By: Darren Schmidt
In his tenure as owner Lacob has hired two people—Myers and his son, Kirk Lacob—to work in the Warrior front office. The combined experience for these people (which is half of the four-man staff on the basketball side) in their positions: 0 days, 0 months, 0 years. Lacob did this for two reasons: he thinks highly of Myers and his son and thinks they will grow into their positions and he wants to be acutely involved in putting together the roster. If he had simply fired Larry Riley and hired a general manager with years of experience and success on his resume Lacob would have been necessarily marginalized. What’s the thing that every general manager wants from his owner? To be given the resources to win and to be left alone to do his job. Joe Lacob is clearly not going to be that owner and he is not going to hire that general manager.
This isn’t to say that Myers was a bad hire. He’s by all accounts a sharp basketball mind and it’s a testament to his ability that so many people have confidence in him. Further, for an organization like the Warriors, who have so consistently made uninspired moves, it‘s refreshing to see them do something creative. Lacob might be the man for the job, too. He’s had great success in business and tangential success in basketball. Why can’t he have success as the general manager of a basketball team? Many teams hire ex-players as executives and I’m not sure how having a jump shot qualifies you to be a general manager more than someone with Lacob’s resume.
An obvious model for the Joe Lacob Warriors is the Marc Cuban Mavericks, who have been one of the better teams in the NBA for a decade. Like Cuban, Lacob has assembled a front office that will allow him to be the final authority on every basketball decision. Now all he needs to do is find the next Dirk Nowitzki.
Seems we may have another Al Davis on our hands without the experience, which may even be worse than AD. Lacob gives every indication of being just as full of himself as Jones, the owner of the Cowboys, Mark Cuban, and the like. Some people think when they’ve been successful in one field they know all there is to know about everything. And given a franchise, they’re like a kid with a new toy. I’m guessing we end up with an assistant coach from another team as our coach. How will that be much different than what we had? And, it’ll be the owner’s third coach inside little more than a year. But, not to worry, I’ll bet his son is making a lot of invaluable and lasting contributions right now. Oh happy day!
The bad news is usually owners that act as GM’s are terrible at personnel decisions and the teams continue to be bottom feeders. The good news is that Lacob couldn’t possibly do worse than the so called basketball people that have been GM’s of the Warriors for the last 35 years.
“Now all he needs to do is find the next Dirk Nowitzki.” – Why are you giving Cuban credit for that? That was clearly a Nellie move.
Ya – an Owner/General Manager has never been tried in the Bay Area before. Ohhhhh waittt – it didn’t (still doesn’t) work out for the Raiders, and I don’t see a reason why it would work better for the Warriors.
VeryWorriedWarrior you have good reason to be worried in the case of the Dubs, but hello it didn’t work out for the Raiders? 3 superbowls, because of Skeletor! How many teams wish they had 3 titles!
It is always important to seperate the two eras of Al Davis as Lord and Master of the Raider empire. Yes the 70s and early 80s were a grand old time for the Silver and Black. Last 25 years, well not so much. Arrogance, ego and mismanagement took it all down. If anyone actually does something to help improve the team they are actually shoved out the door because they might be given credit for it instead of Al.
A fair analogy is like Rome and Italy. Yes the Roman Emopire was great and yes Rome is in modern Italy. Doesn’t mean the economy and infrastructure in modern Italy doesn’t blow chunks. But hey Radier fans keep it up . Keep trying to live off the decaying corpse of long past glories.
An owner who plays General Manager is never called a General Manager. They’re called meddling owners.