» CURRY’S IMPACT UNDERSCORED BY ABSENCE

Silicon Valley has always been a place rife with audacious axioms and faux-motivational platitudes. The combination of competition, intelligence, and easy access to big money creates a manic energy that permeates the entire region.

One of the self-help adages that is often cited by both winners and losers alike is Grant Cardone’s 10X Rule — the idea that one’s goals should be 10 times larger than the status quo. That, apparently, is how you “disrupt”.

In July 2010, Joe Lacob and his group of investors put together $450 million to buy the Golden State Warriors — a team that played next to the interstate in Oakland and had made the playoffs once in 16 seasons.

In that deal to acquire the NBA laughingstock, Lacob and partners also received a 6-foot-3, 180pound guard who had just finished a promising rookie season.

In the decade that followed, the Warriors have won three titles and moved across the Bay to a new, billion-dollar arena in San Francisco. The value of the franchise has gone up — you guessed it — ten-fold. Well, OK, nearly: Forbes estimates the team is now worth $4.3 billion.

There were plenty of actions the Warriors took over this past decade that were “light years ahead”, but at the core of Golden State’s incredible rise was that harmless-looking guard, Steph Curry, who over the last 10 years has effectively reinvented the way basketball is played, lifting the Warriors to heights never before reached in basketball’s modern era.

After 58 games away, Curry is set to return to the Warriors’ lineup for Thursday’s contest against the Raptors. Curry’s absence from the Golden State lineup over the past four months has provided ample time to reflect on how improbable and incredible the Baby Faced Assassin’s career has been to this point — how valuable he is not just to the Warriors, but to the entire NBA.

What else were you going to do — watch the worst team in the NBA?

Curry has not only been at the vanguard of the league’s 3-point revolution — he’s the standard by which all other shooters are now judged — but he’s also re-calibrated the standard of entertainment in the league.

Warriors television ratings — which are still strong, relative to other teams in the league — are down 66% year-over-year. Going from first to worst will do that. Losing the most engaging character in the show — a one-of-a-kind player whose joyous freestyling, limitless range, and constant motion forced everyone to suspend disbelief for 48 minutes and turned perfunctory regular-season contests into true events — will hurt viewership.

At a national level, NBA ratings are down 12 percent. There are more factors in play there, but the lack of Curry flurries is, no doubt, a critical component.

Of course, the Warriors’ on-court downturn this season was likely inevitable. With Curry out it became certain. Nothing that great can last forever — even when money is no longer a constraint.

Golden State lost Klay Thompson for the 20192020 season to an ACL injury in Game 6 of last year’s NBA Finals. They then lost Kevin Durant to the Brooklyn Nets in free agency a few weeks later. The Warriors were always going to be different in this, their first season in their new arena, but when Curry broke his hand in Game 4 of the campaign, the difference between the dynastic Warriors and the new era in San Francisco became even starker.

Without Curry playing, the Warriors have fully reverted back to their pre-Curry ways on the court. The Dubs had averaged 15 wins in each of the last five playoffs. This regular season, Golden State went 13-45 without him in the lineup. It’d say that shows the true value of a superstar in the NBA, but the Warriors have shown that a superstar’s value has more zeros attached to it.

Given Golden State’s lowly on-court product and the team’s inability to make the playoffs at this late juncture of the season (20 games remain), Curry’s return to the lineup has been openly questioned in the media. The irony of those bemoaning “load management” now advocating for it aside, the Warriors’ brass are keen to create momentum ahead of the 2020-2021 season.

“I think it’s important for Steph to play without all the guys we’ve lost who are not gonna be back next year,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said, referring to Durant, the retired Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala _ OK, everyone other than Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevon Looney. “It’s gonna be a different look for him, and I think it’s important. He only got three games before his injury. It’s important for him to feel the difference because it feels different for us.”

So will begin a new chapter in the story of Steph Curry’s career. Like the prior chapters — the injury-plagued early years and the breakout to superstardom — it will have an inauspicious start. Regardless, the Warriors are hoping more titles are to come in the years to come. He makes them believe it’s possible.

At this point, what else is there to believe? That said, it’s fair to suspect that the best is in the past for the soon-to-be 32-year old. The Warriors will certainly never reach the sustained excellence of the past five seasons — 73 wins, five trips to the Finals, three titles.

But given that it’s Curry, we’ll just have to wait and see, and, most of all, enjoy.