The Golden State Warriors were only worth $450 million in 2010. Less than 15 years later, and with some of the best scouting the NBA has seen in four years, the Warriors increased their valuation to a whooping $7 billion as per Forbes, and they are currently the most valuable franchise in the NBA (the New York Knicks are second at $6.1 billion). The Warriors’ change in fortune can be attributed to many factors, but the biggest factor of them all is Stephen Curry.

How Stephen Curry made the Warriors worth billions

When the Warriors drafted Curry with the seventh pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, the team had only won two playoff series over the past 18 years, and only made the playoffs once in the last 15 years.

It left then-Warriors owner Chris Cohan with no choice but to sell a majority share of the team in 2010 after owning the team for the previous 16 years. Cohan sold the Warriors to Joe Lacob and Peter Gruber for a price of $450 million. That doesn’t seem like a bad price nowadays given how almost every team in the NBA is valued at a minimum of $1 billion, but this cost the duo $135 million more than they were expecting. To make matters worse for Gruber and Lacob, the team just came off their worst attendance rate of all time.

However, the new ownership group placed their trust in Curry, and it worked out perfectly.

The rise of Stephen Curry and the Warriors

After a few more seasons of getting lucky in the draft, the Warriors finally started winning again and immediately surpassed their previous top attendance rates. They had a young core of Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Harrison Barnes leading the charge. Once they won their third title as a franchise in 2015, the team’s value continued to skyrocket each year. In fact, in 2019, with two more championships to their name, the Warriors saw a 1000 percent increase in their value from 2010, and went from being the 18th most valuable franchise all the way up into the top 3.

These days, brands are lining up to partner with the Warriors. Outside their sponsorship deals with Rakuten, Fanatics, and Pepsi, the Warriors also have their own esports branch and have launched an NFT collection.

With Curry still one of the top players in the NBA today, you can expect that $7 billion valuation to be very different one year from now.