Why Steph Curry Deserves Slice Of Warriors' Pie After Saving Nba Franchise

Why Steph Curry deserves slice of Warriors' pie after saving NBA franchise originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Jaylen Brown said the quiet part loud enough to be heard by those atop every NBA team, certainly Warriors CEO Joe Lacob. Loud enough to be on the minds of every franchise player, none more than Stephen Curry.

Why, Brown wondered a few months ago, can’t NBA players generate franchise equity as owners do?

Curry knows why but yearns for change.

Given that Wednesday is the 16th anniversary of the marriage between the Warriors and the ownership group led by Lacob and Peter Guber, this seems particularly topical. When the group invested $450 million on July 15, 2010, many considered it an overpay.

Sixteen years and four NBA championships later, the folks at Forbes, who calculate franchise valuations, say the Warriors are worth more than $11 billion, making them the most valuable property in the NBA.

Thanks to Curry’s 17 years as the team’s centerpiece, Lacob, Guber and Co. underpaid.

The Warriors have grown from local cult following to global sensation. Lacob, Guber and Co. entered with a vision of building an elite sports franchise and succeeded – with Curry taking them on a ride to tremendous prosperity.

“Because of the way the CBA is structured right now, we can’t participate in equity,” Curry said in an interview last year with Speedy Morman, then with Complex.com. “And that’s a big deal, because it is a partnership with ownership, it’s a partnership with the league. And we’re on the short term of that revenue.”

The collective bargaining agreement, which determines stipulations for maximum contracts, is why the Warriors can’t legally pay Curry his true worth.

They can make it up to him after he retires. Curry is 38 years old. Body willing, he wants to play another two years. He will have made about $600 million in pretax paychecks from Golden State. He has remained committed, through times good and bad, to the Warriors.

Moreover, Curry consistently has stated his intention to spend his entire NBA career with the team that drafted him in 2009 under the previous ownership.

“For him to be able to stay in one city for that long, why would you want to leave?” Curry’s dad, Dell, told NBC Sports Bay Area last week. “You’ve given so much to that team, to the organization and the city.”

Lacob, Guber and Co. inherited a gold mine. Everyone on the Golden State payroll can point to Curry as the central figure in the meteoric rise of the franchise. Without him, there would be no championships. No five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals. No record 73-win season. No first and only unanimous MVP. No explosive production and profit off Golden State Warriors gear. Never any talk of a dynasty.

“None of this happens without you,” Andre Iguodala said of Curry 17 months ago, during his jersey retirement ceremony at Chase Center. 

When Curry leaves, the Warriors likely will tumble from their longtime perch atop the NBA’s revenue engine, from national TV to jersey sales. No player in the league mints more local or national TV revenue. Curry is an economy unto himself.

Which is not to suggest the Lacob-Guber ownership didn’t, from the start, do their part to elevate the franchise. They made shrewd decisions in recruiting business-side savant Rick Welts and basketball sage Jerry West – moves that declared the Warriors were aiming for the best of the best. Hiring Mark Jackson as head coach was more strategic than intuitive; it brought a level of national publicity rarely given to the once irrelevant team by the Bay.

But it was Curry who awakened and energized a slumbering fan base that grew exponentially because of his exploits. Dub Nation is his empire.

Chase Center, the cash cow crucial to the franchise worth, was visualized by Lacob and Guber but actualized by the broad influence and civic goodwill of Curry. Dealmakers bend toward winners. Champions gain leverage, and their ideas suddenly are more popular. No athlete in Bay Area sports history is more revered for his greatness on the court and civil generosity off it.

Gifting an active player equity in the franchise is tricky for obvious reasons, the most significant being the possibility of a trade. Curry and Brown long for a day that might never will happen. They make good money, but it’s a faction of what goes to successful ownership.

“The idea that we can’t participate in equity while we’re playing is a part of why I would say, yes, we are underpaid,” Curry told Morman. “Because you want to be able to participate in that rise. I know we’re blessed to be in a position where we’re playing basketball for a living, and these are the type of checks that people are earning. And I think it’s all deserved. It’s a special commodity, a special industry that probably won’t go anywhere. Because that entertainment value is there.

“I feel like, hopefully, sooner than later, those rules change a little bit so that players can participate more in the upside of team equity, the league valuations and all that type of stuff.”

Once an NBA player retires, he no longer is subject to any CBA restrictions. The post-career portfolio for Magic Johnson, for example, included his purchase of a 4.5-percent share of the Los Angeles Lakers for $10 million in 1992. The Lakers were worth about $200 million. When he sold his shares in 2010, they were worth three times as much.

Another instance of player-turned-owner involved Billy Beane, who evolved from fringe player for the Oakland Athletics to front-office executive with the team to Hollywood caricature to a 4-percent stake in ownership (now at 1 percent).

Beane paid nothing for his initial share. It was a gift from ownership.

The Warriors now are worth 24 times more than what Lacob, Guber and Co. paid. We know where they would be in the NBA hierarchy without Curry; we all saw it when he missed most of the second half of last season. There was not a glimmer of hope until he returned.

No player in the NBA is, upon retirement, more deserving of being gifted a piece of his team’s franchise than Curry. No player on any team has done more to send ownership stock skyrocketing, enriching those currently holding shares.

For Steph, 2028 should be the year of equity. Call it a reward, if you like, but he has earned it.

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