Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and the Privilege of Having Team Culture
By: Shawn Laib
Tags: San Francisco, NBA, Culture, Sports, Basketball

When John Wall was traded to the Houston Rockets last week, it ended the second longest tenured player/franchise relationship in the NBA for a player who was drafted by their team.

Wall was taken first overall by the Washington Wizards in the 2010 NBA Draft, and the decade since then saw various levels of success with him leading D.C.’s team.

Bradley Beal had taken the torch from Wall in recent years, and the achilles injury to the later all but ended the transition from one franchise star to the other.

The two players who now stand alone as being drafted by the team they still play for are the Splash Brothers. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have been leading the greatest stretch in Golden State franchise history for eleven and nine years, respectfully.

And while Klay has another year-long rehab to tend to after tearing his own achilles last month, he will still be on the team when the Dubs enter training camp in the fall of 2021.

That type of stability is what has separated the Warriors from the rest of the NBA in terms of the often-overused term “culture”. What exactly is culture and how is it established and maintained in basketball across many years?

Do the Spurs still have culture? They no longer have any of the cornerstones who won their five championships for them, gone to retirement and trades.

Do the Lakers have culture? They indeed won their 17th championship this October on the backs of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but neither player has been on Los Angeles for more than two years. Before their arrival, the team was a perennial bottom-dweller in the Western Conference for a decade.

Culture in my mind is established after years of hard work and accomplishment by the players who make up that team’s base. It is nearly impossible for any franchise to maintain that definition of the word because free agency has allowed the biggest stars in the league to come and go as they please after a minimal tenure with their team.

Golden State would have ranked as low as possible on this totem pole before the drafting of Curry and Thompson. They went years on end without even making playoff appearances, and four decades without hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Steph and Klay made it so that others wanted to join that franchise. Kevin Durant arrived controversially in 2016, won multiple Finals MVP’s, then walked right to Brooklyn only three years later. While being indisputably important to their success in the last several seasons, Durant is an entity unto himself.

Like LeBron before him, KD has made himself a nomad within the basketball world. He belongs to himself, not to a team. This free-spirited choice has eliminated him from any discussions about adding cultural value to where he chooses to sign, because his loyalty his fleeting.

Normally, a franchise that loses a player the caliber of Durant would be lost in the woods. All the evidence needed for that assumption is shown by the disaster that ensued when LeBron left Cleveland multiple times, and the six years it took the Miami Heat to get back to relevancy in the Eastern Conference.

That is why Steph Curry and Klay Thompson deserve to be celebrated by the Warriors franchise in ways that will never be forgotten. If you root for that team, never let go of the feelings you experience watching their three point theatrics and joy for the game.

They have given the Warriors an advantage of stability and value that no other team in the entire sport benefits from. It’s why the injury to Klay was such a crushing blow to the psyche of the fanbase. He means so much to what it means to watch the Warriors. He’s become embedded in the fabric of their culture.

In a time when James Harden has asked out of Houston, LeBron has continued to sign short-term extensions with his teams, and KD changes his motivations for employment like they are dirty laundry, the Splash Brothers are solidified in the Bay Area.

Teams don’t make culture. Players do. And Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have forever made the Warriors possess a winning one because their loyalties lie with that team, and that team only.