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Ohm Youngmisuk
IN THE MOMENTS after LeBron James topped Stephen Curry‘s 37 points with an ageless 42-point, 17-rebound effort to lift the Los Angeles Lakers to a 120-112 win in their latest duel, the Golden State Warriors star had to hear “I Love L.A.” blare as he ran into a storied franchise’s newest superstar.
Luka Doncic found Curry, and the two laughed as Curry put his arm around Doncic. Then, James and Curry slapped hands and hugged each other tightly as they shared a few words while covering their mouths so that the world couldn’t eavesdrop.
Their teams, though, gave the NBA plenty to talk about that week of the trade deadline, first with the blockbuster trade that blindsided everyone and gave James a generational All-NBA teammate and then with the deal that gave Curry his newest All-Star teammate, Jimmy Butler.
The Lakers and Warriors made significant moves last week to load up in the Western Conference arms race. Both franchises hope they can give James and Curry one more chance to get closer to the days when they locked horns in four straight NBA Finals from 2015 to 2018 — two of which included Kevin Durant at Curry’s side. While they might have to go through each other in the conference playoffs, their relationship is vastly different than when they were bitter rivals.
A relationship that was once “petty” and filled with “dislike” and “hate,” in their own words, morphed into what Warriors and Team USA coach Steve Kerr called a “total bromance” while in Paris, where the two won a gold medal together with Team USA.
The Warriors have tried pairing the superstars together. They made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire James last season, and, ahead of last week’s trade deadline, they looked into trading for Durant with no luck. Instead, they were able to find Curry another All-Star partner in Butler.
Rejuvenated by Butler’s arrival, Curry isn’t holding out hope that he will one day team up with James or Durant in Golden State for one final run even if the NBA has provided more and more shocking trades like the one that sent Doncic to Los Angeles.
“No, I mean, the league has surprised us for sure,” Curry told ESPN. “Yeah, you could say that anything can happen. A version of ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ is that phrase. I don’t think about that, though.
“Nobody talks about an alternative universe because you can forget about what’s happening right now.”
What’s happening this weekend is a historic reunion. Curry, an All-Star Weekend host with the festivities held in San Francisco and Oakland, will be back on the same stage with his Olympic pals. With James at 40 and Curry and Durant at 36, the three don’t know how many more of these they will have.
“There ain’t going to be that many times left,” James told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “So you take it all in and you don’t take it for granted.
“It’s coming to an end soon.”
WHEN CURRY WAS a rising star at Davidson, he heard that James had requested tickets to come watch him and the Wildcats play against Wisconsin at Ford Field in the 2008 Sweet 16.
Curry didn’t believe it until he saw James, who was in town with the Cleveland Cavaliers, in his seat right behind press row.
“Even Davidson, the fan base, we all wore red ‘Witness’ T-shirts,” Curry recalled of the Nike slogan for James back then.
When the Cavaliers visited the Charlotte Bobcats after that, Curry went to watch James. James gifted Curry a signed Cavaliers No. 23 jersey with the message “The Best Player in N.C.” on it.
“I still got it at my dad’s house in Charlotte,” Curry said.
Over 15 years after James watched Curry in the NCAA tournament, the Warriors tried to pair Curry and James during a clandestine 24-hour window prior to the 2024 trade deadline. With Draymond Green‘s encouragement, Golden State owner Joe Lacob reached out to Lakers owner Jeanie Buss to inquire about whether James would be open to a trade to the Warriors. Buss and the Lakers did not want to trade James but told Lacob to talk with James’ agent, Rich Paul.
Curry said he did not reach out to James to feel things out before Paul and the Lakers eventually told the Warriors that James wanted to remain with L.A.
“Like any talented high-IQ basketball player, whether it’s LeBron, whether it’s KD, whether it’s me, whether it’s AD, whoever you put him on any team, you should be able to figure it out,” Curry told ESPN about the blockbuster trade scenario that was ultimately torpedoed before ever lifting off.
“That’s as far as it got from a year ago. Because it sounded outlandish when I first heard about it. I never thought he’d leave the Lakers. And I obviously said I never really wanted to leave here.”
James and Curry played their last NBA Finals against each other in 2018 with James and the Cavaliers losing for the third time in four Finals to Curry’s Warriors. The idea that the two could ever team up together would’ve been far-fetched when they were vying for the same NBA throne.
“I mean, s—, when you’re in a dogfight and there’s one guy that’s trying to stop you from reaching your goals, you’re going to dislike that person,” James told ESPN. “He disliked me, I disliked him because we were both fighting for what the f— we wanted, and that’s the Larry O’Brien trophy.”
Because there were 22 games over four straight NBA Finals, Curry said a “healthy resentment and appropriate fear” developed for the guy whose signed jersey hung up in his old bedroom.
“All you think about is just winning,” Curry said. “So, yeah, it was petty. It was competitive. Trash talking. All the above.
“[But] there’s always respect. I didn’t like the player. The person’s always great. You just hate when he has a jersey on wearing No. 23.”
A year after the Warriors were rebuffed by James, they turned their eyes toward reuniting Curry with the man who helped him beat James twice. Over a week before the Feb. 6 trade deadline, the Warriors were in discussions with the Phoenix Suns about the possibility of a Durant-Golden State reunion, multiple sources told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Brian Windhorst.
Unlike when the Warriors looked into acquiring James, Curry spoke with Durant to see if his former teammate was interested in returning. But sources told ESPN that Durant indicated to Curry that a Warriors sequel didn’t “feel right,” that it “wasn’t the time” and that he wasn’t looking to leave Phoenix.
“You need everybody to be all bought in no matter what the history you have,” Curry told ESPN about his talk with Durant. “And I respect KD. It’s all about having peace of mind and happiness.
“Neither one of us controlled that [trade] situation. It’s just you want to make sure somebody wants to be somewhere. Other than that, I’m not trying to convince anybody to be somewhere they don’t want to be.”
Curry said he has “no hard feelings, no resentment” at all.
“I don’t blame Kevin one bit for not wanting to rerun things here,” Kerr, who coached Durant with Golden State and USA Basketball, told ESPN. “He took so much s— for like, ‘Oh, you’re jumping on the bandwagon’ [when he signed with Golden State as a free agent in 2016]. And then he’s Finals MVP two years in a row. It’s like he still gets criticized.
“So why would he want to face all that B.S. again?”
1:17
The numbers behind Team USA men’s basketball gold vs. France
Check out the stats from Team USA’s win over France, led by Steph Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant.
THE SWANKY CELEBRITY hotspot L’Avenue was hosting the biggest party in Paris as Team USA’s gold medal celebration carried into the early hours of Aug. 11.
Curry, wearing a blue hoodie featuring his trademark celebration written out in French, “NUIT NUIT,” managed to find James in the crowd.
Wearing their gold medals, the two superstars proceeded to share a personal moment, talking to each other as if no one was watching. A year earlier around this same time in summer 2023, James had sent out the first text messages to Curry and other NBA stars recruiting them to play for Team USA.
They retraced their journey — putting together the right squad, staying healthy in camp and overcoming a 17-point deficit to Nikola Jokic and Serbia in the semifinals. Then, it was Curry’s golden flurry of four 3-pointers in the final 2:48 that had him and James doing the “night night” pose at France’s expense in an unforgettable gold medal game.
“[We talked about] everything that had to go right to be able to celebrate a gold medal,” Curry told ESPN about that conversation with James. “He had experienced it plenty of times before, but it was a little sense of relief, and it was also like this is exactly what we signed up for.
“And the experience, it overdelivered — not just winning the gold, but getting to know each other better. I’ve seen him celebrate championships, he’s seen me celebrate championships. That was kind of cool to do it together.”
Watching those two develop their relationship from fierce competitors to USA Basketball’s co-leaders reminded Grant Hill of another historic rivalry turned friendship.
“It reminded me a little bit of Magic and Bird,” Hill, managing director of USA men’s basketball, told ESPN. “And those guys getting after it and then just appreciating later on [as teammates on the Dream Team] how each other pushed and pulled greatness out of each other.”
James and Curry began to cherish their meetings, such as their 2021 play-in matchup and 2023 second-round series — both won by James’ Lakers. James added a fourth championship in the bubble in 2020, and Curry followed suit two years later, in between those Golden State losses to the Lakers.
“As we get longer in our careers, then you appreciate what that person was able to do for you,” James said. “Because that person motivated you throughout that whole thing. You sit back like, ‘OK, how many more times do we have to go against each other? To have moments?’ When you look back at it, OK, yes, we always went at each other. We still do now.
“But you appreciate the moments even more because you know you don’t have many moments left.”
This weekend, Curry, James and Durant will look to create one more of those moments and pick up where they left off in Paris.
“I always had a bond with LeBron and Steph,” Durant told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “Obviously being [Curry’s] teammate. So mutual respect has always been there. It was cool just hanging around them every day [with Team USA]. It was simple and easy to be around them. It felt like we’d been playing together for the longest.”
Curry repeatedly said things will not be awkward “at all” when he teams up with Durant this weekend, even after the failed trade talks. Curry understands there might not be many more times, if any, that he, James and Durant will play together on the same team after Sunday.
“The fact that this summer we played together and the whole deal kind of adds a cool storyline [to the All-Star Game],” Curry told ESPN. “It will be fun. All of us are aware you won’t be able to play forever.
“These opportunities are very precious, from the Olympics to All-Star, it adds other chapters that we never really thought were possible.”
WHILE CURRY WILL be surrounded by All-Stars on Sunday, he has spent much of this frustrating season without a second star to help him. Opponents have been able to smother Curry without another scoring threat to turn to after Klay Thompson‘s offseason departure to Dallas. But Curry has recently found double teams easier to beat thanks to Butler.
With under 10 seconds to go in the first half on Monday in Milwaukee, Curry was dribbling down the clock with Taurean Prince on him before Kyle Kuzma came off his man to double Curry, who found a rolling Butler at the free-throw line. The newest Warrior drew multiple Bucks defenders before bouncing a pass to a wide open Green for a dunk.
In the two games prior to Butler’s arrival, Curry scored 32 and 37 points in losses at the Jazz and Lakers, but he launched 31 and 35 shots in each game as well.
In the first two games with Butler, Curry scored 34 and 38 points while shooting 10-for-19 and 12-for-24 overall, respectively, in wins at Chicago and Milwaukee.
“There’s definitely a correlation,” Curry said after beating the Bucks 125-111 on Monday in Butler’s second game. “Every possession just doesn’t feel as hard.”
Butler might not have been the first choice, but he could end up being the right one for Golden State. The six-time All-Star, who was not among the players selected to play in San Francisco this weekend, does so many of the things the Warriors have sorely lacked this season, such as his abilities to take the scoring burden off Curry, get to the free throw line, drive and kick, and defend.
“He’s like the exact opposite player of me, which is kind of funny,” Curry said after the Warriors beat the Bulls 132-111 in Butler’s debut. “[This] has a potential to be really, really fun.”
Of the 123 players who have averaged at least 10 field goal attempts this season, Curry has the sixth-longest average shot distance of 19.9 feet. Butler averages the eighth shortest at 8.5 feet, according to ESPN Research.
“They say opposites attract in a lot of ways in life,” said Butler, who signed a two-year, $111 million extension after the trade to Golden State. “I don’t think I could be a better complement to him and vice versa.”
The Warriors started this season 12-3 with hopes of a repeat of 2021-22 when they surprised many with a fourth championship in eight seasons. But visions of another title run faded as Golden State lost 23 of the next 36 games. A frustrated Curry looked defeated at times as the Warriors suffered inexplicable losses.
But now Curry is rejuvenated and “excited” to finally have a new star to play with — a star who wants to be in Golden State.
The Warriors are off to a 3-1 start with Butler, and the goal is to reach the sixth seed in the Western Conference with 27 games left after the All-Star break. Curry said before the trade that he wanted to avoid the play-in and that he believed Golden State can beat anyone in a seven-game series. He still believes that, perhaps more so with Butler.
“I think it all worked out as it probably was supposed to,” Kerr said. “For Jimmy, it’s a fresh start. For us, it’s a different vibe, different look. Kevin didn’t feel [a reunion], so it wouldn’t have been healthy for him to come here or for us if he didn’t want to be here.
“Obviously, we would’ve been thrilled with either one of them. But I think it all worked out as it was supposed to.”