Kevin Durant allowed the Golden State Warriors to keep their championship core together by taking significantly less money than he was entitled to this summer, and he wasn’t the only superstar on the team willing to do that.
Stephen Curry, who recently signed a record five-year, $201 million deal, told Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic that he informed Warriors general manager Bob Meyers he would have taken less to help the team.
“I actually asked Bob, if I were to take a discount — at any number, I don’t know what it would be — how much of a difference would that make for us to be able to sign other guys,” Curry said. “It wasn’t like (Durant’s) situation. His had a direct impact on us being able to sign Andre (Iguodala) and Shaun (Livingston). And it was just an unbelievable sacrifice by KD. But mine didn’t matter.”
If Curry did sign for less than the max, he would have only been saving the Warriors money — not helping them retain other veterans. As Kurt Helin of Pro Basketball Talk notes, Golden State has Curry’s Bird rights and could go over the salary cap threshold to re-sign him. Since Durant was only with the team for one season, the Warriors did not have his Bird rights. If K.D. demanded as much money as he was entitled to, the team would have had to let guys like Iguodala and Livingston walk to have enough cap space to retain Durant.
Next summer, Durant will have been with the Warriors for two years, allowing them to use his Bird rights to give him the same type of deal as the one Curry got. We’re dying to see what kind of joke Peyton Manning throws his way after he inks that contract.
