Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant are the three greatest players of their generation. Curry, James, and Durant have won 10 championships between them, but Hall of Famer Paul Pierce believes they are no longer good enough to lead a team to glory. Pierce claimed on his No Fouls Given podcast that the three icons now need someone better than them on their team to win a championship.
“At this age, [Durant] doesn’t influence winning like he used before [in] OKC and Golden State,” Pierce said. “… He can’t be the best player on your championship team right now. I say that about him, I said that about LeBron, I also say that about Curry right now. They can’t be your best players on championship teams at this stage of their career. They need to play with somebody that’s better than them.
“That’s why the Lakers look better because they have a player that’s better than LeBron on there, and that’s hard to do,” Pierce added. “… No matter what his stats say, it’s just like with LeBron, they need players that are better than [them] that can influence winning because I think they’re just at a stage of their career, it’s hard for them to do all the things necessary to help them win outside of scoring.”
Curry, James, and Durant certainly do not influence winning as they once did. That is to be expected, though, considering one of them is in their 40s while the other two are in their late 30s.
While one could argue that Curry and maybe even Durant can still be the best player on a title-winning team, James cannot. There are games where the 41-year-old looks like his old self, but the consistency isn’t there.
James is averaging 21.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 6.9 assists, 1.1 steals, and 0.6 blocks per game for the Los Angeles Lakers in 2025-26. The 22-time All-Star is still operating at a pretty high level, but it’s not high enough for him to be the best player on a title-winning team.
Fortunately for the Lakers, they do have one Luka Doncic on their roster as well. Doncic has his critics, but he is more than good enough to lead a team to the Promised Land. The Slovenian’s dominance has led to the Lakers looking like real contenders lately, and it will be interesting to see how they fare in the playoffs.
As for Durant’s Houston Rockets, they are looking like a team that is going to get eliminated in the first round. The Rockets have lost four of their last six games to drop to 43-29 and are trending downward at the worst possible time.
Kendrick Perkins ripped Durant and the Rockets after their latest loss at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday. The Timberwolves trailed by 13 points in overtime that night, but still came away with a 110-108 win.
Durant had 30 points against the Timberwolves and is now averaging 26.0 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.9 blocks per game. The numbers are pretty good, but the wins aren’t coming at the rate you’d have expected.
This has pretty much been the story when it comes to Durant’s teams in recent years. The 37-year-old, of course, missed the playoffs last season with the Phoenix Suns.
Speaking of the postseason, Durant has won just two playoff series since he left the Golden State Warriors in 2019. While some of that is down to bad luck in the form of injuries, the fact is that he hasn’t shown for a while now that he is capable of leading a team to success in the playoffs.
Lastly, we get to Curry, who led the Warriors to a title in 2022. It looked like he might take them on a deep playoff run last season, but the injury bug then struck.
Curry suffered a hamstring injury in Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Timberwolves, and the Warriors collapsed without him. They’d have hoped the injury bug stayed away in 2025-26, but it hasn’t.
Jimmy Butler tore his ACL in January, and Curry has been out of action for nearly two months with a knee issue of his own. The Warriors weren’t looking like contenders this season, even when these two were healthy, though. It was clear they needed to upgrade the roster, and they were among the teams looking to acquire Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo at the trade deadline.
Curry, who is averaging 27.2 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 1.1 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game in 2025-26, does still seem capable of being that top dog, but he does need more help now than ever before. Curry can no longer mask the deficiencies of his team as he once did, and Pierce ultimately might be right.
