Bob Myers Gives Strong Explanation On What Attracted Warriors to D’Angelo Russell Trade

Warriors General Manager Bob Myers made a sign-and-trade move to get All-Star point guard D’Angelo Russell from the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Durant.

It was more than obvious that Durant was leaving, and the team won’t lose him in a trade. Myers talked to Tim Kawakami from The Athletic about his meeting with Durant. He wanted to go.

“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.”

Russell isn’t as magnificent as Durant, but he has some great skills.

“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.

“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.”