Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Draymond Green: "Ben Simmons had really had back surgery. And as someone who went through a serious back injury and was actually able to avoid surgery, I have a very, very dear close friend named Bob Myers who also went through back surgery, the same back surgery that I would have needed had I gotten the back surgery, and it ain't go so well. And then he needed another one, right? And then, you know, for someone who I know just loved getting up and down and play basketball, I then watch him not be able to run up and down the court, a basketball court for five years. You know, and and and with by the way, that same back surgery that Ben Simmons had is the surgery that did this to Bob, right? That's brutal, yeah. And then you know, and then I see people like, oh man, he don't he don't love basketball because by the way, again, I watch Bob, like Bob was in the weight room as much as any player for years, trying to just be able to run up and down the court."
Bob Myers: "Trading Andre Iguodala, who had won three championships with the team, in 2019 to sign D'Angelo Russell. The way he took it, the professionalism, made it, as far as a player handling a tough thing, I've never seen one do it as well as he did in that moment. To call a guy that, when you talk about personal, making it personal, and to say we are trading you to Memphis, and he knew it was not a team that was trying to win. By the way, he ended up going to the Heat and going to the finals again after that. But Andre looked at me and he said, I understand. You got to do what you got to do. And it wasn't a bitter, I mean, of course I'm sure he felt a certain way, but it wasn't like it wasn't fair. It wasn't right. When you do things where a player does so much for you and your organization, and you make a decision where he deserved better."
Bob Myers: "I can say what you guys said, which is I haven't traded you yet, nothing I've said yes to, you're on this team. I can do that. I could say no and lie, no I'm not trading you. I'm obviously not going to say yes I am trading you if I don't have a trade. So I said, I don't know, maybe. But I said, here's the point, there's 14 other guys on the team that would come in here and ask me the same thing, and I would give them the same answer. I go, there's only one guy on this team that I'm telling him he's not getting traded, there's one guy. And so I said, just so you know, we can do a line of these guys, you're going to line everybody up, I can say maybe. And I say, if we don't win and you're not playing well, what is my job? What am I supposed to do? That is my job."
Bob Myers on the emotional difficulty of moving on from players: "It never did, but had I stayed in Golden State, it might have. Had I had to move off a Klay Thompson, I might have had a hard time with that. If I had been there and I had to do something with Draymond Green or Stephen Curry, something like that, that would have been personal because of what we went through together. Guys like Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, guys that won multiple championships, if I don't feel a personal, then what the hell was I doing? If I don't have a relationship with those guys, there's not 10 of them, but there's a few guys where I would have a hard time. I think I'd still do the right thing for the organization, but it would be really hard to tell a guy all that that guy did for my life, my life, personally, forget about the organization."
It’s curious that someone with Riley’s draft track record — he also had a hand in picking Draymond Green in 2012 — never had another crack at running a team. Riley left the Warriors in 2018 and has since served as a senior adviser to the Atlanta Hawks. He never received another GM offer, though he said he turned down other front-office opportunities around the league. “I just always felt like my age was working against me,” said Riley, who was 68 when Myers replaced him. “I understand there are times where people want to look at someone with some experience and someone who’s older, and times when people want someone younger. It seems like we were approaching an age where everybody wanted new blood, and analytics were becoming a bigger thing. I don’t want that to be an excuse, but that’s one of the things that I look at.”
Advertisement
Stephen Curry won two NBA championships with the Golden State Warriors — and was on his way to a third — before anyone noticed an issue with his eyesight. “It was 2018, and I didn’t know I was really dealing with crazy blurred vision or distorted images — it was just the way that I saw things, and we compensated around it,” Curry, 38, tells PEOPLE. But one day, Warriors general manager Bob Myers was watching his star player on a road game broadcast when he noticed something odd. “He texted me after the game because apparently the telecast kept showing me when I was on the bench, and he was like, ‘You’re just squinting, looking like you couldn’t see anything. Have you gotten your eyes checked? You should probably go do that because that wasn’t normal,’” Curry recalls.
Curry says he “thought it was going to be nothing” when he met with an optometrist shortly after Myers’ request. “They told me that I had a rare condition called Keratoconus, the irregular-shaped cornea that obviously leads to blurriness, distorted images. What I found out about it was it’s a progressive condition that can deteriorate your vision over time and it’s irreversible if it goes in the wrong direction.” As it turns out, the NBA superstar couldn’t see clearly while he was winning those titles. “I joke that when I’m all done, my memoir should be called The Whole Time I Couldn’t See,” Curry says with a laugh. “You’re having to process more than you probably need to without that clarity of focus,” he adds.
Most people I know in basketball ops absolutely hate dealing with their owners. Basketball guys want to be left alone to do basketball things. There’s nothing worse than that morning phone call from a tech titan or equity lord asking for progress. The owner knows little of this convoluted NBA world, because how could he, and is often confused as to why reality isn’t matching his vision. I could see this most prominently in former Golden State Warriors General Manager Bob Myers, who left in part because he could no longer bear owner Joe Lacob’s persistent pressure. But Steve Ballmer is different. The mail on Steve is that employees actually enjoy working for him. Other owners like him as well, though some have clocked what they perceive as a decadent softness to the Clipper operation. A lot of basketball ops guys made money with the Clips. Rarely does anyone get fired. The scouting report on Ballmer was that he perhaps believed success could be achieved by just throwing small fortunes at management, absent his own scrutiny.
For former Warriors GM Bob Myers, one particular decision is the hardest he made during his Golden State tenure. “Trading [Andre] Iguodala,” Myers said on "Cousins with Vince Carter & Tracy McGrady." “We had to trade Iguodala, who had won three championships with the team, in 2019 to sign D'Angelo Russell. And the way he took it, the professionalism, made it, as far as a player handling a tough thing, that I've never seen one do it as well as he did in that moment.”
“Andre looked at me and he said, ‘I understand, like you got to do,’ and, I mean, of course I'm sure he felt a certain way,” Myers said. “But it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. When you do things where you a player does so much for you and your organization, and you make a decision where he deserved better. He deserved better. And there was no easy way around it.”
Advertisement
Bob Myers: "We needed an edge, and I think Jaylen Brown sets an edge. You need to win a championship, guys that are of that ilk, I think, that are comfortable being uncomfortable, if that makes sense. And he is one of those. And so the deal came down, and I didn't know Jaylen at all. I talked to him the day after, and I just said, listen, don't ever underestimate that you're a champion, and that there's power in that. So use that with this team. We don't have that on our team. And I said, we need you to lead. I'm going to ask you to lead."
Bob Myers: "I think Brad Stevens is one of the most straight shooters in the league. So when you, when you work in the NBA as an executive, you usually have at least one or two, I don't want to say transactions with every other GM. So you know, if I call Tracy, I go, hey, you want to make a deal? He might be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he does, I mean, that's like, I know not you're not this way. But I, you have to understand like he's honest, or he, he might tell me what I want to hear, or he might lie to me. This dude just might just lie. He lied to me two years ago, he's going to lie to me again. That's not Brad Stevens. So when Brad Stevens, um, responded with, what are you offering? Then you knew that there was a shot. Yeah. And so then it becomes 50 conversations, um, towards one, both organizations did a great job not leaking that, which is impossible. That's literally impossible."
Bob Myers: "Kobe, my first day in that office with Arn (Tellem), I went in to interview to be an intern, and Kobe was sitting in that little lounge area they had. You know this, and he was sitting on the couch, and he had a Joe Montana retro jersey, 49ers, number 16. And I literally walked in, he was the first person I saw, because you know that little lounge was right there, there was no security, there was just Kobe Bryant. And they had just lost to Utah when he missed those shots. And this dude was so confident. I said, hey, I'd like to meet you, and he started talking. And he said, I'm going to win 10 NBA championships, and then I'm going to finish my career in Italy."
Bob Myers: "Had I stayed in Golden State, it might have (become personal). Like if I had to move off of Klay, I might have had a hard time with that. If I had been there and I had to do something with Draymond or Steph or something like that, that would have been personal because of what we went through together. Guys like Iguodala, Livingston, guys that won multiple championships. If I don't feel that, then what the hell was I doing? If I don't have a relationship with those guys, now there's not 10 of them, but there's a few guys where I would have a hard time. I think I'd still do the right thing for the organization, but it would be really hard to tell a guy that, all that that guy did for my life. My life, personally, forget about the organizations, which is what you're hired to do, what's best for the organization when you're an executive. But when you win multiple championships with people that played and gave everything and changed my life personally, not the organizations, mine, how can I not let that affect me?"