Will Stephen Curry Sign His $137 Million Extension? The Warriors Cannot Afford to Wait
Stephen Curry has been eligible since August 29 to sign a two-year extension with the Golden State Warriors worth up to roughly $136.7 million. He has not signed it. He is in no hurry.
“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,” Curry said. Classic Steph. Unbothered, deferential, no leverage games.
The Warriors should be a lot more anxious about it than he is.
What the Money Actually Means
Curry is playing the final year of his contract in 2026-27. If he signs the two-year extension, his salary climbs toward $71 million by 2028-29, and he becomes the first player in NBA history to pass $600 million in on-court career earnings.
That number deserves a beat. Six hundred million dollars in salary alone, not counting the Under Armour empire or anything else. For a guy who was drafted seventh overall because the league thought he was too small and too fragile.
There are other paths. Curry could wait past the June 30 deadline and sign a three-year max next offseason worth around $212.9 million. He could also sign for well below the max, and the CBA would let him go as low as roughly $37.5 million for 2027-28, though something in the $50 million range is the more realistic version of a team-friendly deal.
ESPN’s Anthony Slater reported that both sides expect to engage with a shared goal of keeping Curry in Golden State for the rest of his career. That is the easy part. The hard part is the timing, and the timing is where Golden State can lose.
Sign It Now
Here is my position, and I will not hedge on it. The Warriors should put the two-year extension in front of Curry tomorrow and let him sign whatever version he wants.
The case for waiting is a cap-sheet case. Under the second apron, a $71 million salary for a 40-year-old point guard is a real anchor on roster building, and every dollar Curry takes is a dollar Golden State cannot spend on the players who have to carry him. Brian Windhorst has floated the idea of convincing Curry to delay. From a spreadsheet perspective, it holds up.
From every other perspective it is a disaster waiting to happen. You do not negotiate a franchise icon into a discount. You do not let a player who has won four titles and rebuilt your organization from irrelevance spend a season answering questions about whether the team wants him. That story gets ugly fast, and it only takes one bad week for it to become the only story in the Bay.
There is also the risk nobody wants to say out loud. Curry is 38. If he signs now, the deal is done at a known price. If Golden State waits and he has a monster year, the price goes up. If he gets hurt, the situation becomes awkward in a way that serves nobody.
And here is the thing about Curry specifically: he has spent his entire career taking less than he could have and making it work. He has restructured when it helped the roster, and he has never once forced the issue publicly. A player with that track record has earned the benefit of getting paid without being asked to prove it again.
Sign the extension. Deal with the cap math the way every other contender deals with it, by drafting well and finding value in the margins. The alternative is saving money on the greatest player in franchise history and then explaining why for the next decade.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.