Before we begin, let's be fair. The Stephen Curry Golden State Warriors reached heights the Utah Jazz never did with Karl Malone and John Stockton. That's what winning four titles gets you. However, the commonality between these eras of basketball is that they lasted a while, but what goes up must come down.
When the Malone-Stockton era comes up, everyone brings up how close they were to winning a title, against Michael Jordan no less. It's valid, because even if Chicago came up victorious in 1997 and 1998, it's not like it was easy for them. The Jazz made them work for to pull off their second three-peat.
But what many forget is what happened after that. When those Jazz teams made the finals, Malone and Stockton were in their mid-30s, so their expiration date was on the horizon. They never made the NBA Finals again, but they also never made the Western Conference Finals again before the partnership ended in 2003.
The most accurate way to explain why is pretty simple: they simply aged out. Not just Malone and Stockton. The Jazz notoriously fielded some of the oldest teams in NBA history because they also had Jeff Hornacek, Thurl Bailey, Olden Polynice, Danny Manning, Mark Jackson, and John Starks, who eventually aged out as a core.
Now, the Warriors are approaching that exact same end point.
Golden State has become yesterday's news like Utah back then
Despite Curry still being one of the NBA's best guards and offensive weapons, there's not a whole lot of optimism about Golden Stat. They didn't even make the playoffs last year and didn't really do anything to change their make up.
They tried to get Jaren Jackson Jr., but the Jazz beat them to the punch. They tried to add LeBron James, but that pursuit failed as well. They still have their draft capital, and they've added some okay players like old friend Georges Niang, but it's hard to think of a time when it looked more over for them since the Curry era exploded.
With everything that's happened to them, it's hard to see how they salvage this. They can go all out to try to make the most of what's left of Curry (in fact, they should have), but their front office has signaled that they are prepping for what's to come once Curry hangs it up.
After being the golden example for how to run a franchise, the Warriors are now among the league's more directionless teams. This means they are firmly not in that tier anymore like the Jazz were when the Malone-Stockton era was post-1998.
In fact, it might even be worse for the Warriors. When it was all over, the Malone-Stockton Jazz teams weren't title contenders anymore, but hey, at least they were still playoff contenders. Are we sure Golden State really fits that bill anymore?
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