The Golden State Warriors lost Kevin Durant to free agency this summer after Durant decided to join the Brooklyn Nets. However, Warriors general manager Bob Myers wanted something in return, so he managed to make a sign-and-trade deal to get All-Star guard D’Angelo Russell from the Nets.
This move was quite surprising and many thought Golden State brought Russell only to ship him away in a trade to bring other assets. However, Myers quickly squashed those speculations, saying that the team has plans for the former Los Angeles Lakers point guard.
“From that point on, the motivation going in and leaving, obviously leaving, I left with a certainty that [Durant] wasn’t coming back,” Myers said on The TK Show. “Going in, my job, our job as a front office, is to prepare for what if Kevin does come back and what if Kevin doesn’t come back. It wasn’t necessarily an immediate pivot to D’Angelo.
“It was, ‘These are our options if Kevin doesn’t come back. What can we do?’ And for the people listening, it was simple. Either we do something like we did, which was more aggressive, whether it would have been that or something else, or another formulation of a sign-and-trade or using a huge trade exception, or we stand pat and signing a taxpayer mid-level. Those were the two pivot points. We obviously went the way we did.”
"We saw an opportunity to do it. That's why we did it."
Bob Myers sheds light on what attracted the Warriors to D'Angelo Russell https://t.co/6hguPBacM6 pic.twitter.com/cPATWBblQS
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) August 18, 2019
Although Russell isn’t as great a player as Durant, he is coming off his first NBA All-Star campaign and his numbers drastically improved with Brooklyn.
“The attraction for us was, what’s very hard in our business and in any sport is, how do you get a talented, young player?” Myers said. “It’s very difficult. How do you do it in my job or the front office? Usually it’s through the draft or a trade. And most times you try to trade for a guy that’s young and good, you have to give up something that’s easier, either a guaranteed high pick or a lottery guaranteed pick, or a good player or a combination of players. It’s hard to do.”
Bob Myers on D’Angelo Russell: “We didn’t sign him with the intention of trading him” pic.twitter.com/ST9YNg6XTm
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) July 15, 2019
“We saw an opportunity to do it. That’s why we did it. And that’s the direction we went in. The other direction would have been not to do that and stay the course and see where that went. But we chose the path, and we’re pretty happy with it.”
