What is obvious to Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers fans is finally apparent to the rest of the world: Steph Curry and LeBron James are still championship-caliber players. Although the odds are stacked against them in a loaded Western Conference, their franchises seem reluctant to go all-in for one last shot at a title. What a joke.
Sorry, Warriors GM Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, the "we can't throw away our future if it doesn't make us a contender today" nonsense you've peddled the past year is a fallacy after how Curry and James led Team USA to a gold medal at the Olympics in Paris. If you can't build a contender around Curry and James (and Anthony Davis in Pelinka's case), you shouldn't be calling the shots anymore.
Curry, who capped his first Olympics with arguably the two greatest individual performances in Team USA history, should be peeved that the Warriors stood pat at last season's trade deadline. Although Golden State owned the rights to essentially all of its future draft picks and had tradable prospects Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski, Moses Moody and Trayce Jackson-Davis, management didn't budge. "THE GOLDEN DAGGER!" Steph Curry that is utterly ridiculous.
#ParisOlympics | NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/8hIN8tgmfK Curry also should be irate that Dunleavy wouldn't include Kuminga in a potential deal for Paul George and Podziemski in a package for Lauri Markkanen earlier this summer.
Neither Kuminga nor Podziemski nor any of those future first-rounders are likely to yield production on par with the likes of George and Markkanen, both of whom would fit perfectly with Curry and Draymond Green. Even if Kuminga and Podziemski were to blossom into All-Stars, they'll do so when Curry, who is 36, is retired or diminished. And if Curry isn't Curry, the Warriors aren't winning squat anyway.
James, also known as "LeCaptain America," was named Most Valuable Player of the 2024 Olympics men's basketball tournament. He must be at wits' end because of the Lakers' indecisiveness and unwillingness to push their chips to the center of the table after the Russell Westbrook fiasco from 2021-22. Los Angeles, despite having two top-10 talents in James and Anthony Davis, refused to trade its 2027 and 2029 first-rounders for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield in 2022-23 — a season in which the Lakers eventually made the Western Conference Finals.
Ditto goes for a potential deal for Kyrie Irving that trade deadline and subsequent offseason. Either of those deals would've made the Lakers much more competitive against Denver the past two postseasons. Sadly, Pelinka stood pat at the 2023-24 trade deadline and has made zero roster upgrades this summer.
He has hemmed and hawed about how it's difficult to operate under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but in reality, this is clearly a job-preservation tactic. Pelinka knows that if he takes a big swing and makes another Westbrook-level mistake, he's out of a job. But if he keeps kicking the proverbial can down the road, he can keep selling the future to owner Jeanie Buss and stay employed.
The Lakers already have a 200-foot luxury yacht with James, who will turn 40 this season, and AD, but Pelinka keeps opting to kick that can. The other aspect that should be at play here is the respect factor. Curry and James are basketball deities — if they continue to grace your franchise with their presence, you owe it to them to do everything in your power to help them win.
But neither team is doing that now. "I don't know how many opportunities or moments I'm gonna get like this, to be able to compete for something big and play in big games," James said and Curry echoed during their recent Olympic run. Both franchises should be embarrassed to hear things like that from two of the greatest athletes ever.
Either fully commit to Curry and James or trade them to a team that will. Heck, do everyone a favor and trade them to the same team so they can finish out their careers together and run their unstoppable inverted pick-and-rolls for the rest of basketball eternity. If anyone's earned the right to compete for titles, it's Curry and James.
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