Many Warriors fans wanted Golden State (46-36) to shake things up before the Feb. 8 trade deadline during the 2023-24 NBA season.
While a major move never came to fruition and Golden State flamed out in the NBA Play-In Tournament against the Sacramento Kings, a trade wouldn’t have made things worse in hindsight.
However, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy firmly believes it was best not to tweak the roster, a process he explained to reporters on Thursday.
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"I think knowing what I know now, there is not anything on the table that I would have done or gone through with,” Dunleavy said. “I think it was good to see this team out. I think one of the best things about this year, frankly, is there were no catastrophic injuries. There's no, 'Hey, Steph only played 40 games. What would this team be like without him?' Things like that.
"We know clearly what this team was. It wasn't good enough, and so there's no doubt about that. There's no 'what ifs' 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 answered all those questions, and so now we can move forward with clarity.
The Warriors made a blockbuster trade last offseason by dealing Jordan Poole to the Washington Wizards for 12-time NBA All-Star Chris Paul. Golden State hasn’t made a trade of that magnitude since.
Golden State Warriors
At the deadline, the Warriors kicked the tires on trading 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 values the information he was able to garner about his team throughout the year.
"But going back on it, no, I feel good about this team,” Dunleavy added. “We really put a lot into it before the season started and a lot of thought. I thought it could play multiple ways -- pretty versatile defensively, offensively. Did we do those throughout the year? No. But to be able to see that out after the deadline, I thought was important.
“That's ... the feedback I got from the players, the coaching staff. And, frankly, we were 27-12 the last half of the season. So, I'm good with how we went after the deadline. Just don't like maybe the earlier part of the season that got us too far behind that we couldn't make up."
The Warriors looked like their dynastic selves to end the year, but as Dunleavy mentioned, the team just didn’t have enough juice and dug itself too deep of a hole early on.
And it was the right move, in Dunleavy’s eyes, not to do more than trade Corey Joseph to the Indiana Pacers at the deadline for draft considerations and everyone’s favorite -- cash considerations.
However, it appears the Warriors might need to make moves during the offseason.
Expect Dunleavy to be working the phones more than before in his second offseason as general manager.