GM Bob Myers says Warriors will be 'good partners' if NBA season resumes
Golden State Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers said his organization will be "good partners" if and when the NBA regular season resumes.
On April 28, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said the team (15-50) had been operating as if its season was over despite having 17 games remaining on the schedule.
"It feels like the offseason," Kerr said then, mentioning a Zoom call he and Myers had with the players. "... It was just a chance to check in, but it was also a chance for Bob to update the players on his contact with the league and the latest news, but it also kind of felt like our annual team exit meeting. Our coaching staff has been undergoing staff evaluations, offseason plans, so we are absolutely in offseason mode right now."
Those comments caused a stir around the league, particularly among playoff teams, which are hoping to resume and finish out the season. But Myers told ESPN this week that he understood what Kerr was expressing and thought the comments were taken out of context.
"The truth is we have the worst record in the league. That's a fact," Myers said. "It's hard to motivate in our unique position. But that doesn't mean players don't have pride and won't come back and play and care about the league as a whole. We want to be good partners and we will be good partners.
"We'd like to see Steph [Curry] play with [Andrew] Wiggins; I think we got to see that for one game where we were hoping to see that."
The Warriors had long since been eliminated from the playoffs when the season was shut down. They had the worst record in the league and the best odds to win the lottery, whenever that happens.
It was a far cry from the five-year run of dominance the franchise enjoyed previously. But Myers said the hiatus has given him and Kerr time to step back and see things from a different perspective than they had during the past five NBA seasons.
"When you're lucky enough to play as deep [in the playoffs] as we did, you have to go right into the draft and free agency," Myers said. "And it probably didn't give us the necessary time to talk about our process and what we want to do.
"So as we wait, we're taking a step back and analyzing, 'What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? How do we want to play offensively? How do we want to play defensively?'
"That's been a breath of fresh air, just to talk to Steve, in some space."
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