Former Warriors GM Myers details NBA trade deadline week challenges originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Managing an NBA roster is a challenge in itself, but the difficulty increases exponentially around the trade deadline.
Former Warriors general manager Bob Myers knows firsthand the challenges that occur when racing to get a deal done in a short amount of time, and he detailed the hectic NBA front offices face in the week leading up to the trade deadline.
“It’s pretty rough, much more than maybe the public realizes. This isn’t like you woke up two days before the deadline and decided to make a trade,” Myers told 95.7 The Game’s Matt Steinmentz and Daryl Johnson on Thursday. “It’s pretty exhausting from the standpoint of just running out a ton of ground balls. Most of the stuff you discuss in detail, you don’t end up doing. Or you’ll move forward, you’ll get to the 10-yard line with another team and they’ll just pull out because they got a better deal somewhere else or they’ll change the deal, or something will happen. A guy will sprain his ankle, deal is off. Someone’s medicals will come back negatively.”
While navigating the trade deadline can be tricky, Myers detailed how the process allowed him to learn and gain valuable insight about the people he was working with on a daily basis.
“But every time you go through it, you learn something. You learn about your peers, who you can trust,” Myers explained. “You learn about your own group. Some in the group are more aggressive, some are more conservative. Ultimately, it’s Joe [Lacob’s] team. It’s his call and I accepted that. And that’s what every organization operates under, is it’s the owners team. And more so than ever, owner’s engagement. The prices of these teams, the values of these teams, if you guys bought a team I’m sure you would have your say, as you should.
“So you’re balacing all these things. The coach certainly has a way of expressing themselves. I was lucky with Steve [Kerr], we had a good partnership. I knew kind of where he stood.”
It might have been easy to get on the same page as Kerr, but one of the greatest challenges front offices face is winning in the court of public opinion, a facet of the job that Myers revealed continues to grow in importance.
“But the truth is, there is a media component to it. What are the fans going to think? What would the business ops think? That all matters,” Myers explained. “More so than ever the power of how a deal is received has probably never been greater. I’d like to believe you put your head down and do what you believe is best, but more organizations now … whether it’s social media, or the reaction, is discussed. Every year I saw that grow. But guys, it’s not perfect. I mean you just do the best you can. You try to placate all the powers in your organization. Clearly for me, you’d loop in Steph, you’d loop in the key stakeholders.”
Myers’ most impactful trade deadline move came in 2020, when the Warriors traded point guard D’Angelo Russell to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Andrew Wiggins and the No. 7 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, which Golden State used to select Jonathan Kuminga.
That deal proved to be invaluable, as Wiggins and Kuminga both contributed to the Warriors’ 2022 NBA championship.
While Myers days of stressing over the trade deadline are over, current Golden State general manager Mike Dunleavy currently has his hands full as Golden State continues to be the focal point of a handful of rumors circulating around the league.
Whether or not the Warriors make a notable trade ahead of the Feb. 6 deadline remains to be seen, but you can be assured there will be plenty going on behind the scenes leading up to the pivotal date.
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