Warriors Front Office Striking Out?

As of last week, teams were able to start negotiating with prospective free agents about potentially getting them on board. Also, trades could be discussed with the hope for many to upgrade their rosters and create depth for the upcoming compressed NBA schedule that will see every team play 66 regular season games from Christmas to late April.

Have a look at some of the notable moves made by various NBA teams:

• Dallas Mavericks acquire Lamar Odom via trade from the Los Angeles Lakers
• Indiana Pacers come to terms with free agent David West
• Los Angeles Clippers sign free agent Caron Butler
• Los Angeles Clippers claim Chauncey Billups off waivers
• Los Angeles Lakers acquire Chris Paul by trade and then actually find out they did not
• New York Knicks acquire Tyson Chandler in a sign and trade
• Miami Heat sign Shane Battier
• Orlando Magic re-sign Jason Richardson

Granted, there were other additional moves made around the league in the past few days but these were surely the biggest ones.

Notice the absence of the Golden State Warriors from that list. Instead, the Dubs are currently appearing on the wrong end of the NBA transactions list:

• Golden State Warriors rescinds Reggie Williams’ qualifying offer, thus making him a free agent
• Golden State uses amnesty provision on Charlie Bell
• Orlando Magic use amnesty provision on Gilbert Arenas
• Portland Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy set to retire

The Magic essentially just had to jettison Arenas’ gigantic contract and news of Roy’s retirement was saddening but made sense given the injury concerns.

But is their truly any way to explain the Warriors’ moves?

To be fair, we are early in this installment of the offseason, but so far the Dubs are only worth talking about for their apparent near misses. Depending on whom you ask, the Dubs were close to obtaining Chris Paul and also had a big opportunity to also sign Tyson Chandler; but instead they struck out on both attempts.

Chandler is now a Knick and Paul seems destined to play the Warriors four times a year as the newest member of one of the Dubs pacific division rivals by joining either the Lakers or Clippers (although David Stern may have something to say about that).

In addition, Golden State got rid of some serviceable players with the intent of creating some cap room that may or may not prove to be useful. Indeed, Reggie Williams was a solid scorer off the bench for the Warriors and seems to be a perfect fit for teams like the Bulls and Grizzlies who need some scoring from their second unit.

Charlie Bell was a good defender and decent offensive option who just could not seem to get out of Keith Smart’s doghouse last season; and his failure to produce as well as some off the court issues led to him essentially being dismissed.

And yet, the Warriors had signed center DeAndre Jordan to an offer sheet that the Clippers ended up matching to retain his services. Mind you, had Golden State been successful in their acquisition of the defensive big man, what was their plan for Andris Biedrins?

Hypothetically they could have kept both players, but let’s remember that the Warriors would have been paying close to $20 million to have both on the team and also with the Latvian center struggling with confidence issues as of late, would it even have been prudent to have him become the team’s back up center (you have to assume that the Dubs would have made Jordan the center based on the four-year, $43 million offer sheet they had him sign)?

If that sounds worrisome for Warriors fans, things may in fact be worse. Have a look at Jerry West’s thoughts on Jordan:

“He’s a young active player, probably coming into his own. Those are the kinds of players that people are willing to take chances on in terms of paying a lot of money. At the end of the day you have to find out what’s in store for anyone. And I’m just not really sure about him.”

At this point, one has to wonder what other moves the front office has in mind. So far it’s somewhat evident that Golden State’s attempt to acquire talent has failed. In addition, some of the players that were lost could certainly help the team out and thus their departures have to be viewed as failures for the time being.

With the regular season set to start in less than two weeks, there has to be a plan in place to upgrade the roster…right?

At this point in time, I’m afraid such may not be the case.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected].

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