Dunleavy details a difficult balancing act as the Warriors timeline shrinks originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Dunleavy swung for the fences in his first act as Warriors general manager last offseason, trading Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards for Chris Paul in a winning move that ended with Golden State taking a sad bus ride back home after. being embarrassed by their Northern California counterparts, the Sacramento Kings, in the NBA Play-In Tournament.
One summer later the intrigue surrounding the Warriors was about what Dunleavy didn’t do as opposed to the creative moves he completed, all while the entire basketball world watched his 36-year-old superstar Steph Curry saves Team USA men’s basketball to win gold at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics playing for coach Steve Kerr.
Paul is now in San Antonio dishing lobs to Victor Wembanyama. Franchise icon Klay Thompson controversially darted for Dallas join the reigning Western Conference champions. Paul George is not a warriorand neither Lauri Markkanen or any other established star to play alongside Curry. Dunleavy and the front office pursued both, but the other parties were unwilling to happily join hands in holy matrimony.
The front office also shied away from high-risk decisions, doing everything they could to not sway too far one way or the other in Dunleavy. a balancing act of doing right by Curry and make the smartest financial and basketball choices for the team.
The timeline for Curry, Kerr and Draymond Green is not lost on Golden State’s general manager. Nor are all the other conclusions to which someone in his position must come.
“We’re probably as impatient as a franchise as you can be right now given our time horizon and all that,” Dunleavy said Thursday at Chase Center. “But there’s a fine line between impatience and being undisciplined. I think I feel good about the discipline that we’ve had this summer and the roster that we’ve built and the growth from within that we’re going to have.
“We are in a good place for this year. I know everyone’s always looking for big headline news and all that, but I really like this team.”
There were certainly opportunities to move on from the youth movement of Jonathan Kuminga and Brandin Podziemskiboth of whom may still be trade options down the line, as well as other young players. The Warriors could have pivoted to players such as Zach LaVine and his monster contract, or Brandon Ingram and the massive amount of money he wants to be paid. That’s where the discipline comes into play.
The reality instead was Dunleavy being able to sign De’Anthony Melton to a one-year, $12.8 million contract after waiving Paul, and then pulling off the first-ever six-team trade that brought in Warriors veterans Kyle Anderson and Buddy Hield.
Days before training camp begins in Hawaii, the Warriors are optimistic about the team they built behind a cloak of so much external negativity. Dunleavy also couldn’t help but use his new favorite word “optionality” later in the day.
“We have to see what this team is,” Dunleavy said. “It’s a really talented team. I think there are a lot of ways we can be good, which is exciting. We have a generational talent in Steph Curry, got Draymond Green, who is one of the more unique, all around players in the NBA, and after that we have a ton of pieces and depth and youth and experience and just everything you want. in a team.
“We’ll look at it, see where we are. The good news is that we have a lot of ways to improve from the outside, but right now we’re fully behind this team, and we think they’re going to have a great year.”
In the event that the right trade is put on the table, Dunleavy says the Warriors will be aggressive. They have interesting young players who can motivate other teams, still possess attractive assets and have tradable contracts.
Like bad team owner Joe Lacob, Dunleavy and the rest of those who sign deals want to win, they also won’t just make a move simply to make a move. Nothing was more evident than how they maneuvered the offseason.
“There’s no point in going all out to be slightly above average,” Dunleavy said. “To get into everything, you have to feel that you are all in. That way we’ll sort of judge and evaluate things, and we’ll see what’s there.”
The Warriors followed up their 2021–22 NBA championship season by winning 44 regular-season games, resulting in a No. 6 seed before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the playoffs. They increased their win totals by two games last season to 46 games, but fell to a No. 10 seed and failed to make the playoffs for the first time under Kerr where they had a healthy Curry, Green and Thompson.
This latest iteration of the Warriors has Kerr and Dunleavy ready to see the product on paper produce on the court. What is at stake is not lost on the front office, making the following months pressure filled. It’s also a time to reintroduce himself when the Warriors might feel forgotten, a notion Kerr didn’t dismiss.
“I don’t see any reason why we can’t improve on last year’s team and have a great season, and then you roll the dice from there,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going on with the rest of the league.
“But if we take control of our team and our destiny and be the best team we can be, I think good things can happen.”
