Warriors’ Mike Dunleavy fires back at critics of offseason strategy

SAN FRANCISCO – The only feeling that adequately summarizes the Golden State Warriors’ tepid offseason is deja vu.

After all, what changed?

The Warriors are returning a roster that won only 37-games and failed to get out of the Play-In game. They re-signed Draymond Green, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, De’Anthony Melton, and Gary Payton II to short-term veteran deals and made no new acquisitions other than rookie Yaxel Lendeborg in the draft (and fringe NBA center Charles Bassey if you count that).

They weren’t anywhere close to obtaining names on the levels of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaylen Brown, or even the likes of Trey Murphy III and Michael Porter Jr., either out of their own volition or out of their inability to build an enticing enough trade package.

And maybe most frustratingly of all, they struck out on LeBron James after centering a majority of their free agency plans around acquiring. Instead, he went to the Philadelphia 76ers for the minimum in a move that he made clear he believed was his best chance of chasing one last title. To spell out the quid pro quo there: the King didn’t believe Golden State was good enough to seriously contend, even with Stephen Curry on the roster.

However, general manager Mike Dunleavy remains “pleased” with how the Warriors’ offseason shook out. While quiet was the result, and apathetic deja vu is now the overwhelming feeling, it wasn’t for a lack of trying, according to the fourth-year executive.

“We’re super aggressive. I mean, if people knew the cold calls I made, offering a lot of stuff for players, I think they’d realize how hard we’re trying,” GM Mike Dunleavy said over a virtual press conference with beat reporters Tuesday afternoon. “And frankly, it’s not as much the guys that end up getting moved; there’s a lot of guys that we really, really value that don’t get moved, and that’s probably because so do those teams. We call on the guys that we really think can make an impact and change our direction.”

Flexibility for an in-season move

As currently constructed, the Warriors’ only pathway to contention is to make a trade– a measure they’ve been careful to pull the trigger on but also willing to fire if it aligns with their vision. And throughout Dunleavy’s 30-minute conference call, he made sure to emphasize that Golden State has the ammunition, flexibility, and willingness to make a deal to upgrade the roster if need be.

“We have multiple ways to get better during the season, which is something we’ve done the last few years,” Dunleavy said. “Whether it’s adding [Jimmy] Butler, adding Porzingis, you can go as far back as adding Andrew Wiggins. I’d say we’re pretty good about improving our team in the middle of the year. 

But the key caveat in those past midseason deals is that Golden State never parted with something truly valuable.

In the Butler deal, they surrendered only Wiggins and an immediate protected first. In the Porzingis deal, they sent away a disgruntled Jonathan Kuminga, who now has yet to sign with any team after the Atlanta Hawks sliced up his team option. And in the Wiggins deal, they actually got the Timberwolves to throw in an unprotected first-rounder for De’Angelo Russell, a player that never made sense for them.

So on the one hand, they’ve kept their powder dry and have the war chest to pursue an upgrade. On the other hand, to get something, you have to give something.

Look at every trade the champion New York Knicks made. Every move involved risk, every move involved surrendering real, tangibly valuable assets. To make a roster upgrade midseason, their willingness to part with valuable assets will have to match the sentiments Dunleavy expressed during his conference call.

 “If you just look at our books, our assets, all that stuff, we’ve got a lot of ways to entice teams and make things available and worthwhile for them to do a trade with us,” Dunleavy maintained. “So, for those reasons, I feel pretty confident that if we have to improve the roster in the middle of the season, we can.“

But even if the Warriors are willing to part with their more precious assets, what does that gain them? Their supposed war chest couldn’t beat out a package for Antetokounmpo centered around Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., and Kel’el Ware. And short of a talent like the Greek Freak, what player out there is changing Golden State’s destiny? Is Murphy really worth surrendering three future firsts that have only become more valuable with the lottery reform?

These are the ripple effects of Golden State’s quiet offseason. By returning a roster that finished 10th in the Western Conference, almost by default with the tanking epidemic, the Warriors have backed themselves into a corner in which they have to make an impact in-season trade. And that’s the kind of thing that looms over a locker room, a front office, and a fanbase like one big axe waiting to drop.

Mike Dunleavy’s response to disgruntled fans

Whether deserving or not, Dunleavy’s drawn the brunt of the Warriors’ fanbase’s ire as a result of their tepid offseason. The base has its reasons. There’s no path to contention outside a trade that sacrifices their post-Curry future. The roster they returned is old, injury-prone, and unaccomplished outside of a flash in the pan run in 2024-25. And Curry’s final chapter feels destined to end in mediocrity.

But when posed with the question of what he’d communicate to fans frustrated with the Warriors’ offseason, Dunleavy was resolute in his feeling that they’ve constructed a strong roster.

“So short of health, I feel really good about this team. We need to stay healthy. That’s always the case. We’ve talked about at the end of the season the things that we need to clean up internally, control the things you can control, the turnovers, the game plan, execution, late game stuff-all those things that with Steve coming back, he’s on top of. He’s excited to tackle.”

“This is a really good team that I would say underperformed last year, based on injuries and some things we can control. So, if people see us as you know running back a 37-win team, I would say we’ve added to that team, from the way it started last year with a player like Porzingis, and then most importantly, when we get into the season, we’ll see how our guys come back from injuries like Moses and Jimmy.”

It’s a house of cards in Golden State. Squint and you can see the high-end scenario of this team. Everyone stays healthy, Curry continues defying age and time, Green returns with renewed vigor, and Butler and Moody reinforce them in March as they hit their stride for a Rambo-esque, playoff sprint. But that’s a scenario in which you have to keep multiple pairs of fingers crossed.

Realistically, the Warriors are in store for what they went through last year. Which is what every great dynasty experiences at the twilight of its run. The Bulls had their Last Dance, Magic Johnson’s Showtime Lakers and Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics both got old, and Kobe Bryant went out on a lottery-bound team. This is just what happens when the end is near.

Hence the deja vu.

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