LeBron James and Steph Curry source: Getty Images

Head south and live the high life with the old money in The Hamptons.

Or veer north and settle in with the up-and-comers in Greenport.

Both are dreamy destinations.

There is a third possibility, but it makes little sense. You can keep going straight… right into the Atlantic.

Mike Dunleavy Jr. inherited a tough task when he took over as Warriors general manager in June of 2023. Some called it a no-win situation, and Dunleavy certainly has lived up to the billing.

When last seen, the Dunleavy-steered Golden State team bus was swimming with the Titanic.

One season after beating the Celtics for the 2022 championship, the Warriors tried to drink champagne and eat their cake, too. They believed the core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andrew Wiggins and Andre Iguodala had another title or two in them, even while having to babysit the likes of Jordan Poole, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and James Wiseman.

Three years later, the bubbly remains on melted ice, and the cake… well, Green smushed it into Poole’s face.

One year removed from the title, having finished sixth in the West and been eliminated in the conference semifinals, GM Bob Myers was so fed up with the two-direction approach, he left to spend halftimes sitting next to Stephen A. Smith.

Enter Dunleavy, with turn signal in hand:

Go right at Riverhead, trade off the young guns for ready-to-win talent and force owner Joe Lacob to sell his Hamptons getaway in order to finance a shot at NBA immortality.

Or go left, drop off all the old-timers except Curry at the first truck stop and hope the guys Myers had drafted to be the future could develop quickly enough to keep the superstar point guard interested.

Dunleavy chose east. Bub, bub, bub.

Is it too late to fix? Probably so. But that doesn’t mean you just bleed out.

The road to the Hamptons remains open, albeit congested.

With the Nuggets still powerful and new blood (the Thunder, Grizzlies and Rockets) having stepped over the West’s other has-beens (the Suns, Lakers and Clippers), there’s no assurance acquiring LeBron James for Wiggins, Kuminga and a first-round pick would pave even a path to the conference finals.

And if that’s the best a LeBron/Curry pairing can do, it’s easy to imagine what a Nikola Vucevic or Jimmy Butler addition would accomplish.

The obvious path is north, and in some ways Dunleavy has shown an interest in heading that direction with the jettisoning of Thompson and Chris Paul last off-season.

Unfortunately, he brought on a Thompson wannabe (Buddy Hield), a Paul never-has-been (De’Anthony Melton) and Father Expired Time (Kyle Anderson).

Throw in the head-scratching in-season addition of Dennis Schroder and—as hard to believe as it might seem—the Warriors have actually gotten older. And certainly no better.

In fact, quite a bit worse.

Getting younger at this point might be even harder than acquiring LeBron. And, surely, it would be much riskier.

It would require putting “For Sale” sandwich boards on Green, Wiggins, Schroder, Hield, Anderson, Schroder, Kevon Looney and Gary Payton II and hope either the new contenders believe they’re one veteran away from a championship run, or the has-beens panic and stubbornly insist their second life starts now.

Take a look at those eight names. Is it any wonder there are phone lines open at Golden State HQ?

Presuming neither plan is going to pan out—and there’s no reason to believe the overmatched Dunleavy even has a snorkel long enough to breathe life into either—perhaps there’s a more realistic third option that could work:

Get serious about winning the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes.

As it stands, the Warriors have the 12th-worst record in the NBA, which means they’d have close to the highest odds against them to win the jackpot among the lottery teams.

But given their current form (10-19 since a 12-3 start), the advantages of giving Curry’s sore knees and aching thumb the spring off after a long summer, and the always-important desire to see what Quinten Post, Pat Spencer and Jackson Rowe can do, a further drop in the standings is imminently possible.

Then there’s Kuminga, a highly regarded prospect. If he were in the draft next year, he might go second.

So offer him around to teams like the Trail Blazers, Raptors and Hornets, hoping one sees him as a better prospect than they’re likely to get in the draft. Get one to bite on a first-round pick, and now you can at least dream of lucking into Flagg.

And lastly, the Warriors also have their 2026 first-rounder, when they could be REALLY bad. Teams would line up to acquire that asset.

But there’s no Flagg in 2026, so dealing it to the highest bidder for their 2025 seat at the Flagg sweepstakes would be beneficial. Heck, throw in 2024 all-rookie Brandin Podziemski to get their attention.

The Bulls, who could head seriously south after a sell-off at the trade deadline, just might go for it.

Imagine that: Three shots at a generational talent like Flagg. And a very realistic plan to stockpile ping-pong balls.

It might not be the lure of The Hamptons or Greenport, but Sag Harbor is pretty nice.

It sure beats cozying up to the Titanic.