Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
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.”
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."
Advertisement
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?"
Bob Myers: "When the Warriors were in 14, Jermaine was on the team. Jermaine O'Neal who I worked with too. And Jermaine was like year 16, 17. He came back for that year, because I asked him, I said, we need some leadership. Because that's, that's not enough, there's not enough of that either, by the way, in the NBA. They ran them out. Yeah, it's, it's very hard to find leadership at any level. So I thought our team needed, and Jermaine is a very, very good leader, I think. And so he came to the team, we lost the Clippers in seven games, and he was banged up trying to play, his wrist was jacked. We lose in seven games, and I'm looking at the team going, well, Steph's looking like he could be something, Klay, Harrison Barnes, some of our young guys. Draymond played in that series. And Jermaine calls me three days after we lost, and I'm thinking he's going to tell me he's retired and whatever. He goes, hey man, listen to me, do not break this team up. And I was kind of like, what's so great about this team? We just lost in the first round. And he goes, I've been in a lot of locker rooms at the end of a season, and this team knows how to lose. He said it bothered them the right amount."
NBA Courtside: Bob Myers says LeBron James chose the hardest path by joining the Sixers: “Now you say best chance to win. He goes back to Cleveland. He’s made man. He chose the only one reason. It’s to win. It wasn’t because I played there before. Or I grew up there. I want to play with my friend. It was because I want to win. So, I’m going to go where I want to go. It gives me the best chance to win.”
Bob Myers on Jaylen Brown Trade: [The] Jaylen Brown [trade] was not [something] like "We lost to the Knicks and we’re going to go get Jaylen Brown." Like, that’s not what happened. It just that’s not what happened. You start hearing there was a possibility, and the job then became, "Is this a real thing with Jaylen Brown? Is it a real thing?" And you know, I think Brad Stevens is one of the most straight shooters in the league. So when you work in the NBA as an executive, you ultimately usually have at least one or two I don’t want to say transactions with every other GM. So, you know, if I call, "Hey, you want to make a deal?" He might be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then he doesn’t I mean, it’s like I know you’re not this way, but you have to understand like, he’s honest, or he might tell me what I want to hear, or he might lie to me. This dude just might 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 responded with, “What are you offering?” Then you knew that there was a shot.”
Advertisement
There's a belief that the Sixers entered the picture only because former Warriors executive Bob Myers helped swing a blockbuster trade for Jaylen Brown on July 1, boosting the supporting cast and luring James to look in their direction. Several days prior, the Boston Celtics called the Warriors about Brown near the draft, league sources said, testing Golden State's temperature about a trade for four first-round picks and another first-round swap in an effort to beef up the Celtics' own offer to Milwaukee for Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Paul told The Athletic he had been trying to get Myers to come on the podcast for months; the invitation was not specifically tied to addressing James’ free agency. The 76ers, team sources said, had thought about the potential downside of Myers’ pitch being viewed as groveling publicly. But the upside of Myers — and his four rings from Golden State — speaking directly to Paul outweighed the potential minuses.
