How hungry were Joe Lacob and Mike Dunleavy Jr. to make a trade and recast this Warriors season immediately, if not sooner? Extremely hungry, it turns out — they acquired veteran scorer Dennis Schroder on Sunday, the first day the trade was possible to complete.
The trade deadline isn’t until Feb. 6. Most teams will use the time to evaluate their players and situation, scan the market, maybe start, stop, and banter through some negotiations until they get to late January or early February, which is when most trades get made. Not the Warriors. Not this season. Not while they’re in the middle of a 2-8 tailspin that, after Sunday’s loss to Dallas, brought them to 14-11 and eighth place in the Western Conference.
And they’re probably not stopping here.
“Trades are hard. I’ve made this comment before,” Lacob told me after the game Sunday night. “This one was available for us at the right time, and hopefully another one, might be two. … Obviously, if we keep losing, I’m going to want to … do something else.”
Lacob said that with a chuckle, but everybody in this franchise understands and acknowledges that he isn’t somebody to sit around while a season tilts the wrong way. Especially not after the 12-3 start, then all those close games lost at the end, when the Warriors couldn’t find anybody other than Stephen Curry to attack swarming defenses.
And Dunleavy, in his second season as Warriors general manager, is showing that he can be just as restless to keep exploring moves that might immediately bring the Warriors closer to the fifth championship of this era. Because Curry is still a dominant force in this league, but he’s 36, and every time the calendar page flips, it is a reminder that this will not last forever — or maybe even for another few years. And Draymond Green is 34 and accumulating more wear and tear as he goes up against younger, larger opponents.
Warriors fans logically have fretted for years about making sure this team maximizes the Curry prime years. But Lacob doesn’t really think of it like that. His nature is to fret about maximizing all the years.
“I’m always trying to win,” Lacob said. “I don’t care if it’s ‘maximize the Steph years’ or ‘maximize the Draymond years.’ Maximize my years. It doesn’t matter to me. We’re trying to win at all times and be the best team we can.”
Schroder could help open the court enough to take some of the burden from Curry and maybe free up Jonathan Kuminga, whose future as either a foundational Warriors figure or a February trade piece is being decided right now. This is what the Warriors were getting from De’Anthony Melton before he tore his ACL. This is what they hoped to get from Brandin Podziemski or Buddy Hield after the loss of Melton. But none of that happened, and now they’ve sent Melton’s contract to the Nets for Schroder.
“I think since the beginning of the season we’ve had a hard time taking care of the ball and initiating offense without Steph late in games at times,” Lacob said. “I think we missed Melton. We were better with Melton. So I think [Schroder]’s a pretty good proxy for him. He’s having a great year, actually. He’s always killed the Warriors, as you know.”
Schroder is famous in the NBA for his shoot-shoot-shoot, get-out-of-my-way mentality, which, of course, is a big departure from the thoughtful style of player the Warriors have featured and favored in Steve Kerr’s offense. It’s worn on previous teams. It could wear on the Warriors — there’s a reason Schroder’s now on his eighth team in 12 NBA seasons.
“He has changed teams a lot,” Lacob said. “But he’s actually playing the best basketball of his career. This is his best year ever. And by the way, he played great for Germany — you probably saw the Olympics. So, I think he’s probably at the height of his abilities. He’s played as good as he’s ever played. You know he’s always liked San Francisco. He’s very excited about coming to us. I just think it all made sense.
“Whether he’s the same style, I don’t know. … You have to be able to do different things to win games in different ways.”
To that point, Schroder could be an instant way to stabilize the Warriors and make sure they’re in solid enough position by February to make it worth sacrificing part of their future for a win-now star — Miami’s Jimmy Butler would be the most obvious target. Other names will come up. The Warriors will be interested.
“We’re in a time zone here of maximizing our window with Steph, Draymond, and Steve as our coach,” Dunleavy said on a Zoom call with reporters Monday morning. “For the most part, I feel good about this team, particularly on the defensive end, and now we have a player that we think could create and generate more offense for us. I want to evaluate and see, but we’ll always be looking at stuff.”
This is not new to the Warriors or to the Lacob-Dunleavy partnership. They tried to land Paul George and Lauri Markkanen in the off-season. And this team will always jump into the deal flow and see what’s out there. That’s how they got Andre Iguodala in 2014. That’s how they got Kevin Durant two years later.
“We’re always looking to improve,” Lacob said. “I mean, there’s no difference between now or [later]. We’re always going to be looking for the right deal. This is the right deal that came along at the right time.”
Here are some other highlights from our conversation:
The Kuminga question
Lacob has been one of Kuminga’s biggest fans since they drafted him in 2021 and, now that Kuminga is in the starting lineup and getting big minutes, Lacob is liking what he’s seeing.
“I’m very excited — 20 points tonight,” Lacob said. “I think he’s been playing pretty well. he’s been doing better. He’s getting better. He’s contributing a lot to our success. There’s nights you could say he’s been our second-best offensive weapon. He’s a good player. We like him a lot.”
But Kuminga and the Warriors couldn’t come to an agreement on a rookie-deal extension two months ago, so he’ll hit restricted free agency in July. There’s a stress point here: Is he worth more to the Warriors as a player for the long term or a trade piece in February?
“I can’t go into details of all that,” Lacob said of the contract talks. “Of course we like him. We do have him under contract. He’s playing for us this year, and we have restricted free agency coming this summer. So it’s not like we really lost anything here. We get another chance to see him progress and … see how good he can be this year.”
Would it be tough to trade him?
“I’m not going to speculate on that,” Lacob said.
Prepping for the All-Star Game
The franchise, the city, and Chase Center will be spotlighted during February’s All-Star festivities, which has meant plenty of time and energy spent by Warriors staffers to prepare for it all.
“I think it’s gonna be incredibly successful, incredibly impressive to the NBA world, which is who it’s really aimed at,” Lacob said. “I’m looking forward to it. I’ll also be glad when it’s done. Because it’s a lot of work, and we want to get it over with and move on to do other things.”
What’s Lacob looking forward to seeing most? “It’ll be great to see Steph Curry playing in front of his home fans.”
Ride of the Valkyries
There’s a sense around the WNBA that Lacob and his Valkyries executive team want to make a splash before their debut season next summer. They recently added their first players via the expansion draft, which, interestingly, left the Valkryries with tons of cap room. They hold the fifth pick in next spring’s WNBA draft. Ticket sales are booming. Could there be something big happening soon?
“I don’t expect Rome to be built in a day here,” Lacob said. “We’ll try to be the best we can the first year, provide a great experience for our fans, build the team up, and hopefully get to be very competitive.”
But you’re plotting to get a star, right, Joe?
“Oh yeah, sure,” Lacob said. “Free agency’s probably the best shot to do that. We’ll give it the best shot we can this year and certainly next year, there’ll be even more available. I would expect that over the first couple of years we’ll start to get some really good players in here. And give us until Year 5 to win that championship.”