Dunleavy has no regrets as the Warriors trade deadline originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Many Warriors fans wanted Golden State (46-36) to shake things up before the Feb. 8 trade deadline during the 2023-24 NBA season.
Although a big move never materialized and Golden State broke out in the NBA Play-In Tournament against the Sacramento Kings, in retrospect a trade wouldn’t have made things worse.
However, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy firmly believes it is best not to make any roster adjustments, a process he explained to reporters on Thursday.
“I think knowing what I know now, there’s nothing on the table that I would have done or pursued,” Dunleavy said. “I think it was good to see this team off the field. I think one of the best things about Honestly, there haven’t been any catastrophic injuries this year. There’s no, ‘Hey, Steph’s only played 40 games. ‘ Those kind of things.
“We clearly know what this team was. It wasn’t good enough, and so there’s no doubt about that. There’s no ‘what if’ if we had made a move at the deadline – ‘Well, maybe that wasn’t the right move ‘ [or] “What if we had kept this guy or that guy?” We’ve answered all these questions so we can now move forward with clarity.
“Knowing what I know now, there is nothing on the table that I would have done or continued.”
Dunleavy on the Warriors’ approach to the trade deadline and whether he would have done anything differently pic.twitter.com/kzKK5otJGy
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) April 18, 2024
The Warriors made a blockbuster trade last offseason, dealing Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards for 12-time NBA All-Star Chris Paul. Golden State hasn’t made a trade of that size since.
The Warriors broke at the deadline when they traded for then-Toronto Raptors forward OG Anunoby, ESPN’s Zach Lowe reported, citing sources, but nothing came of that either.
Dunleavy wishes the Warriors’ season went better. However, he appreciates the information he was able to gather about his team throughout the year.
“But when I come back to it, no, I feel good about this team,” Dunleavy added. “We really put a lot into it before the season started and thought about it a lot. I thought it could play in multiple ways – pretty versatile defensively, offensively. Have we done those all year long? No. But after that I thought it was important to be able to see the deadline.
“That’s… the feedback I got from the players, the coaching staff. And honestly, we were 27-12 the last half of the season. So I’m good about how we went after the deadline. I just don’t like the first part of the season, we fell too far behind and we couldn’t make up for that.”
The Warriors looked like their dynastic selves to end the year, but as Dunleavy said, the team just didn’t have enough juice and dug themselves too deep of a hole early.
And doing nothing more than trading Corey Joseph to the Indiana Pacers at the deadline was the right move in Dunleavy’s eyes for draft considerations and everyone’s favorite: cash considerations.
However, it appears the Warriors will need to take action this offseason.
Expect Dunleavy to work the phone more than before in his second offseason as general manager.
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