The Golden State Warriors drafted well between 2009 and 2012 in adding Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes, but Bob Myers' bold sign-and-trade in 2013 for Andre Iguodala began to move the team in their current direction.
Iguodala had spent one season with the Denver Nuggets following his trade from the Philadelphia 76ers.
"There were a lot of particulars to that transaction," said Myers. "Like anything, there's a confluence of events. Andre wanting to play for us, that was big. We had just played [Denver] in the playoffs, and it's interesting. He saw something in us maybe that we didn't even see in ourselves. He saw a chance to be a part of something special. He intuitively was willing to wait. He forewent some other opportunities as far as money. But as far as I knew it wasn't going to happen. I knew he was going to sign somewhere, I just didn't think it would be with us. Joe [Lacob] was constantly supportive. Jerry West, as someone who has done a lot of big things, was always encouraging. All of us combined to do our part, but Andre, to be fair, he was the visionary in that area.
"Getting the deal done was extremely difficult. Moving $24 million in that era was even harder than it would be now because the salary cap wasn't what it is now. It represented more than a third of a team's entire salary. I'd only been GM for a year, and it taught me a lot about what can be done, what can be accomplished even if you didn't think it can happen, so it was a lesson. If it hadn't worked, we would've been OK in the fact that we would've given everything we had to get it done, but I kept thinking it wasn't going to work.
"What it showed people outside of our organization was, wow, somebody actually went to the Warriors on their own accord! Andre has a great reputation throughout the league as a player, as a person, so for him to take that step was big for us. It was somewhat transformative.
"He was really the GM of that move more than any of us. I told him, "Go take something else because we can't do it." He said, "Well, give me a little more time." I said, "Don't lose anything."
"If you would have heard the conversations, you would have thought Andre and Rob [Pelinka, Iguodala's agent] were being irrational by waiting. The last thing we wanted to do was mislead them and leave them hanging, so I kept telling them, "We can't do it, we can't do it, take whatever else you have." He kept saying he'll wait a little bit longer, one more day, one more hour."
