Our two best things were our equipment guy (Eric Housen) and our PR guy (Raymond Ridder). “When I was here, I felt pretty confident that we had a strength in two areas. He rejoined a franchise that was a whole lot different from the one he left. He stayed in the Eastern Conference for the rest of his career and lived in New York City when the Warriors hired him in 2018. ![]() Near the trade deadline of his fifth season, Dunleavy was sent to the Pacers in a deal that brought Stephen Jackson to the Warriors, morphing that team into the “We Believe” run and quickly washing away memories of the Dunleavy era. They were just perpetually bad enough to live below the playoff line and continue to disappoint the fan base: 38-44, 37-45, 34-48 and 34-48. The Warriors weren’t awful during Dunleavy’s four-and-a-half seasons. I probably should’ve been more aggressive, should’ve launched, done all that stuff.” “You gotta go out and put up numbers, and I was probably too team-oriented and interested in getting the team better, playing together with my teammates. “Looking back on it, I probably didn’t have the right mindset to be the third pick,” Dunleavy told me when he rejoined the franchise in 2018. He infamously criticized the fans for the constant booing, ratcheting up the temperature on him. The organization had more harmful problems.īut Dunleavy often felt the brunt of the Oracle Arena boos because of that third overall pick label and then the five-year, $44 million price tag - negotiated by Myers’ agency - on his extension. The team kept losing because of much bigger issues. They saw Yao, an immediate star in Houston, and Dunleavy, a steady role player with an obvious long-term ceiling below the All-Star floor. But Warriors fans weren’t concerned with the alternatives. He went on to have a better career than Drew Gooden or Nikoloz Tskitishvili or Dajuan Wagner, the three guys drafted right after him. The Warriors, drafting third, got Dunleavy. The Bulls, drafting second, got Jay Williams. The Rockets, with an 8.9 percent chance, did. The Warriors and their fans, knowing what kind of player and marketing opportunity Yao represented, desperately wanted to win. ![]() ![]() They tied for the worst record in basketball, giving them equal odds - 22.5 percent - to win the draft lottery. The Warriors lost 61 games during the 2001-02 season. Here is a timeline of how Dunleavy got to this point, beginning with a complicated start to his relationship with Golden State. He is replacing Myers, a franchise legend. With it being announced Friday, Dunleavy is now the Warriors’ next general manager. ![]() “Which is a little bit surprising because I think he’d be a good coach. “The one thing he knew he didn’t want to do was coach,” Myers told me then of Dunleavy. They added him as a pro scout in September 2018 with an expectation that it would eventually become more. Myers was given the green light to hire Dunleavy, who settled on his next career path quickly. Myers felt he needed another trusted voice next to him in a decision-making room that included Joe Lacob, the opinionated majority owner, and Kirk Lacob, his oldest son rising the ranks. Right around the time Dunleavy retired, the Warriors’ front office was shifting around Myers.
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