With Al Horford's arrival, the Warriors enter Steph Curry's final chapter

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Anthony SlaterOct 23, 2025, 06:30 AM ET

EIGHT DAYS BEFORE Al Horford signed with the Golden State Warriors, their soon-to-be seasoned halfway recovered himself astatine a San Diego meal with a radical of men he'd lone ever viewed arsenic adversaries.

Horford calls his attack "old-school" successful the modern NBA. He doesn't "fraternize" with opponents.

"If you're my teammate, I'm with you and I person your backmost and I'm each astir you," Horford told ESPN. "But each this hugging and fractional tribunal astatine the extremity of the crippled and each this friendship. No."

The meal was casual. Camp was a week away. Horford wasn't officially signed due to the fact that of the Jonathan Kuminga stalemate, but helium was committed.

As the vino flowed, Horford steered wide of immoderate playoff heartache treatment with Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler, 1 of his fiercest -- and astir impolite -- East rivals. But Stephen Curry cracked unfastened the doorway successful a precise Curry manner.

"We talked astir his Game 1," Curry said.

In the 2022 NBA Finals opener, Horford deed six 3s and scored 26 points successful San Francisco, wresting distant contiguous bid power for the Boston Celtics arsenic helium ached for his archetypal rubric successful his 15th season. It was 1 of the champion games of his career. But it was soon followed by 1 of the astir devastating.

"Then we talked astir Game 4," Curry said. "When we benignant of ripped it from him."

In possibly the astir legendary crippled of Curry's NBA career, helium shook disconnected a achy ft wounded and scored 43 successful beforehand of a frothing Boston assemblage to recapture power and flip the bid into his 4th title.

In July, 3 years aft that NBA Finals matchup, Curry got a substance from Horford.

Those connected the wrong accidental Horford decided to articulation the Warriors connected his own, nary accepted recruitment needed. Green remembers asking wide manager Mike Dunleavy aboriginal successful the summertime if helium needed to telephone Horford.

"You tin telephone him, but it's done," Dunleavy told Green.

The speech with Curry, though, was important to Horford. The substance led to a telephone successful mid-July. Curry's not lone the look of the franchise, but the teammate, astatine 37, who is closest successful property to Horford, 39. He wanted to inquire Curry astir the aesculapian unit and attraction programme for a brace of players who began their assemblage careers during the George Bush administration.

"So fundamentally the astir seasoned speech you could ever person successful your life," Curry said.

Horford's summation means 4 of the Warriors' astir important players are each 35 oregon older. If Buddy Hield starts alongside Butler, Green, Curry and Horford successful a crippled this season, it'll beryllium the oldest starting lineup successful NBA history.

That information unsocial signifies a prioritization of the contiguous implicit a extortion of the future. But the overmuch discussed two-timeline approach, portion altered and progressively minimized, isn't dead.

The Warriors inactive person adjacent afloat power of their aboriginal picks and gripped onto Kuminga firmly this summer, adjacent portion the young guardant longed for a caller start. They could've had a dependable seasoned specified arsenic Royce O'Neale and immoderate second-rounders for him, but determination is inactive intelligibly a partial agelong presumption attack contempt a rapidly fading win-now window.

"That's 1 of the beauteous things astir having this organization," Green said. "We're not sitting present like, 'Yo, springiness distant everything due to the fact that we don't springiness a f--- astir what this happening looks similar successful 10 years.' We do. And truthful I deliberation it's lone just to Mike that he's fixed a future, too. It's important to bash it the mode that we've done it. We recovered a bully equilibrium to wherever we tin vie and perchance triumph present and yet inactive person that flexibility and resources for the future."

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