Golden State Warriors News & Rumors

In part two of an interview with Nate Duncan of Basketball Insiders (part one was released yesterday), Warriors GM Bob Myers discussed the decision-making that led to the current Warriors roster, the team’s solid performance this season, and their championship window. The whole thing is an interesting read, and here are some of the highlights:

On Andrew Bogut‘s three-year extension, which is one of just two non-rookie extensions to be signed under the new CBA:

“In this day and age in a new CBA, a player that’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 player’s side, a lot of players don’t want to come to the table and discuss the extension because they’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.
…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 that’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?

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 you’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, ‘Look I’ll let you guys try and try and try, but you have a deadline now.’ 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 you’re really motivated to do a deal, you can usually find a partner – sometimes you can’t and thankfully we did. I think it fit what Utah was looking to do, and it all lined up.

On the possibility of further moves:

We feel like we’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. We’re very attractive, we have a lot of talent. It allows you to have flexibility should you want to make moves.

Warriors GM Bob Myers sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Nate Duncan of Basketball Insiders.  In part one of the two part chat, Myers spoke about his approach in building from his hiring in 2011 to their 2013 playoff success.  The whole thing is certainly worth a read, but here’s a look at a few of the highlights..

What is really the goal of the organization?  Is it being a contender, is it winning one championship, or is it winning multiple championships?

Well it’s the right question. I think winning consistently is the goal of any organization, it’s certainly the goal of ours and when you say winning, you mean winning at the highest level, winning championships. That’s the goal here. We think we’re in a market that can be attractive to players. We know we have ownership that supports spending in the right ways and we’ve got an unbelievable fan base, so we’re set up and positioned to be what we consider a championship contending team if not now, in the future.

That’s what we’re building towards, whether it’s incrementally–we don’t set a timeline as to when it will happen. The way we operate within our front office and ownership, it’s always trying to get better each and every day, and sometimes things happen sooner than you like and sometimes they happen later than you like, but the end goal is and will always remain winning championships and doing it over as long of a period of time as you can. I think that’s the goal of anybody and we’ve seen organizations that have been able to do that, and we would like to become one of those. 

Is there an understanding though that certain moves, obviously to contend now, may have a detrimental effect later on and make it harder?

Yeah, you always have to balance, you have to be realistic about where you are as an organization, where your team is. Sometimes organizations can get in trouble when they overreach and make a play that is perceived to be a play towards a championship, but in hindsight you look back and it’ll be looked at as, instead of a play towards a championship, a short-term move that cost you in the future. So you have to be smart. You’d really like to have a roster that’s balanced with youth and veterans so you’re always having players in the pipeline as your organization grows, and having those young players around veterans also helps them develop. But you don’t want to get into a situation where you have an entire roster that’s aging. You also don’t want to be in a situation where it’s all young players. So some type of mix of that is essential. You’re right though, the challenge is to make moves that are prudent and fit your timeline. You have to be realistic about what your timeline is and we think we’re building in the right direction. We don’t think we’re anywhere near where we need to be, but we think we’re going in the right direction. 

How did you know Mark Jackson would be a success as coach despite having no previous experience? 

Yeah, well it’s hard. It is hard to evaluate anybody, players, coaches, any hires you make are difficult. But in Mark we saw immediately, Joe [Lacob] as well as myself and people in the front office, immediately his ability to lead, his presence, and we think that’s invaluable in the NBA. It’s a long season, it’s a grind, and we knew immediately after talking to him for five, 10 minutes that he would capture the minds of the players. And we also knew that it was rare to find somebody that had the skill set he had in that he could lead and also had tremendous experience within the NBA as a player, as a broadcaster, at the point guard position. So we saw a lot of qualities that really endeared us towards him.