How the Warriors went from doormat to dominant: the extended cut.

Bay Area News Group basketball beat writer Monte Poole recently called out “a habit the Warriors have perfected over the years”: losing. 


“They lost games during which they played well, lost games when they deserved to lose, lost games because they simply gagged away the final minutes,” he wrote. 


Because of those painful bricks – the Warriors have made the playoffs just once in 18 long years – few accuse the organization of being ahead of the game. But as its venture-capital-minded ownership pioneers an openness to fans and the media, and top-to-bottom developmental league strategies – by way of boho Santa Cruz, of all places – that’s precisely where they find themselves. As words like “trust,” “transparency” and “communication” surface more than rebounds, steals and assists, the Warriors are in a place that feels more like a sensitivity retreat in Big Sur than a front office in the hyper-competitive NBA Western Conference.

—from "What About Bob: The Golden State Warriors’ rookie general manager epitomizes the team’s surprising new brand of basketball," Nov. 29, 2012

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Before Stephen Curry was named the Golden State Warriors’ first NBA Most Valuable Player in 55 years…

Before the miracle 20-point fourth quarter comeback against the New Orleans Pelicans last month, which came within a point of the most dramatic in playoff history...

Before Draymond Green earned more first place votes for Defensive Player of the Year than anyone else in the NBA the same week…

Before Golden State claimed the best home record in the league and the second best in NBA history, the best overall record for 2014-15 and the league lead in both offensive and defensive efficiency…

Before Klay Thompson captured the imagination of the hoops hemisphere with two late-season quarters that totaled 64 points…

Before the Ws ripped off a team record 16 straight victories, before Curry seemingly snapped All-NBA defender Chris Paul’s ankle ligaments with a crossover, before record-setting rookie head coach Steve Kerr was hired…

Back before the Warriors made the playoffs in 2013, for just the second time in 19 years, and then did it two more times in a row...

Way back then was a time for experts to predict Golden State would do what they'd done for decades: suck.

Sports Illustrated decided it’s “a safe bet that… [the] Warriors aren’t going to make the playoffs.” 


After then coach Mark Jackson and new GM Bob Myers played against prisoners at San Quentin, Bleacher Report added this: “The Warriors and their supporters need to believe there’s something better out there than season after season of lottery picks…just like the inmates have to believe there’s a reason to be optimistic about the future. And if you think it’s a stretch to compare prison inmates to Warriors fans, you obviously haven’t been around the Bay Area for the last 20 years.”


But not everybody was predicting futility. The Weekly saw something that would lead not just to the playoffs but to perennial contention. A new culture.

“Current standards are insufficient to get the national and international reputation our organization needs to be one of the top in professional sports,” Warriors Vice President Jim Weyermann told the Weekly in 2012. “That’s our goal. This whole experiment, money and resources into this, is a direct testament of understanding that to be in the elite, you have to be best in everything you do, from top to bottom. Not easy to do coming from the starting place we were coming from.”

Then the Ws made the playoffs and stunned the Denver Nuggets and almost clipped the heavily favored Spurs. Now the Warriors are the number one seed—but suddenly heading into Game 3 against rival Memphis Grizzlies looking uphill again.

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You don't have to be an NBA historian to know what's happening in Northern California is unprecedented.

But if you are a true Warrior fan you should understand how they went from a mess to blessed.

The five major steps appear below:

1. Joe Lacob-Peter Gruber group buys the team.

Lacob’s real introduction to Warriors fans got ugly, fast. So many booed him on a night honoring Chris Mullin that fellow Warriors legend Rick Barry said, “ "Seriously. C'mon people."

His new ownership group—which bought the team in 2010 for $480 million—had famously traded explosive leading scorer Monta Ellis for an injured Andrew Bogut.

What was less apparent: How deeply they were changing the DNA of the team.

Lacob, who put himself through college and Stanford business school, made partner at marquee venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was saying things like “Transparency is something we view as a hallmark” and “There’s more than one way to do things.”

Those ways included acquiring a farm team, The Santa Cruz Warriors, to help the Oakland squad prepare players and front office and build a fanbase.

And new Moneyball-style analytics, which help Lacob’s son and Warriors Assistant GM Kirk Lacob go deeper into player and matchup effectiveness.

Myers said this early on: “If your owner is mingling with ticket sales staff, making himself available, it trickles down. He comes from a venture world where a 23-year-old has the best idea in the room—or the city—so it’s not a caste system. Our company embraces new thoughts and ideas, not old-time hierarchy.”

2. The Myers hire.

The GM is known for parlaying his background as a former player at UCLA and high-powered agent into shrewdly evaluating talent.

But beyond the draft picks (see number 3), the complicated trades for studs like Andre Iguodala and Bogut and the refusal to include Klay Thompson in any trade for Kevin Love, he reveals a knack for finding key role players like Ws alums Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry, or current clutch reserves Leandro Barbosa, Marreese Speights and Shaun Livingston.

Still, talent is only a piece of the puzzle. He wants upstanding guys. He wants hard-working guys. He wants team players.

“When we draft or sign a player,” he says, “we’re asking, ‘Do they have room for growth; are they competitive; do they care about the craft?’”

The result speak for themselves, and through Golden State’s league-best 27.4 assists.

Like Curry said at his MVP press conference coronation, “There’s a reason my man Bob Myers has a trophy for executive of the year. He’s made all the right decisions.”

Those include having signed Curry—while he was hurt—to a controversial extended contract that now appears a big bargain. The rest of Warriors young core is also signed for several more seasons.

3. Monta Ellis trade for Andrew Bogut.

The old Warriors won—or more often lost—with exciting guard play, outside shooting, and occasional iffy character. (Sorry Latrell Sprewell and Stephen Jackson.)

The new Warriors, by contrast, have won games this year with depth, defense, rebounding and—wait for it—character.

That doesn’t happen without this Myers-managed trade, which brought in one of the premier defenders in the league—note Bogut’s nearly season-long place above the defensive efficiency rankings—and cleared the way for the best shooter in the world to develop into an MVP.

By the time a normal marksman releases the ball, Curry's is already 12 feet up in the air; his 0.33-second trigger ranks as the fastest measured.

That quickness catapulted comebacks from deficits of 26 (to the Boston Celtics), 20 (to the Dallas Mavericks) and then again versus the Pelicans, but his leadership means as much to Golden State.

“We very much believe in each other and the process and the team,” Kerr says. “Steph embodies that, and makes it easy to buy into the fact that we can achieve great things together.”

4. The Warriors 2013 Draft.

First round pick Harrison Barnes has contributed from the get-go, starting as a rookie and returning to the starting lineup in year three.

He’s stroked better than 40 percent from 3-point land while playing inspired defense against larger opponents and providing some of the athleticism that allows defensive coach Ron Adam's switching to employ a befuddling, constantly switching “shell” defense.

Third rounder Festus Ezeli has come on to contribute big minutes against sizeable teams like Memphis, huge given the fact that center is the Ws’ most crucial and the shallowest on defense.

But it’s second rounder Draymond Green who has done nothing but wow everyone outside his own locker room by seizing the opportunity created by a David Lee preseason injury to transform into the most feared 6’7” “big” man in the league.

He shut down future-MVP Anthony Davis in round one; the Memphis Grizzlies only turned the tide in the second round's Game 2 once Green was out with foul trouble.

Myers made the decision to take Green. "We saw a winning player,” Myers says. “And we believe winning is a skill."

5. Signing Steve Kerr.

Kerr learned every lesson consensus best-coach-in-the-league Spurs coach Greg Popovich taught him playing for two world championships, and he built those upon a Phil Jackson- and Lute Olsen-forged foundation.

After five championships playing, Kerr knows the importance of humility, resilience, humor, quality assistants, constant communication and prioritizing things besides basketball.

One key playoff lesson he's mastered is a Pop postulate: Give everybody minutes during the season because one of them will win you a playoff game. With weapons like Livingston, Speights and Barbosa already affecting outcomes, that bodes well.

His management of minutes mean the Warriors have the healthiest roster of any team remaining, and the freshest legs.

They also have another advantage: home court advantage, with which the W's are 42-3.

Kerr's ability to scheme on the level with his old coaches, something former coach Mark Jackson struggled with, marks the team's biggest playoff improvement.

His steadying influence was already apparent immediately after the Memphis loss, which pushes Golden State back toward its familiar underdog role.

“It’s been a dream season,” he said. “Things have fallen into place over and over again. It’s not always going to work that way: When you get outplayed by a good team, you’re gonna lose at home or on the road, and you move on.”

And you keep moving up.