Steph Curry has a new contract as of July 1st, one that he signed with the Golden State Warriors. The recently crowned NBA champions, according to Spotrac, signed Curry to a 5-year deal worth $201,158,790. The new contract covers the next five seasons of the NBA and averages out to $40,231,758 per season. A valid question with the Curry contract is if he is paying paid for what he is expected to accomplish in the future or what he has accomplished over the last few seasons as a member of the Golden State Warriors?
$40M per season may prove burdensome
As good as Steph Curry is, more than $40,000,000 per season is a mind-boggling total. Curry, who recently turned 29 years old, saw some of his numbers dip in 2016/17. In the previous season he averaged 30.1 points per game, but in 2016/17 he averaged a lot less at 25.3. His assists per game basically stayed the same while his rebounding average went down about 20%.
That could be due to sharing court time with Kevin Durant, keeping in mind that talented teammates can out-rebound their allies as much as their foes. Furthermore, playing alongside a prolific scorer like Durant can have an effect on the number of touches that you get on offense yourself. From this Point Of View, Curry's averages declining might not be viewed as a decline in his performance: he played with Durant in 2016/17, but not beforehand.
However, Curry did have some near-career lows for shooting percentages in 2016/17. Certainly, his 41.1% shooting from three-point land was the worst of his career. He shot 46.8% from the floor overall and has only had two seasons which were worse from that point of view. Lastly, his free-throw percentage dipped to below 90% for the first time in three seasons.
While playing alongside Durant might be responsible for Curry's averages dipping, it's hard to see why his shooting percentages would dip as well.
Curry has been instrumental in Golden State's success
That said, Curry did win the MVP Award twice in the last three seasons. His Golden State Warriors also have two NBA titles in recent seasons.
While Durant was on board for the most recent one, Curry has been the face of the franchise long term. Furthermore, even if his stats have declined a little bit, they aren't exactly egregious. The question remains: is Steph Curry worth $40,000,000 per season or is he being paid retroactively in some ways?
This last season he made $12.1M, an amount that isn't high compared to what other players of lesser caliber made. For instance, Reggie Jackson of the Detroit Pistons made nearly $16M in 2016/17 despite not coming close to Curry in terms of pure ability.
The $40M per season average could be viewed as a sort of half-and-half salary: perhaps part of it references the fact that he has been paid below average for his ability in recent years despite Curry's individual successes and Golden State's franchise successes.
The other part certainly has to do with expectations in the future - and this is where Golden State may have blundered.
Point guards don't last forever in the NBA. Jason Kidd, as an example, saw his effectiveness start to decline at the age of 30. That's not to say he didn't belong as a starter on a quality team, but looking back his 2003/04 season was the beginning of a slow decline. You have to wonder if Golden State will be shelling out a huge salary in a few years' time for Curry when he's no longer a short-list favorite for the NBA MVP Award. If so, then this contract, which might prove hard to ship elsewhere due to the financial obligations that a franchise would have to take on, could be burdensome for the Warriors in the long term.