Warriors need to let Steph Curry go

DON’T DO IT!

This public service warning goes out to the Golden State Warriors.

The biggest mistake pro sports teams make is rewarding a star with a fat contract late in their career for past accomplishments.

Sadly, they live in the past and hope that the same results will come after it’s pretty clear the party is over.

Enter the Warriors.

Of course, they want to re-sign Steph Curry this summer.

In fact, Golden State general manager Bob Myers said on Monday that he fully expects to get a contract extension done with Curry before next season, the final year of his current pact.

“I don’t see any reason not to be optimistic,” Myers said to the media. “He seems like he’s motivated; we’re motivated. I would say pretty confident we’ll get something done.”

If the Warriors make this grave mistake, Curry would become the first player in NBA history to sign two separate deals worth over $200 million.

Curry was already the first player to sign a super-max extension in 2017, inking a deal worth over $201 million over five years. He is now eligible to sign a four-year, $215.4 million extension that would keep him under contract through the 2025-26 season.

On the surface, this looks like a no-brainer.

After all, Curry is coming off a great regular season, winning the NBA scoring title at age 33, the oldest to do so since Michael Jordan won it at 35 in 1998.

And that’s nice.

However, Curry couldn’t even get the Warriors to the postseason in a league where 16 of the 30 teams make it.

We get it. Sharpshooter guard Klay Thompson missed a second straight season with a major injury.

Still, Golden State should have made the playoffs.

The harsh reality is that the Warriors’ championship run is over, cancelled. Not by the culture, but by Father Time.

With or without Curry in the fold, the Warriors aren’t winning any more titles. It’s a pipe dream at best.

Let’s be real. Curry can’t play any better than he did this past season. Who knows what type of player Thompson will be going forward. Even Myers couldn’t front on Thompson’s availability. Thompson probably won’t be ready for the opener next season. “When I say the start of the year, I mean Game 1,” Myers said. “I don’t know if that’s realistic or not. That’ll be less than a year. … I don’t know what date the season opens up, but I think that’ll be 11 months. I don’t know that that’s realistic.”

Add to that Draymond Green getting older and more one-dimensional every year.

The future isn’t bright for the Warriors. They have an aging core. And the young guys have been good — Andrew Wiggins and James Wiseman — not great.

Plus, the Western Conference is hardly easy to get through. That’s not changing anytime soon. And we won’t even mention the Brooklyn Nets out East.

It would be one thing if Golden State still had Kevin Durant. He was a big reason why the Warriors made five straight trips to the Finals in the glory days. Durant, almost single-handedly, won two of their three championships during his three seasons in the Bay.

Remember, Durant, not Curry, was the Finals MVP in the Warriors’ last two titles. Curry, without Durant, was the author of the biggest choke job in NBA Finals’ history. That record-setting 73-win team became the first team to ever blow a 3-1 Finals lead.

History also tells us the Warriors going down this path won’t work.The Lakers did it with Kobe Bryant. He was a great player, but the big deal was a mistake. Los Angeles failed to make the playoffs in Kobe’s final four seasons.

The Bulls didn’t go that route with one of the greatest players ever. Jordan left the Chicago Bulls. For sure, Jordan could have stayed there until they ripped the uniform off him and finally made him retire.

But they didn’t want that scenario. They simply didn’t want the party to continue and made Jordan’s decision to retire easy by not bringing back coach Phil Jackson, despite coaching the team to six NBA titles. With that, Jordan retired.

We get it. This is a business. You want your fans to believe that you want to win and you want to keep the band together, even though they haven’t had any hits lately.

A new Curry deal will be a miss. Just watch.