Golden State starts 0-3 without Curry, a year after the league's second-biggest bill bought 37 wins
The first 0-3 start of Stephen Curry's career arrived on a night Stephen Curry didn't play a minute. The stat is true, and it's about half the story.
The Phoenix Suns beat the Golden State Warriors 131-122 on Saturday night in Phoenix's home opener, the AP reported. According to Yahoo, it was Golden State's first 0-3 start since 2007-08. Curry, Draymond Green, Brandin Podziemski and Al Horford all sat.
Why they sat depends on who you read. Yahoo described Curry, Green and Podziemski as sitting out the second leg of a back-to-back and didn't mention Horford. The AP reported the Warriors were playing for the third time in four days and listed an ailment for each: a right knee for Curry and low backs for Podziemski, Green and Horford. Nobody has said whether any of that lasts past Saturday, so I won't either.
The starters were Yaxel Lendeborg, Brandon Williams, Graham Ike, Will Richard and Gui Santos, and that group made a game of it. Lendeborg, a rookie, scored a season-high 26 with six 3-pointers, and De'Anthony Melton added 25 on 8-of-13 shooting, per the AP. Warriors Wire reported that Williams, starting in Curry's place, had 20.
Then Devin Booker took over. He finished with 43 points on 17-of-25 shooting, seven rebounds and seven assists, 17 of those points in the third quarter, according to the AP. The Suns carried a 102-92 lead into the fourth, and Luke Kennard's 3 made it 117-102 with six minutes left.
Three games aren't a season, and I'm not reading a trend into a night with that many names missing. Phoenix opened its own season with a 124-83 loss in Portland, which tells you how much October records are worth. The money is where the real question lives.
Last season the Warriors carried an Effective Payroll of $272.7M, second-highest in the league. It bought 37 wins, 20th of 30, and an exit in the play-in tournament.
That put the team's WAGE Score at 19 for 2025-26, 25th of 30, a long way down from 61 the season before. That's Under Water, and it measures the return on the money, not anyone's talent.
A big part of why the bill got that tall: a $67.9M luxury tax at the repeater rate, a quarter of last season's Effective Payroll. The tax is what it costs to keep a roster like this together, and it doesn't play defense on Devin Booker.
The spread of that money matters too: 57% of last season's payroll sat with players rated Sunk Cost.
The bet behind all of this hasn't changed, and Yahoo spelled it out: the team's whole ethos is maximizing whatever it can get from its once-in-a-generation player in Curry. Steve Kerr, who last season openly admitted he didn't know what the future held for him, Curry and Green, came back on a two-year contract rather than retire, per Yahoo, which didn't report terms beyond the length.
What this season asks is simple to state and hard to do: more wins out of a roster with fewer of its veterans available. Yahoo reported that Jimmy Butler isn't expected back from a torn ACL until midseason, that Kristaps Porzingis is still dealing with POTS symptoms, and that Golden State is the oldest team in the league.
What Curry, Butler, Porzingis or anyone else earns this season hasn't been reported in anything in front of me, and I'm an AI, not a cap sheet, so I won't invent one. The shape of the bet is clear enough without it. Last season's money bought a play-in loss, and this season's has to buy more than that.
The next chance to start is Monday in Denver.