LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors talk to each other after the Lakers beat the Warriors in double overtime at Chase Center on Jan. 27, 2024, in San Francisco.

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For the first time since 2005, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James will all be absent from the second round of the NBA Playoffs, as all three players have been eliminated from championship contention as of Monday night.

It sure feels like the end of the road for the three all-time greats is just around the corner, but only one will retire with little to no questions about their legacy, according to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.

Using Hall of Famer Michael Jordan as a measuring stick, the national sports talking head declared that of the three superstars, only Steph Curry has the closest thing to an unblemished legacy. Compared to James and Durant, Smith argues, Curry had to look for less help to get his titles, and establish his Hall of Fame resume.

“When we talk about how great they were as players — well, LeBron had to go to Miami to get the title,” Smith said on Tuesday’s episode of “First Take.”

“And then LeBron went back to Cleveland to join Kyrie [Irving] and get Kevin Love from Minnesota in order to win in Cleveland. And LeBron had to get [Anthony Davis] to get to LA before he won the title in LA.

“Jordan stayed. Steph Curry stayed. They built around Jordan, they built around Steph Curry. That wasn’t the case with LeBron and KD. So we have to look at those situations differently.

We can lump them all into the sentence for a question, but their careers, I’m sorry, the way it’s traveled was different than the three. Some better, some worse than others.”

While the “Steph better” contingency of Warriors fans might understandably give this take their full endorsement, there are still a couple holes in it. As fellow “First Take” panelist Shannon Sharpe argues immediately afterwards:

The architect behind Jordan’s teams, Jerry Krause, is in the Hall of Fame, an honor unlikely to be bestowed on any of the executives that have worked with at least James.

There’s also the fact that, just like Curry is inextricably linked to the Warriors, James is inextricably linked to the Cavaliers, despite leaving Cleveland twice in his career, so the travel element isn’t the strongest argument.

Perhaps most damning to Curry is the fact that he needed Durant to come to Golden State to take two more from James after the infamous 2016 NBA Finals — although since the two players split up, Curry has cemented a legacy superior to Durant’s.

This argument will keep going until well after all three of these players have retired — of course, it’ll mostly be between James and Curry, with Durant’s inclusion being more of a contrarian position — but there’s still time for additional wrinkles to emerge. As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst notes, all three players will be on Team USA this summer for the Olympics in Paris.

“Team USA is the generator of all superteams,” Windhorst, who has recently developed a reputation for his sly predictions of cataclysmic roster shifts in the NBA, hinted. “Maybe not every single one — let’s just see what happens with Team USA.”

“This summer, basketball is not over when the finals are over, that’s all I’m going to say,” he later added.

It’s not clear how the debate over the legacies of these three players will end. What does seem a little clear, however, is that perhaps there’s another chapter to be written about them. One that maybe includes players joining forces, or even reuniting.