SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors have an aging roster that just finished a middling season. They just paid a ludicrously large luxury tax bill with a team icon hitting free agency. They have a responsibility to compete for titles as long as Steph Curry remains great and a moral obligation to keep their dynastic core intact — possibly contradicting needs.
That sounds like a summer of migraines for Mike Dunleavy Jr. The Warriors’ general manager was disappointed to be sitting at a podium on April 18 rather than, say, June 18 for his end-of-season debrief.
After a quick opening statement, Dunleavy reiterated Steve Kerr, Curry and Draymond Green’s public desire to bring Klay Thompson back. He said he didn’t have any regrets from a quiet trade deadline. He said he believes the Warriors were closer to the top of the Western Conference than the bottom — even though they actually finished 10th.
The anticlimactic end to Golden State’s season is still fresh. But the real work for Dunleavy will begin soon. The twilight of a dynasty is in his hands.
“I think I probably operate off the saying: ‘There’s never a bad time to make a good decision,’” Dunleavy said. “So, doesn’t mean it’s not tough and you stir over it, but my job is to have the best interests of this franchise and the direction of this franchise and when I make a decision or we make a decision. So, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Golden State has an “unequivocal” need to improve, Dunleavy said. Especially if the Warriors keep their legendary trio intact, as they’re posturing, everything else must be on the table to get better. Trades, spending, strategy tweaks — the works. This season provided Dunleavy with clarity on what this roster is and where it’s heading, and his takeaway should be that simply running it all back isn’t a viable option.
Dunleavy is ready to navigate the offseason with that in mind.
“I think everything’s on the table in terms of how we play, how we want to do things,” Dunleavy said. “When you have a couple years, you know, we’ve missed the playoffs three of the last five years, so it’s fair to evaluate and make changes to things.”
The first order of business for the offseason will be Thompson. He wasn’t yet ready to dive into his pending free agency in his exit interview, but he’ll have suitors. He wants to win, to feel respected and to have a sense of happiness at this late stage of his career. The Warriors won’t be the only team to offer all three.
“Certainly we want Klay back, first and foremost,” Dunleavy said. “I expressed that to him yesterday. I think our players have expressed that, our coach, front office, ownership, look, everybody wants Klay back.”
Golden State’s preference of keeping Thompson will have to coalesce with its goal of shedding salary. Everybody knows it doesn’t make sense to field a $400 million lottery team. Majority owner Joe Lacob has been vocal about possibly dipping under the luxury tax threshold.
The Warriors are roughly $41 million over the tax. Thompson reportedly turned down a two-year, $48 million extension last winter. Both retaining him and cutting under the tax line would likely require him to take even less than that on an annual basis.
“Knowing what I know now, there’s not anything on the table I would have done or gone through with.”
Dunleavy on the Warriors’ trade deadline approach and if he would have done anything different pic.twitter.com/kzKK5otJGy
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) April 18, 2024
“I wouldn’t say we’re at a point now where we’re saying we got to be out of the tax or we got to be under a certain apron or anything like that,” Dunleavy said. “We’re going to look at everything. I think if you’ve got a team that you feel can contend for a championship, you do what it takes financially… You know how Joe is with his willingness to spend and compete, I don’t think there will be any restrictions, but we’ll also be prudent.”
How to build a championship contender around Curry, Green and Thompson at this stage of their careers is the real question. It might not be possible. Golden State needs a reliable second scorer next to Curry. They need a shooter to supplant Thompson in the starting lineup and reduce his minutes. They need more athleticism to apply ball pressure and speed up their pace.
Some of those needs are on the current roster and under contract. Most are not.
The Warriors likely don’t have their first-round pick this year, but have two future firsts and multiple pick swaps to dangle in trades. Their best asset on the player side is Jonathan Kuminga.
The Warriors still believe in Kuminga, both short- and long-term. But unless he rapidly improves as a passer, off-ball defender and 3-point shooter, he won’t be his fully formed, prime self in the next two years — the two years that matter for the 36-year-old Curry, Green and Thompson.
If another team thinks Kuminga could be the next Paul George, Kawhi Leonard or Jaylen Brown, the Warriors should at least have the conversation about taking their best package and letting them see if they’re right.
“I think we have enough good players in our system, we have enough assets to acquire good players and we have the ability to keep getting better,” Dunleavy said. “So, given that, as long as those guys are still really good, like, yeah, I think we can contend and compete.”
Chris Paul has a non-guaranteed $30 million contract, so the Warriors can either waive him for cap relief or trade him. Andrew Wiggins is going to be the subject of trade speculation given the wing logjam. Perhaps Moses Moody would be more valuable to a rival team than in Golden State, where his role has yo-yoed.
If a star player fades out of the playoffs and demands a trade, the Warriors should make anyone available — including impressive rookies Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis.
“I think the premise of getting better, that’s what we got to look at, for sure,” Dunleavy said of a trade. “So, that will be taken into consideration. We also have to be mindful of the player who it is, the age of the player, the skill set of the player, it’s all got to fit to be able to put the chips on the table to make a move. So those are the things we’ll kind of look at and evaluate, but, yeah, there’s multiple ways to get better and that’s certainly one of ’em.”
A core of Curry, Green and Thompson is flawed. Curry has said, “I just want to win.” To grant him that wish, everything around the trio will have to click masterfully.
Beyond personnel, the Warriors may have to rethink their style. The Warriors play a beautiful game, but their motion offense of split-actions, floor-bending spacing and freestyling isn’t as novel as it once was.
In some ways, the league has caught up. Kerr, who has said that he didn’t do a good enough job putting some players in positions to score this year, has to adjust.
“I learned so much basketball from Tex Winter and Phil Jackson, and what Phil used to tell us is, ‘We don’t run the triangle for Michael and Scottie, we run it for the rest of you guys,’” Kerr said.
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“We can run anything for those guys and they will be fine, but we run it for the rest of you guys to help you make decisions, to help simplify the game. And I’m not going to run the triangle so don’t put that in a headline, but I need to create a simpler format.”
Dunleavy thinks the coach will be “open” to changes, though Kerr said, “philosophically, I don’t think we need a huge schematic shift.”
The Warriors struggled with guarding the 3-point line. They played slowly, ranking last in percentage of points scored on the fast break. Their mix of crashing the offensive glass and sprinting back on defense was askew.
They won 46 games and believe they should’ve probably won 50, but the West is only going to get better. Ja Morant will return for Memphis. Victor Wembanyama will be a problem for the next decade. Houston was already on the Warriors’ tails.
The Warriors’ currency is championships. Getting back to that level next year will require drastic change (and a healthy dose of luck). It’ll take risks and, most likely, sacrificing at least part of Golden State’s young core it believes in. All options must be explored — at the very least to improve, but really to give Curry another shot at a title run.
There’s never a bad time to make a good decision. But this summer is no time for indecision.