LeBron James and Stephen Curry may be among the elder statesmen of the league, but they’re still at the top of their craft. They showed how deadly they could be as teammates by leading Team USA to Olympic gold.
Their success together inevitably raises the question of whether such a pairing would be possible in the NBA.
It may sound like the stuff of fantasy, but there are technically ways to make it happen. The Warriors kicked the tires on a LeBron trade last season before ultimately getting rebuffed. And the Lakers would obviously love to have a player like Curry on their roster.
Here’s what would need to happen to reunite the two stars in the NBA.
How LeBron James and Stephen Curry can become NBA teammates
A Lakers trade for Stephen Curry
Would there be any way to get Curry on the Lakers? Salary cap rules would make it difficult.
Curry is owed $55.7 million this season and the Lakers are in the first apron. That means that they would not be able to take in any extra money in a Curry trade.
Getting to Curry’s $56 million salary while keeping James and Anthony Davis on the roster would require including multiple players. The Warriors would also ask for pretty much everything that the Lakers have to offer, including unprotected first-round picks in 2029 and 2031.
Here’s what that deal would look like:
This is the most plausible version of a Curry-to-Lakers trade, but several roadblocks would make it unlikely.
First, the Lakers would be trading away pretty much all of their depth pieces. They would only have veteran minimum contracts available to fill multiple roster spots, and most decent players are already signed at this point of the summer. They would have a ton of top-end talent, but they would be mortgaging their future for a team that might not even be good enough to go deep in the playoffs.
Second, would the Warriors even do this? This would signal a total rebuild for them, and this package honestly still isn’t worthy of a player like Curry.
Those two Laker picks would likely be good and Reaves is a nice prospect. The Warriors might be able to flip Russell and Hachimura for more picks. Knecht was a strong value pick for the Lakers in this draft at No. 17. But if Golden State opened up the bidding on Curry, it could get a better offer from some other team.
A Warriors trade for LeBron James
The more likely path to get Curry and James together is if they were to link up in the Bay Area.
That trade would have been much easier to pull off at last season’s trade deadline when the Warriors had multiple high-salaried expiring contracts in Chris Paul and Klay Thompson to include in a deal. Now, they would have to include multiple players in order to make it work.
This is the Warriors’ best available package. It includes both of their tradeable first-round picks, their two best young prospects in Jonathan Kuminga and Brandin Podziemski, another good prospect in Trayce Jackson-Davis, and salary filler in Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton II.
This trade would make sense for the Lakers. They’re not good enough to win it all in the West and this would let them quickly retool around Davis with a ton of young players, picks and salary flexibility going forward.
For the Warriors, this would mortgage their future to give Curry a fighting chance to win a title over the two remaining years on his contract. James would be a massive upgrade over Wiggins and they would still retain Draymond Green to form a terrific big three.
The Warriors have been reluctant to include Podziemski and Kuminga in a trade. That would be the sticking point in this type of trade.
MORE: Projecting USA basketball’s roster for the 2028 Olympics is no easy task
Linking up in free agency
If a trade isn’t possible, then there is still one last way to reunite James and Steph.
Both are set to be free agents in the summer of 2026. Curry will be 38 and James will be 41. They likely won’t be good enough to win a championship as the main guys anymore, but they could still be valuable pieces somewhere and sign together for a discount.
Projecting cap space that far out is not super useful, but basically every team would be in the running to get both of them outside of the Celtics, Sixers, Cavaliers and Suns, per Spotrac. It would be a storybook ending if they could be the third or fourth options on a team in their final seasons in the league, and there’s no question every team would love to have them.