Ann Killion:
General manager Bob Myers has no time to celebrate as he works to keep his team together.
No bikini models or bottle service for Bob Myers last weekend.
“I didn’t get to go to Vegas,” the Warriors’ general manager said Monday, after coming down from his office. “I took a couple of days with my wife and kids.”
Even if he had gone to Las Vegas — where all the players as well as owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber went to celebrate their championship — he would have been crunching numbers. And not the “Should I hit on 17?” kind. The “How do we pay Andre Iguodala?” kind would be running through Myers’ brain.
A week after he celebrated with his team, Myers is hard at work trying to figure out how to
keep his championship team together. There’s little rest in professional sports, but there really is none in the NBA, if your team makes it to the Finals.
“To be honest, I wish there was a little more of a pause, but that’s the price of winning,” Myers said. “The time between the NBA Finals and the draft and free agency is a really tight window . ... You learn how to move within the structure but, selfishly, I wish there was a little more time.”
The draft is Thursday. Though the Warriors don’t have a pick, they’re acting as if they do and have filled out a board. If there’s a “B” in red next to a player’s name, that means the team thinks that player would be worth buying a pick to acquire him. The Warriors have more players coming in for workouts Tuesday, including Rick Barry’s son, Canyon.
NBA free agency starts eight days later on July 1. And things are heating up already. Myers can’t speak about free agents officially, per NBA rules, but he’s seeing all the reports.
On Monday, there was a report that Golden State forward Kevin Durant will decline his player option for next season, which is good for the Warriors. That would give the team far more flexibility with cap space, allowing the Warriors to both give Stephen Curry his super-max contract and re-sign other players.
But there was another report that swingman Andre Iguodala will seriously consider offers from other teams. That’s bad thing for the Warriors because Iguodala is so indispensable to the team and its culture.
“It’s hard to quantify,” head coach Steve Kerr said, when asked on a conference call about Iguodala’s value. After ticking off the things Iguodala does on the court, Kerr said, “He’s the guy who keeps us organized. Who keeps us sane. The example that he sets coming off the bench … He mentors young guys on the bench.”
So that’s the kind of puzzle that keeps Myers up at night, even if his shoes still smell like Champagne.
Iguodala, as well as guard Shaun Livingston and the other free agents, naturally will listen to offers from other teams. It would be ridiculous for them not to do so. So everything you read or hear is part of the negotiations.
Iguodala acknowledged that himself, not long after he jumped on the scorer’s table to direct the celebration after the Warriors clinched the title.
“Bob Myers — I can’t believe I’m giving him a compliment considering we’re about to go heads up in negotiating — but he’s done an awesome job of finding the right personalities to fit the culture and balancing it out,” Iguodala said shortly after Game 5. “That’s the culture that we built and it’s an amazing thing to see.”
Iguodala and Livingston and the others will have to weigh how much they want to stay in that culture, as opposed to making more money elsewhere. The Warriors have 10 free agents this summer, so Myers has his work cut out.
“I look forward to July 1, when we can sit down and add more than five players to our team, which is all we have right now,” Myers said.
While Myers is hard at work, his counterpart is out. On Monday afternoon, the Cleveland Cavaliers announced that the team and general manager David Griffin, plus others in the front office, had “parted ways.” Apparently, three straight trips to the Finals and one championship was not enough. The parting-of-ways happened amid reports that Griffin was trying to swing deals for Paul George and Jimmy Butler.
Myers, who has evolved into one of the best general managers in the league, isn’t going anywhere. But that’s about the only certainty ahead.
“Free agency is so fast and fluid, that you really just hope you’ve created a place where there can be honest dialogue,” Myers said. “We want our players to be treated fairly. They’ve earned that. They deserve that. … We don’t always get what we want in free agency.”
It was quickly pointed out to Myers that, a year ago, after the famous meeting with Durant in the Hamptons, Myers did get exactly what he wanted in free agency.
“Last year was unique,” he said. “Last year was good.”
But the Warriors will change again. Myers has to try to make a good team even better. Or at least not worse. No time for a party in Vegas. “I’d rather be having a glass of wine,” he sighed. “Maybe in August.”