longer succeeds. The NBA has passed them by. They need to reset their roster. And then there is the strong undercurrent beneath the pessimism:
Their core is too old to win a championship.
Curry is 37, will be 38 when the 2025-26 playoffs arrive. Jimmy Butler will be 36, as will Draymond Green. The pessimism is fair, as no team with such a venerable core has won an NBA Finals.
Yet Curry has a response.
SIGN UP HERE “We’ve heard it for even before the ‘22 championship,” he told NBC Sports Bay Area in South Lake Tahoe, where he was co-defending champion at the American Century Championship Celebrity golf tournament.
“We heard it, so to the point like it’s all it all comes down to health. I mean, if you look at every team . . . [Oklahoma City] had a relatively healthy run. And that’s what you need. Like, vets get through a regular season. Try to be in a position where we’re not chasing anything down the stretch.”
That was the case last season, when it’s reasonable to believe a furious pursuit of a playoff berth in the final two months caught up with the Warriors. They finished seventh in the Western Conference, landing in the play-in tournament they’d hoped to avoid.
After slipping past Memphis in the play-in game and taking a 3-1 series lead over the young, physical Rockets in the first round, the Warriors fumbled their chances for an extended break by losing Games 5 and 6. Winning Game 7 at Houston sent them into the conference semifinals with one full day to recover before Game 1 against the Timberwolves.
Golden State Warriors
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A Game 1 victory at Minnesota was tarnished by a hamstring injury sustained by Curry in the second quarter. Golden State was swept in Games 2 through 5.
“I know I got hurt,” Curry said. “But you just want to build off that for another year to build chemistry with Jimmy. You know Draymond will do his thing. Hopefully, some of our young guys are able to take another step. That’s every-year process. Just take what we did great, know we’re going to have to elevate that and do it more consistently for a whole year.”
If Curry seems optimistic to the level of fantasy, it’s significant to comprehend his mentality. He believes when others do not. He was too small to thrive at a major college, too delicate to thrive in the NBA and too susceptible to injury to have a long career.
He became a certified star as a sophomore in college, leading tiny Davidson College (generally about 2,000 students) to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Entering the NBA draft after his junior year and drafted seventh overall – behind two other point guards – in 2009, Curry won his first MVP award in 2015 and topped it the following season with the first unanimous vote in league history.
“It’s been that way my whole career, pretty much through high school,” Curry said of being doubted. “But those narratives take a life of their own. I just want to win. That’s it.”
Curry, who will be entering his 17th season in October, is a four-time NBA champion and the most influential basketball player since Michael Jordan.
Ever mindful of skeptics, he has built a Hall of Fame career banishing their lack of faith. After all he has accomplished, might he still be motivated by the doubters?
“At this point?” he replied. “It is white noise because I’m self-motivated enough. I don’t really need any outside motivation to the point where, like, I still love to play the game. And if I have that and I have great teammates and I have a great culture and organization, then I can just be in that space.
“I don’t really need any outside noise to motivate me.”
The oddsmakers generally place at least eight teams ahead of Golden State in the race to the 2026 championship. Five of those teams are in the West: The defending champion and still very young Thunder, the Denver Nuggets, the Rockets, the Timberwolves and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Even the Atlanta Hawks, perpetually mediocre in the vastly inferior Eastern Conference, are generating better odds than the Warriors.
All of which warms Curry’s heart.
“We’re excited about the opportunity,” he said. “You know. being in that fight . . . there is nothing like it. And we’ve kind of kicked away for the time for a long, long while. So hopefully we do it for another couple years.”
Before writing off the Warriors – or Curry – it might be worth remembering that early in his career, during the leanest of times, he vowed there would be a prosperous future. And delivered.
Download and follow the Dubs Talk Podcast
