Inside Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s second season and the Warriors’ chase for the next big fish

SAN FRANCISCO — Paul George’s rookie season overlapped with the final of Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s five seasons as a player with the Indiana Pacers. Dunleavy was, as Draymond Green referred to it, George’s initial “vet,” generating a relationship that proved beneficial for the Golden State Warriors this June.

Dunleavy — now the Warriors general manager — “led the charge” on the George recruitment, according to Stephen Curry. He hatched the idea and handled all the logistics to get George, Curry, Green, Steve Kerr and other necessary power players together in Los Angeles to pitch George on coming to San Francisco.

“He was very persistent (in) making the date work,” Green said. “He did the job. Paul George wanted to come here. So shoutout to Mike. The Clippers just wouldn’t do (an opt-in and trade).”

Instead, George went to the Philadelphia 76ers. The Clippers chose to shed his salary rather than gain anything from the Warriors in return. The Warriors would argue that the Clippers miscalculated George’s true desire to leave until it was too late and boxed out Golden State in the process. There remains fading frustration.

“Let’s keep it real,” Curry said. “Most teams are probably not going to want to help us.”

About a week later, on the eve of free agency, Kerr drove to Santa Monica from his San Diego home. The Warriors front office was gathered in a meeting room at Hotel Casa Del Mar.

They’d missed out on George. They’d already been informed of Klay Thompson’s pending departure. They didn’t like anything available for Chris Paul’s dissolving salary. Dunleavy pulled Kerr to the side in the middle of the meeting. He pointed toward the top portion of their free agency board.

“Look, Kyle Anderson’s a hell of a player,” Kerr remembered Dunleavy telling him. “We should turn our sights on him and a couple of these other guys, turn our cap space and flexibility into good players and let it sort out from there.”

Sixteen months after Bob Myers stepped down, the Warriors are entering the second season of Dunleavy’s general managerial tenure. It’s been defined by patience at a moment in the franchise’s arc that urges impatience. They’ve drafted well, reset the financials and sharpened the edges but tried and failed to land the seismic move that boosts them back into title contention before Curry’s basketball clock expires. If that’s the goal, it’s still out of reach.

But regardless of an incomplete mission, it’s clear — through various interviews and background conversations with The Athletic — that all the major voices within the Warriors are aligned with Dunleavy’s plan and believe his voice carries the necessary weight and direction atop Joe Lacob’s power structure.

“It’s a tough job. I understand that,” Curry said. “But it’s an ongoing job. Right now, he’s doing a great job. But there are going to be decisions coming up that he’s going to have to figure out. It’s our job as players to keep applying the pressure by the way we’re playing.”

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When Dunleavy laid out the blueprint to Curry and Green, Utah Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen wasn’t Plan B. He was a subsection of Plan A. The Warriors wanted both wings — believing George’s opt-out threat would allow them to protect the required assets to entice Utah Jazz CEO Danny Ainge, and Markkanen’s reasonable $18 million returning salary could make the financials work.

“The conversation was always about that possibility,” Green said. “You get both of those guys, you make a huge splash. But the Clippers weren’t really willing to play ball. Then Danny Ainge was being Danny Ainge.”

If George had been in tow, perhaps the Warriors would’ve unloaded everything left in the cupboard for Markkanen — all the first-rounders, second-rounders, swaps and young players the Jazz requested. Contention would’ve been a reasonable expectation.

But without George, it’s clear the Warriors didn’t like the price considering the return on investment. That’s what Dunleavy relayed to Kerr in that pre-free-agency meeting at Casa Del Mar.

“Mike is very sensible,” Kerr said. “He just said to me, ‘It doesn’t make sense to sell your entire future for a team that you think can be pretty good, but isn’t awesome, right?’ Especially at this stage with the ages of our stars.”

Dunleavy put it this way at his pre-camp news conference: “There’s no point in going all in to be slightly above average.”

Three weeks later, in the same room that Dunleavy delivered that quote, controlling owner Lacob is reminded of the framing.

“I saw where he said that,” Lacob said.

Lacob is perpetually outward about his ambition and optimism, so it isn’t the easiest thing to concede that, even with a large summer swing, this Warriors team still wouldn’t have been good enough.

“Well, here’s the issue,” Lacob said. “You’ve heard me say and you’ve heard him say: Making trades is really hard in this league. And often you have to overpay. We know that. But when you say all in, I mean in one of the situations that was a trade that you’re alluding to, ALL IN should have been in capital letters.”

All the firsts, seconds, swaps, Brandin Podziemski, Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody.

“So that term is important,” Lacob said. “It’s not just a term. That was something we tried hard to do. If you’re going to get the guy you want, you can do that. We’ve done it before. We did it with (Kevin Durant). We had to gut half the roster if you recall. So if it’s the right move, we’re willing to go quote ‘capital A capital L capital L’ all in. But you can only do that once, so you’d better be right.”

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One of Dunleavy’s better leadership qualities, according to Kerr, is his ability to have a difficult conversation when necessary. He used an example from the summer. The front office felt that Kerr needed to shake up his coaching staff.

“He comes from a place of humility and respect,” Kerr said. “Respecting what we’ve done, what our other coaches have done. But he’s also not afraid to say: ‘Hey, look, we’ve lost Mike Brown, we’ve lost Kenny (Atkinson). We don’t have a former player on the staff anymore after losing Willie Green and (Leandro Barbosa).’ He’s not afraid to say the truth.”

The Warriors hired Jerry Stackhouse and Terry Stotts. Stackhouse was a Dunleavy connection and suggestion. His NBA Rolodex is deep. The early returns on both have been positive.

“You’re taking in everybody’s opinions,” Dunleavy said. “Steve’s. The staff’s. The players’. Joe’s. I’m not including those guys because I have to. I’m including them because I value their opinion.”

Perhaps the most difficult — or at least most delicate — conversations of Dunleavy’s summer came with Curry. The Warriors indirectly walked Thompson out the door, weren’t able to get Curry the second established scorer he craved and pivoted into a patient approach months before Curry’s 37th birthday, all while convincing him to add an extra year onto his contract.

“He’s just honest,” Curry said of Dunleavy. “The same way Bob was. I always say I just want to see effort and an aggressive nature.”

Dunleavy plotted the George recruitment with Curry. He kept him up to date on any material Markkanen development. They discussed other names that both agreed didn’t move the needle. Curry and Green have always been De’Anthony Melton fans. Melton said the Warriors’ front office was in his agent’s office within 20 minutes of free agency starting.

Don’t mistake Curry’s understanding with a lack of urgency. He’s still in a sturdy alliance with the organization because he trusts Dunleavy similar to how he trusted Myers and he’s been led to believe that they will strike —  using future picks and other necessary sacrifices — to maximize the next couple of seasons if the right trade materializes.

“Yeah, but nobody knows what that means until there’s an opportunity or you assess what this team is,” Curry said.

In the last couple of months, the Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves had a conversation about Karl Anthony-Towns, league sources said, but it didn’t go anywhere. The Timberwolves targeted a specific package from the New York Knicks that the Warriors didn’t possess. There’s no other obvious big name immediately available as the regular season arrives.

“I just think the biggest thing for me is, as a player, when you’re dealing with a GM, there are material moments throughout the year that you want to have an alignment,” Curry said. “Come New Year, I may have a check-in. Come trade deadline, I might have a check-in. Come offseason, I have a check-in. The rest of the time it’s his job to go maintain relationships and keep an eye on the league. It’s my job to go hoop.”

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Green once sat in Golden State’s draft room and witnessed firsthand what he considers the epitome of the Lacob ownership experience. During a particularly spirited debate on a personnel choice, Lacob voiced his opinion with conviction and tried to sway the room. His scouts and front office collectively disagreed. They went a different route. He accepted the outcome.

“That’s one of those things that gets overblown,” Green said. “Joe’s gonna speak his mind. He’s gonna speak to the media. When someone speaks their mind, people come to their conclusions (that whatever that person says goes). But every smart person knows what they don’t know and puts people in positions of what they don’t know.”

Asked about Dunleavy, Green said: “When I call Mike and I say, ‘Hey, Mike X, Y, Z, can we do this? Can we get this done?’ It doesn’t have to be a trade. It can be anything. He’s like: ‘I’ll get back to you on it. I’ll get it done.’ He gets s— done. No puppet gets s— done like Mike gets s— done.”

In the aftermath of Myers’ departure, the front office operates with striking similarity. Dunleavy is one of Myers’ closest friends and worked directly under him for four years, taking over many of Myers’ day-to-day duties several seasons ago. Kirk Lacob is still an influential third in the power structure, but he is rising. So many others — Chuck Hayes, Pabail Sidhu, Larry Harris, Ryan Atkinson, Jon Phelps, Jonnie West — influence the process.

“Mike has a very strong voice,” Joe Lacob said. “He’s doing a great job. First of all, it’s Mike and Kirk, to be honest. Kirk’s been here for 14 years. He’s a real veteran in this league at this point. So together, they’re architecting this. Mike is the top dog. But I’ve had the same role I had with Bob. There’s no difference. None.”

Now the question becomes what kind of job this front office is doing. Despite essentially admitting — via their lack of all-in trade reasoning — that they were in the middle tier of a crowded conference, expectations have zoomed upward in the last month.

They’ve quietly been glowing about Melton, Anderson and Buddy Hield, their offseason pickups, and Lacob said, “I don’t think there’s a deeper roster in the entire NBA right now of quality players. I don’t.”

“I’m extremely happy with the roster right now,” he added. “Am I saying that I think we’re a championship-caliber roster? I don’t know yet. We may be better than people think, though.”

Their internal number models had them in the top six of the conference dating to the summer. They plan to chuck 3s and crank up the pace. Their younger players look improved. Their 6-0 preseason went about perfectly. They are fully healthy entering the opener. There has been internal talk that 50-plus wins should be the expectation.

“We’re sitting about as good as we could, subject to the point that we didn’t catch the big fish that we were going after,” Lacob said. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t. It just means we didn’t yet.”

So despite how it may appear, Lacob said this isn’t just a franchise trying to guide its way to the end of the Curry era in relevant mediocrity.

“We are all of the same level of impatience,” Lacob said. “We all want to win the championship. That’s all I f—ing care about is winning the championship. I am incredibly and we are incredibly hungry. And I’m not just saying that. We’re not scared of the pressure our fans might put on us. No. Accept it. Adopt it. Because that’s who we are. That’s what we want to be.”

(Illustration by Kelsea Petersen: The Athletic; photos by Kavin Mistry, Jeff Bottari, Ezra Shaw and Rocky Widner / Getty Images)