For years, whenever Stephen Curry hit a shot worth celebrating, there was one man he always found first: Klay Thompson, who isn’t on that bench anymore. Golden State let him walk in 2024, and this past August he signed with the Miami Heat. So, when Curry got emotional this week talking about the last ring the two of them once cried over together, it was more than understandable.

Curry was midway through a stop on his China tour when he was asked to look back on his career. The tour, running September 9 through 14 with stops in Beijing, Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, is his first since signing a reported $400 million deal with Li-Ning, closing the book on a 12-year run with Under Armour, which ended in November 2025. So, it’s a tidy new chapter for Curry the businessman. Curry the Warrior, on the other hand, is walking into this tour with major questions still hanging over what comes next.

“The three years before that were hardest, I guess, worst Warrior years because of injuries and two years before we were the last-placed team,” Curry said during a fan meet (via @chnhoops). “That three-year journey was all about passion, hard work and teamwork all coming together at the right time. I think being ready for your moment, not letting the hard times in life keep you down. You believe in yourself and have the patience to know that at some point it’s going to pay off. I think 2022 was that for me. That’s why I was out there on the court crying.”

The heartbreak he described is easy to forget from the outside, looking at a résumé with four rings. The 2019-20 Warriors had finished 15-50, the worst record in the league, gutted by Klay’s torn ACL in the 2019 Finals and a broken hand that limited Curry to five games all season. The year after that ended in a play-in loss, no playoffs, and no real proof things were turning.

Then, in June 2022, Golden State beat Boston in six games, and Curry, finally holding his first Finals MVP, broke down on the TD Garden floor before the final buzzer had even sounded. Photos from the championship parade days later show Klay in tears too, the two of them having climbed out of the league’s basement together. Curry has called it his “ugly crying” game more than once, telling Sports Illustrated in December 2024 that it remains, “absolutely,” the most special of his four titles: “you don’t find me ugly crying on the court for no reason.”

Fast forward to the present and Klay is gone. Jimmy Butler, the closest thing Curry has had to a new partner since, tore his ACL in January and has no return date. Steve Kerr, the only coach Curry has ever known in Golden State, entered the summer without a contract, at one point turning to Curry and Draymond Green and admitting, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” before finally re-signing in May.

Curry himself, extension-eligible since late August, still hasn’t signed anything. He appears to be weighing a shorter deal now against a bigger one if he waits until 2027, the same summer Green and Butler are also due to hit the open market. Nobody around him seems to know exactly how much longer this version of the team, or his career inside it, is going to last.

Curry’s contract runs through the 2026-27 season, with a $62.5 million salary. He has never played for another team and has only entered unrestricted free agency once, in 2017. This time, however, no additional season awaits him. If he does not sign an extension, he could reach free agency in 2027. Because of the NBA’s Over-38 Rule, Curry is eligible for a max two-year extension worth $136.7 million, which could keep him under contract with the Dubs through the 2028-29 season.

The perk of waiting until free agency is that Curry can sign a three-year deal instead of two. But there’s little indication that he wants a different destination or is even remotely interested in shaking up the Warriors’ applecart. He spoke with NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dalton Johnson and made his preference clear.

“There’s no question I want to be here the rest of my career, and I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen,” Curry said.

Curry also made it clear that he doesn’t want the pressure of his contract’s timing hanging over the team and its expectations to deliver.

“The deal and the contract stuff will happen at the right time… The fact that the team we’re coming back with has a lot of familiarity. Hopefully, we can be healthy and just have a chance to show what we’re capable of, myself included, missing so many games last year.”

Now, in any logical world, the Warriors paying north of $60 million a year to a 39-year-old veteran just sounds bizarre. In fact, holding off on certain (unsaid) drastic roster changes just to accommodate the veteran is also a tough pill to swallow. But the fact is, this is Steph Curry, and he has defied every possible expectation.

Even GM Mike Dunleavy assured that he is “confident” that Curry would sign a new deal with the team this offseason. Whether that becomes a lower-paying deal to free up cap space remains to be seen. But right now, we don’t see any scope for an upset or the sharpshooter suddenly changing his mind.

Curry is now 38 years old, reflecting on tears born out of the worst stretch in franchise history. And the fanbase is watching him circle back to that same uncertainty without knowing if there’s another parade waiting at the end of it. The last time it felt this unresolved, Curry answered by crying on a basketball court in Boston. Whatever answers this era of the Warriors, he won’t be looking over to find Klay standing next to him when it happens.