Golden State Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. speaks to the media on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Golden State Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. speaks to the media on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
The NBA isn’t a league where major roster upgrades happen by accident.
No, this a league run by an elite, backroom syndicate where real power-brokers hatch blockbuster moves long before any transaction window officially opens.
If you aren’t sitting at those tables, privy to those text-message chains, looped in on those conference calls, you’re just a spectator with a fancy title.
And Mike Dunleavy Jr. — despite being the general manager of the Warriors — admitted Tuesday that he didn’t receive the invite to the party.
“We’re super aggressive,” Dunleavy said of a Warriors offseason in which they added exactly zero new free agent players. “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.”
Cold calls? Really?
I make cold calls. The general manager of the Golden State Warriors should not need the Glengarry Leads.
(Do you think Bob Myers needs them? )
If you’re making “cold calls” in today’s NBA, you’ve already lost. The real deals are locked in over late-night dinners, back-channel texts and quiet handshakes months in advance.
And the only thing the Warriors have locked in this far in advance is an early offseason in 2027.
Dunleavy was hired to manage a the final years of a dynasty but he continues to prove, day in, day out, that he’s running the Warriors like a lackey at a mid-level accounting firm.
He can pick some nice bottom-of-the-roster players, sure, but that’s not what wins in the NBA today or, frankly, ever.
So in a summer where the rest of the league engaged in yet another high-stakes arms race — with players like LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jaylen Brown all available (among so many others) — Golden State’s front office stood completely still.
Sure, they tried, but what do they have to show for the effort?
They did absolutely nothing to upgrade a 37-45 lottery team. That isn’t patience or prudence.
No, it’s a dereliction of duty.
Steph Curry is 38 years old. He’s still, somehow, one of the dozen best basketball players on Earth.
Why does it seem like the Warriors’ front office resents him for that fact?
Because here’s his team’s general manager is talking about the roster like a man trying to survive a tax audit instead of trying to win a fifth ring.
On Tuesday, Dunleavy’s thesis might statement: “We’re not trying to win the championship in August.”
That’s a relief, because after this no-move summer, this team isn’t going to win one in June, either.
It takes a special brand of delusion to be this high on a supply this unremarkable.
When asked about the optics of running back a team that won 37 games and missed the playoffs entirely, Dunleavy offered pure spin. He argued the Warriors technically “added” because Kristaps Porzingis is around for a full season and guys are coming back from injuries.
Who needs LeBron or Jaylen or Giannis? Who even needs a Lu Dort or Mitchell Robinson, a Tim Hardaway Jr. or Coby White?
No, the Warriors are going to stand pat with a team that finished 10th in the West last season, counting on perfect health this upcoming season from a team built around aging veterans and guys recovering from major knee surgeries.
It’s like building a house out of straw and praying the wind never blows.
That’s not a plan, it’s insanity — like, to the colloquial definition.
Of course, Dunleavy also spoke at length about how the league’s new(ish) collective bargaining agreement makes player movement tricky. The Warriors love to tell you how difficult it is to make deals these days. He championed “cap flexibility” as the true secret weapon to success, despite that new(ish) CBA effectively ending high-level free agency.
Dunleavy sounded less like an NBA executive trying to maximize a generational talent and more like a car salesman explaining why the engine light is supposed to stay on.
Nobody buys tickets to Chase Center to watch cap space. They pay to watch Curry light up the galaxy.
They pay — a lot, mind you — to watch the Warriors win games.
Yet Dunleavy keeps rambling about threading the needle, internal development, and staying “in the mix.”
But the Warriors aren’t “in the mix,” they’re a play-in tournament team. What would they be if everything broke right?
The sixth seed, maybe?
Not a title contender, to be sure.
But amongst so many hits Dunleavy played Tuesday, there was one true bring-down-the-house number — the kind of quote that will come back to haunt him in due time:
When asked about Curry and if the star has given any indication he wants to leave, Dunleavy casually mused that if Steph ever came to him and requested a trade, “Joe [Lacob] and I will talk it through.”
Wrong answer. Insanely wrong. Couldn’t be more wrong.
Yes, the GM of the Golden State Warriors casually laid the groundwork for trading the most important athlete in Bay Area history because he couldn’t figure out how to build a competent supporting cast around him.
It’s almost as if they want it to happen — as if they want to jettison the player Lacob inherited and prove, in his absence, that Joe and his scions were, in fact, the driving reason the Warriors went from laughingstock to the most valuable basketball team in the world.
“We wouldn’t love it,” Dunleavy made sure to say, as if trading Curry is the equivalent of 101 traffic.
Up the street, Buster Posey wouldn’t engage on trading Logan Webb a few weeks back. Webb is a solid player — an All-Star — that is what, the 15th best pitcher in the National League?
Yet Dunleavy had no problem entertaining the notion of trading one of the single greatest athletes in any sport, ever.
“Optionality,” right?
Wrong. The sole job of this front office is to ensure Curry — who is not just a franchise-changing player, but a league-changer — never has a single reason to look elsewhere, let alone ask for an exit. They’re not supposed to be testing his loyalty, much less taking it for granted.
And yet here we are: The Warriors have spent the entire summer twiddling their thumbs (not terribly different from last summer) and re-signing their own guys hoping the 2026-27 season is one where injuries are banned, but just for them.
The rest of the league is playing poker, while Dunleavy is sitting in the corner playing Solitaire and congratulating himself on not losing any cards.
Curry has earned better than this. The fans deserve better than this.
Because if the Warriors brass thinks sticking with what they have is a winning strategy, then they clearly lost the plot on how to win in the NBA.
And that leaves the door open for Curry asking to have that conversation Dunleavy “wouldn’t love.”
Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry (30) grabs a towel to wipe away sweat after a win against the Sacramento Kings in an NBA game at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry (30) grabs a towel to wipe away sweat after a win against the Sacramento Kings in an NBA game at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., Tuesday, April 7, 2026. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)