For a team that makes relatively few in-season transactions, and who drafted its core over a decade ago, the key moments for the Golden State Warriors’ roster tend to come in the offseason. The franchise has certainly had a whopping number of watershed summers that have propelled them to four titles and six Finals trips over this dynastic run.
The biggest was the summer they used the cap spike to sign Kevin Durant, sending an entire cavalcade to the Hamptons to pitch the Slim Reaper on joining up. What about three summers later, when Bob Myers and company turned Durant’s exit into D’Angelo Russell, flipping him for Andrew Wiggins and the pick that would become Jonathan Kuminga?
Perhaps the Warriors’ best summer work came in 2021, when the Warriors had virtually no financial flexibility but still managed to nail every signing on the margins, adding Otto Porter Jr., Nemanja Bjelica and Andre Iguodala to bolster the roster and propel them to their fourth and most impressive title.
How did the Warriors do this offseason?
That legacy only added to the pressure on newly-minted general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. this summer, trying to live up to the lofty history of this franchise and once again build a winner around Stephen Curry and company. He wasn’t timid in doing so, either, trading multiple players away and bringing in Chris Paul, re-signing Draymond Green and adding players in the draft and free agency to fill out behind them all.
How did Dunleavy and the Warriors do? Let’s go step by step through their entire offseason thus far, grading them on each move and ultimately compiling an entire report card. We are grading them on the moves available to them (they aren’t getting dinged for not drafting Victor Wembanyama or signing Khris Middleton) and our scale sees an ‘A’ as an excellent move, ‘B’ one worth making, ‘C’ a questionable move and ‘F’ a clear disaster.
Let’s start at the top, with the Warriors keeping the core together for another run.