Stephen Curry tries not to think about his new status as the Golden State Warriors’ elder statesman.

But sometimes after practice, one of his young teammates unknowingly reminds Curry, now 31, of his advanced age, usually with a variation of the same question: “What are you getting into? Want to hang out?” Curry politely declines. With three kids at home, he needs to beat the traffic to Atherton to help his wife, Ayesha, around the house.

“I’m sure their days are a little different than mine,” Curry said of his 20-something teammates. “But outside of that, I don’t feel it. I still feel fresh. I’m still young at heart on the court.”

The Warriors, and the fans who will flock to the season-opening game Thursday at the team’s new San Francisco arena, are hoping that’s true. With a drastically different supporting cast from the one that reached five consecutive NBA Finals and won three championships, Curry might require an MVP-caliber season for Golden State to just reach the playoffs.

After years of preserving energy to play deep into June, he will go all in on the regular season, a tricky albeit necessary proposition. With former teammates Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston gone, and Klay Thompson out until at least late February following knee surgery, even a minor injury to Curry could quash the team’s playoff hopes. Yet if the Warriors make the postseason with a worn-down Curry, they might not survive the first round.

Curry’s infamous ankle issues, which threatened to derail his career when it was just getting started, have resurfaced at times the past couple of years. As he wades deeper into his 30s, some might wonder how much longer his slight frame can withstand his demanding, frenetic playing style. Research suggests that 27 is the heart of the average NBA player’s prime.

But Curry is no average NBA player, and he sees no reason for his greatness to wane now. Since more than half of the roster has turned over, he has kept his focus on opening the season in top shape and getting to know eight newcomers, many of whom count him among their idols.

Just four months after Curry ended the Finals as the Warriors’ fifth-oldest player, he’s become the only one born in the 1980s. This signals a new phase in his leadership style. Long a lead-by-example type, Curry is taking a more hands-on approach to mentorship.

During video study and practice, he peppers young players with pointers on such nuances as dribble handoffs and switches off screens. Sometimes, after a game, Curry will pull aside a rookie to congratulate him on a well-set pick or timely outlet pass. On the road, he invites new teammates to dinner.

“He’s never going to be Draymond” Green, head coach Steve Kerr said. “He’s never going to be barking away, but he’s more inclined to say something now than he would’ve been when I first got here, for sure.

“I think with this team especially, Steph’s smart. He realizes what we’ve lost the last couple of years from a veteran-leadership standpoint. He understands he’s got more responsibility in that regard.”

At times this preseason, Curry has found himself reflecting on former teammates Ronny Turiaf and Corey Maggette. As Golden State endured a 56-loss season in 2009-10, Turiaf and Maggette made a point of helping acclimate the baby-faced rookie to life in the NBA. The pair showed Curry their favorite restaurants, regaled him with stories from their careers and, of course, sent him on the occasional coffee run.

That added to a blueprint for leadership that began when Curry was still a kid in the Charlotte Hornets locker room observing his father, Dell, a respected sharpshooter whose 16-year NBA career spanned five franchises.

A half-decade removed from his first All-Star Game appearance, Curry still considers it a bit surreal whenever rookies tell him they grew up emulating him. Then Steve Nash arrives at a Golden State practice and Curry remembers how awestruck he was when he first played against the Hall of Fame point guard, who now serves as a part-time consultant with the Warriors.

Entering last season, Golden State hired Dr. Rick Celebrini as its director of sports medicine and performance largely because of his experience pushing the limits of Nash’s prime. When Nash retired from the NBA in March 2015, he wrote on the Players’ Tribune that Celebrini “had as big an impact on my career as anyone,” a nod to the work he did with Nash that helped him win two MVP awards in his early 30s and make an All-Star team at age 38.

Over the past year, Celebrini has taught Curry how to economize his physical movements. In June, after the Warriors lost to the Raptors in the Finals despite 30.5 points per game from Curry, Celebrini worked with him to map out an offseason regimen that included plenty of down time.

For more than a month, Curry relaxed at home and let his body recover. In late July, he began to work out with his longtime trainer, Brandon Payne, for three hours a day, six days a week. After vacationing in Iceland with Ayesha and some close friends in late August, Curry, an East Bay resident for 10 years, moved into a $31 million Atherton estate to ease his commute to the team’s new Mission Bay arena, the Chase Center.

When he arrived at the arena’s new performance center, he was pleased to learn that Celebrini was overseeing the design of a “mindfulness room,” a phone-free area where players can nap, meditate or play iPad games to help with vision and focus.

Perhaps the most important feature of the room is a sleep pod: an oval capsule with a bed that applies gentle pressure around a person’s entire body, simulating the feeling of being hugged. It will allow Curry to sleep without distractions after practice or shootaround.

Given that the Warriors’ season depends on his transcendent shooting, he can use the extra rest. The team’s preseason performance has illustrated just how predictable Golden State can become without Curry on the floor, its motion offense quickly turning slower and more static.

Without Durant’s prolific scoring, Kerr no longer has the luxury of limiting Curry’s regular-season workload.

Curry’s usage rate — an estimate of the percentage of plays run through a particular player when he is on the floor — has ranked no higher than 20th in the league each of the past three years. For the Warriors to contend in an improved Western Conference this season, that rate may need to be at least as high as in his unanimous MVP season in 2015-16, when he was involved in about a third of the team’s plays.

That’s a big ask for someone who has missed 50 games over the past two seasons. But those close to him believe if anyone is capable of propelling the Warriors past expectations, it’s Curry. As Kerr put it recently, Curry “is at his peak physically, mentally. He’s seen every defense that people have thrown at him during his career, and he’s ready to have a great year.”

That hasn’t stopped his younger teammates from ribbing him about being Golden State’s oldest player. After listening to Curry explain the subtleties of an offensive principle early in training camp, rookie guard Jordan Poole smiled and said, “All right, old man.”

“I like to pick on him a little bit,” Poole said with a chuckle. “He takes it well. That’s why Steph is great. Even after all he’s accomplished, he doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cletourneau@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron

Curry by the numbers 16,315: Career points, 16th among active players 5,690: Career 3-point attempts, eighth all-time 2,483: Career made 3-pointers, third all-time 31: Age 6: All-Star appearances 3: Championship rings (2014-15, ’16-17, ’17-18) 2: MVP awards, in 2014-15 and ’15-16