Klay Thompson didn’t care about his legacy when he left the Warriors on Monday, signing a three-year, $50 million deal with the Dallas Mavericks via a forced sign-and-trade.
So why should we spend this strange, end-of-an-era moment waxing poetic about the past and all the good times Thompson provided in the Bay?
Save that stuff for the jersey retirement ceremony. No, I, like Thompson, will take this moment to look into the future.
Though I imagine the four-time champion took one last look back at the flaming wreckage he helped create in San Francisco.
It wasn’t that long ago when the “lightyears ahead” Warriors wanted to be the next iteration of Spurs — good for two-plus decades. To do that, they’d have “two timelines” that would allow them to win now and win later.
That plan never panned out.
And now they’re left with no timelines.
No matter what you thought about Thompson’s efficacy last season, the Warriors letting him walk out the door for only a traded player exception (worth roughly $16 million) is roster malpractice.
Mike Dunleavy Jr. was hired as the Warriors’ general manager on June 16, 2023. That was nearly a year to the day the Warriors won the 2022 NBA title.
Dunleavy inherited some problems, no doubt, but in the 382 days since he took over, he turned Thompson, Jordan Poole, and a first-round pick into nothing more than a steaming pile of funny money.
In short, he has ensured the Warriors won’t win another title with Steph Curry leading the way.
Is it all Dunleavy’s fault? Hardly. The inscrutable Thompson turned down a fair contract extension offer from the Warriors before the start of last season, opting instead to bet on himself.
Thompson lost that bet — his new deal is an annual pay cut of nearly $10 million from the Warriors’ extension offer. But instead of admitting that, he opted to pretend he won.
But Dunleavy hasn’t shown the negotiating chops or the roster-building creativity this precarious moment has demanded.
Instead, he helped drive the team off the cliff. In a job that demanded the stacking of wins, even small ones, amid roster arbitrage, Dunleavy came up woefully short move after move.
Coming into this offseason, the writing was on the wall: someone was going. The NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement made the Warriors’ previous spending habits far too onerous to maintain.
For Dunleavy, the choice was simple: can lose Thompson or you can waive Paul.
As disappointing as both of them were last season, the Warriors couldn’t lose both for nothing and maintain whatever competitiveness they had.
And yet that’s exactly what happened.
So I hope everyone enjoyed last season’s 46 wins and embarrassing play-in tournament exit to the Kings — that’s likely as good as things will be for a while yet.
The Warriors’ current roster leaves the team in basketball purgatory for at least the next season, if not longer.
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
