SAN FRANCISCO — The clip lasted fewer than ten seconds. Somewhere between his arrival in Beijing and the morning gym session Li-Ning had arranged for its newest global ambassador, Stephen Curry took a handful of steps and something in his gait caught the eye. A slight hitch. A half-favor. The kind of thing that looks like nothing and, given everything Golden State has been through, becomes everything.
Curry, 38, touched down in China on September 9 to begin Li-Ning’s Wide Open Tour (four cities, six days, hundreds of handshakes), his first major promotional swing since signing a reported 10-year, $400 million shoe deal with the Beijing-based sportswear brand in June. The video surfaced within hours on Chinese social media, accelerating through NBA circles before the story gained weight from a disclosure by Yahoo Sports: Warriors beat reporter Monte Poole, on the Dubs Talk podcast, said that some in the Golden State organization are genuinely worried about their franchise player entering the new season. “There’s at least some lingering concern about the knee,” Poole said.
There is no official injury report. The Warriors have issued no statement, and Curry’s camp has not responded to questions about the clip. The autograph session that followed the workout became its own story when fans mobbed Curry outside the Beijing gym, as Yahoo Sports reported. In other footage from the same session, Curry moved through the crowd without any visible favoring of either leg. The limp, if it was a limp, had vanished. The explanation may be as unremarkable as soreness from a 12-hour flight or the stiffness that accumulates in a 38-year-old’s joints after a long car ride in Beijing traffic.
But the 2025-26 Warriors season took something from the way Golden State permits itself to hope. Curry missed 43 games last season with patellofemoral pain syndrome. A team that finished 37-45 and watched the playoffs from home did so around a centerpiece who played fewer than half the schedule. When Curry was healthy, the Warriors went 24-19. Without him, 13-26. That is not a depth problem. That is a franchise that has never adequately solved the arithmetic of Curry’s absence.
Training camp opens September 29 at BYU-Hawaii in Oahu, where the Warriors will spend five days before the preseason schedule kicks off October 4 against the Los Angeles Clippers. The club announced the Hawaii training camp in late August as a change-of-scenery measure, a focused environment before the season’s demands began. There are 17 days between the moment the limp video spread and the moment Curry is expected to step onto a court in a practice jersey and confirm, in real time, that the knee cooperating with him on a Beijing morning was not an exception.
He told a CBS broadcast at a Golden State Valkyries game earlier this month that he was excited and that “there’s a lot of health coming back,” a sentiment that could be read as optimism or as a hedge, depending on how you were already feeling about the Warriors. The extension question hanging over him compounds the subtext. As EH’s reporting on Curry’s contract situation detailed last week, the Warriors presented their franchise player with three options: a one-year maximum, a two-year deal worth $136.7 million through the 2027-28 season, or free agency in July. Curry has committed only to wanting to finish his career in Golden State. He has not signed anything.
There is a version of this story where nothing is wrong. Curry has spent 18 NBA seasons managing a body that the basketball world has repeatedly underestimated. He has made the league look foolish every time it decided he was finished, through four championships and a scoring title and shooting records that may not be challenged in any of our lifetimes. A morning arrival in a new city produces stiffness in people half his age. The China itinerary continued, with stops in Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, without reported incident after the initial footage circulated.
But the Warriors cannot operate on that version alone. Golden State added Yaxel Lendeborg with the No. 11 overall pick, re-signed Draymond Green and Kristaps Porzingis, and committed to a roster built around Curry’s health. Jimmy Butler, the new wing the franchise acquired to give Curry exactly the secondary creator he has needed, is recovering from a torn ACL and unlikely to be ready when training camp opens. Moses Moody is also nursing a knee ailment. The Warriors are walking into September 29 without three players whose presence or absence will define the shape of their season.
Head coach Steve Kerr told reporters this summer that if the group locks in on the right process, the 2026-27 season can be the turning point. He knew when he said it that “a lot of health coming back” was load-bearing language. What happens to the Warriors if that health does not come back is a question the organization has been quietly gaming out since July, and a video from a Beijing gym is not the answer they were hoping to get in September.
Curry is somewhere in Asia, shaking hands and signing shoes. His knee is doing whatever it is doing. And in San Francisco, the Warriors are watching a ten-second clip and counting down the days.
