Mike Dunleavy Update: If Warriors Pay Up, He’ll Be The GM

Bob Myers, who recently stepped down after a brilliant run as Golden State Warriors GM, endorsed former Blue Devil Mike Dunleavy as his successor and while there is no official word on that yet, there is this: it’s his job if Golden State is willing to pay him what he feels he’s worth.

According to Bay Area journalist Matt Steinmetz, “The next GM of the Warriors gonna be Mike Dunleavy, according to my sources... They got to agree to money, but if the money’s right, Dunleavy’s gonna be here. If he’s not here, that means the money wasn’t right.”

As we said previously, Golden State’s dynasty has likely run its course or will soon, but there are still some very appealing aspects to this job. First, it’s an historic franchise and it’s been well-run for some time now. That wasn’t always the case: Golden State, back in the day, was a place where careers went to die, at least partly because it was one of the easiest places in the league to get drugs. The NBA has since gotten a grip on that situation.

And when the current ownership group took control in 2010, they made it clear that they were willing to do what it takes to win. Spending money is one thing. Spending it to build is another.

The franchise put great players around Curry and worked to build a new state-of-the-art arena. It’s been a stable and intelligent franchise.

So our guess is that if they think that Dunleavy is the guy, they’ll pay him accordingly. And as a lifer from childhood, he’ll have contacts from Jerry West and Magic Johnson to his dad and fellow lifer Mike Dunleavy Sr., his college roommate Shane Battier and of course his college coach Mike Krzyzewski.

He could obviously fail; anyone could. But there’s a pretty good chance that he could succeed and do so on a very high level.

And let’s just point one more thing out: the Warriors gambled on Myers, who had been an agent prior to becoming an assistant GM for Golden State in 2011. Just a year later, he was promoted to GM.

Steve Kerr had management experience with Phoenix but no coaching experience when Golden State hired him in 2014. All Kerr did was to win a championship in his first year, make the Finals for five straight years, winning three more titles to date.

So we’d have to think that Golden State knows what it’s doing if it hires Dunleavy.