Before almost every draft pick, the ESPN broadcast flashes to the war room of the team on the clock.
These scenes are hardly ever interesting.
But when the camera feed zoomed in on the Warriors’ deliberations during the first round Tuesday, a fascinating moment unfolded.
There was GM Mike Dunleavy conversing with his boss, owner Joe Lacob. Lacob’s son Kirk Lacob, the executive vice president of basketball operations, stood behind him. After some brief, animated gesturing, Dunleavy picked up his phone to call in the Warriors’ pick, Michigan forward Yaxel Lendeborg. The elder Lacob threw up his hands and paced around his chair.
“Yeah, we got into it about the best golf course in San Francisco,” Dunleavy joked at his post-draft press conference. “He didn’t agree with me. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”
The footage provided a rare window into the dynamics of the Warriors’ top stakeholders: the passionate owner committed to winning and the GM tasked with improving the roster. It was also completely mute and without context.
Lacob, like almost every owner, signs off on major transactions. But this pick was Dunleavy’s to make. There was organizational alignment that Lendeborg was Golden State’s guy, and the front office feels great about the selection.
So what was the fuss all about?
The Warriors were on the clock, and the five-minute timer was ticking down. That time can be frantic, especially when teams call with trade offers. Dunleavy’s job is to field offers, weigh them, and explain them to his colleagues, including the owner. Dunleavy and his deputies may receive several calls at once.
“There wasn’t anything major, but when you’re on the clock, you get calls,” Dunleavy said. “I think from our standpoint, we knew we were going to pick Yaxel at No. 11; he was the guy. But you just want to [flesh] it out, make sure you’re not missing anything that falls in your lap or makes a ton of sense. That’s what we were doing. I think Joe was like, ‘Come on, just go ahead and pick the guy.’ I said, ‘Joe, we have time — these five minutes.’ He was just getting a little anxious about us picking Yaxel. I think the good thing was because we were on the clock, nobody could swoop in and take him ahead of us.”
A source in the room said Lacob and Dunleavy weren’t disagreeing on the selection; rather, the owner was reacting to a confusing trade offer lobbed at the Warriors. What looked like a tense moment was just an example of how frenzied Draft Night becomes.
But it also showed just how involved Lacob can be.
He is known to have influenced draft choices, including Jonathan Kuminga and James Wiseman. But, contrary to some corners of the fan base’s belief, he doesn’t call the shots. If Lacob made a personal big board, he never broke it out and showed Dunleavy, the GM said.
“But I definitely knew where he stood on guys,” Dunleavy added.
There’s a give-and-take to serving as Lacob’s GM, and at the root of the dynamic is the owner’s persistent drive to compete for championships. He deserves credit for the rare willingness to repeatedly spend on payroll.
He also has opinions. If you Zapruder-film the 24-second clip, some personnel across the room appeared to chuckle as the discussion unfolded. You’d also notice head coach Steve Kerr tapping away on his phone. Dunleavy or Lacob might ask Kerr for his opinion on a certain move, but he left his GM days in Phoenix.
Lacob is as hands-on as any owner in the NBA, and everyone in the basketball operations department knows it. Dunleavy said Lacob was “great” during the draft process: “He’s so into it.”
“I told him, ‘Joe, no matter what we do, we’re going to get criticized,’” Dunleavy said. “‘It doesn’t matter if we pick old, young, good, bad, short, tall.’”
“And he goes, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ I go, ‘Joe, trust me.’ And then sure enough, he goes, ‘Can you believe what this guy said?’ No, he’s really excited about the pick, who we got and how we think he can help us.”
Draft Night was the second time in three months that cameras caught key Warriors figures in delicate moments. The first happened at the end of Golden State’s play-in loss to the Suns, when Kerr hugged Steph Curry and Draymond Green and told them, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I love you guys.”
That intimate moment displayed Kerr’s genuine uncertainty over his future. The war-room snippet didn’t show a rift but, rather, offered a realistic window into how many moving parts it takes to make a pick.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。