NBA

Q&A: Warriors GM Bob Myers, Part 2

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Nine months after engineering the Golden State Warriors’ first playoff appearance and series victory since 2007, General Manager Bob Myers sat down with Basketball Insiders’ Nate Duncan in the midst of another solid season. ย In part two of a two-part interview, Myers discussesย the Warriors’ acquisition of Andre Iguodala, the extension of Andrew Bogut and the team’s approach with its core going forward. ย For part one, click here.

With Andrew Bogut’s three-year, $36 million extension, I believe that until Kobe Bryantโ€™s extension, he was the only non-rookie extension underย the new CBA. Why did that work for him and for you? For a lot of people, it doesnโ€™t work because you can get more years as a free agent.

Myers: I think you said it right, in this day and age in a new CBA, a player thatโ€™s playing well likely will opt to wait because they can add years. Had he waited until this summer, he can get a five-year deal. The way that we structured it in the extension, all we have to give are those three years. From the playerโ€™s side, a lot of players donโ€™t want to come to the table and discuss the extension because theyโ€™re forfeiting money in the future. But Andrew understood that this is a place he wanted to be, and he obviously wanted to get a fair deal. I felt like we offered a fair deal, obviously he did too because he accepted it. But to find veteran extension opportunities, sometimes you need circumstances where a player is willing to possibly forgo an extra year of money for the security of getting a deal then instead of playing a year out. If theyโ€™re playing on teams that are willing to commit and not make the player play out that extra year, and willing to commit to him early, there are always variables that play into it. Some financial, some situational; injury plays into it to some extent, age plays into it, whether that player feels like he can get another deal, happiness, how happy is the player in that market, on that team with his coach and his front office. A lot of things have to line up and thatโ€™s why I think you see few of those types of deals.

Going to the Andre Iguodala sign-and-trade, at what point did the thought of opening up the cap space over last summer kind of come into focus for you guys? [Note: In July 2013, Golden State acquired Iguodala via a sign-and-trade. Golden State acquired Iguodala from Denver and signed him to a four-year, $48 million contract. To open up the cap space to sign Iguodala, the trade included offloading $24 million in salaries attached to Brandon Rush, Richard Jefferson and Andris Biedrins in addition to 2014 and 2017 first-round draft picks to the Utah Jazz.]

Myers: Our ownership is an incredible ownership with Joe [Lacob]. Heโ€™s always thinking aggressively as far as how to upgrade talent and how to move the team. Like any team, we look at the free agent pool and what players we felt like were able to help us and identified him as one of them. Now, I will also say that realistically we felt like it was an extreme long shot to get a guy like that, but after meeting with him in Los Angeles and seeing his desire to be a part of a group trying to build, that really motivated us. What started as a seed from our side in the situation, we felt like this would be a great guy to add to our roster, was cemented when we met with him and he echoed the same sentiments. From that point on, it was full steam ahead to try to find a way to do it. Even after that, though, my personal belief was that it remained a long shot. Just because we wanted to do it and he wanted to do it, that was nice and made us feel good about it, but youโ€™d still put low odds on it – less than five percent. We had to find multiple trading partners taking a lot of money; it had to fit what they were trying to do. It really came down to the last 30 minutes, where his agent had said to us, โ€˜Look Iโ€™ll let you guys try and try and try, but you have a deadline now.โ€™ He was very fair about it. So that really came down to the wire, and fortunately for us the league is comprised of 29 other teams and if youโ€™re really motivated to do a deal, you can usually find a partner โ€“ sometimes you canโ€™t and thankfully we did. I think it fit what Utah was looking to do, and it all lined up. All of the things that had to happen for it to happen, made it seem very unlikely. Weโ€™re just glad it came to fruition.

How much trepidation was there about surrendering those picks and also now the flexibility, not being able to trade the 2015 and 2016 pick? [Note: The NBAโ€™s Ted Stepien rule prevents a team from trading its first-round pick two years in a row. Because the Warriors dealt their 2014 and 2017 picks to the Jazz to facilitate the Iguodala sign-and-trade, they are unable to trade their 2015 and 2016 picks.]

Myers: We wanted to build upon what we had established as far as some level of success in the organization. We thought it might be difficult to keep two core guys in Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry at the numbers we would have liked to have kept them at. They were paid well and they deserved to be paid well. We were looking at a situation where if we wanted to maintain and keep the same team, weโ€™d be heavy into the luxury tax. So it wasnโ€™t just adding Iguodala, it was adding Iguodala along with clearing up a lot of salary on our books that really made us believe the deal was worth it from our side. If somebody wanted to compartmentalize the deal, youโ€™d say one pick was for Iguodala and one pick was to get off $24 million. Would we do that in a bubble? Yeah, we felt like that was worth it, because it wasnโ€™t just two first-round picks for Iguodala. We would have been looking at a team, should we not have done anything and stood pat, likely the same team coming back at the five starter spots, but also without Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry, who were huge in regards to our success last year. That likely would have set us back and we didnโ€™t really want to take a step back after having some success for an organization that hadnโ€™t had any in so long. We wanted to try to not just maintain, but take a small step forward. That was the motivation behind the deal and moving the picks. You never know how things could have worked out, you never know in any deal. Our thought at the time when we did it and constructed it was that it was worth it.

With David Lee being 30, Andrew Bogut being 28, Andre Iguodala being 29 and Steph Curry now being is his prime, is there a feeling that these next two years or so are really the organizationโ€™s best window to win, at least in the short-term?

Myers: Actually, really no. We feel like weโ€™ve still got players, more than two and three years where we think our core can play at a high level. We think continuity — although maybe some physical tools diminish with age — and your mind improves. Like look at a team like the Spurs and some of these teams that are a little older, even the HEAT to some degree, have some veterans that have been in the league a long time on their team and have experienced success. You look at some of the Celtics teams before they decided to go in a different direction. Continuity and playing together can overcome athletic ability, speed and quickness, and things like that. We feel like weโ€™ve got a healthy window here to evaluate this team, and weโ€™re going to give it a shot to see how it goes. I think it was perceived to be a win-now type move, where internally we more perceived it as this makes us better; we think itโ€™s worth it for all of the reasons aforementioned. It wasnโ€™t a situation where we feel like weโ€™re playing Texas Hold โ€˜Em, where we put all of our chips on the table. We feel like as an organization, weโ€™ve made a bet and put some chips on the table and we felt like we had a good hand. But we also have a stack of chips that we havenโ€™t played. We donโ€™t feel like this trade or the acquisition of Iguodala makes us limited and this is it for the next two, three years–if it doesnโ€™t happen then weโ€™re nowhere. We donโ€™t have that mindset in our front office and ownership side.

Obviously trades can always be made, thereโ€™s no such thing as someone being untradeable in the NBA. With Andrewโ€™s extension and Andre having a 15 percent trade kicker, itโ€™s going to be relatively difficult to make further moves, but I assume this core going forward is one that youโ€™re very comfortable with?

Myers: Yeah, weโ€™re comfortable. I read today that the starters are 21-7 and I donโ€™t know how much stock to put into something like that. I guess itโ€™s better than 7-21, but we do feel like it can be a competitive group heading into the future. We feel like it hasnโ€™t hit its ceiling or even close to it, we hope, both for this year and beyond. We are comfortable with it. We have time to see how it develops. You have to sometimes be patient as you progress as an organization. We are not thinking that if we donโ€™t win a championship this year, itโ€™s a failed season; we donโ€™t have that dialogue, we donโ€™t believe in that mentality. We obviously want to compete and compete at the highest level. We feel like weโ€™re going to give this core and these players a healthy amount of time to see if it works. We also believe that we maintain now and believe in the future a healthy amount of assets on our roster. Weโ€™re very attractive, we have a lot of talent. It allows you to have flexibility should you want to make moves. I think youโ€™re right, weโ€™re going to give this a good go and believe this team can compete with some of the best teams.

Did you know that these starters, this five-man unit would be as good as theyโ€™ve been?

Myers: No we didnโ€™t. Realistically you do your best, but you donโ€™t know. Youโ€™re putting it together; there are so many different factors that equate to success. Itโ€™s not always about putting the best five individual players together. Sometimes you have to see a guy like Iguodala that has to be less aggressive for our team to be a better team. Is that the right thing? Weโ€™re figuring that out. What roles should each player take within our team to make us the most successful as a team? Itโ€™s always a work in progress. I donโ€™t think a sample size of 28 games is enough to really make any concrete conclusions from.

If you missed it, check out part one of Nate Duncan’s interview with Bob Myers.

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Jeff Hawkins
Sports Editor

Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.

All posts by Jeff Hawkins
Author photo
Jeff Hawkins Sports Editor

Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.

All posts by Jeff Hawkins