Bob Myers' immense pressure and a Warriors crossroads

The living legend executive bids farewell, leaving huge shoes to fill at a crucial time in Warriorland.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Hay Harvest; Pieter Bruegel the Elder; 1565

Bob Myers, the architect of the Golden State Warriors dynasty, announced Tuesday that he would step down from his role at the end of his contract. That means that Myers will not be around for the coming big decisions for the Warriors, nor the next dramas as the 2023-24 season begins.

There’s no indication of what Myers will do next, but he’s very clearly not ruling out running another team soon. This doesn’t feel like a Daryl Morey situation — where he left the Rockets citing desires to spend more time with his family, then had a job running the Sixers two weeks later. It might be more of a Danny Ainge situation, where Myers is ready to take an elevated team president role somewhere a little more quiet.

It does seem like the unique pressure of the Warriors might have been a factor — not from the perspective of Myers deciding that all the pressure is too much, but … just, can you imagine giving your decision and rationale and this is the response from your billionaire boss?

"I'm not going to sit here and tell you I understand it because I don't," [Joe] Lacob said as he sat adjacent to Myers in a news conference at Chase Center on Tuesday.

This is what Myers had said, that Lacob can’t understand:

"The bottom line is this job, the one I'm in ... requires complete engagement, a complete effort, a thousand percent, and if you can't do it, then you shouldn't do it," Myers said. "So that's the answer to the question of why. I can't do that to our players. I can't do that to Joe and Peter [Guber]. Really, I can't do it to myself. And that's the question I've been wrestling with."

If you can’t understand why someone would walk away from that self-induced pressure after 12 years, then you’ll be left wondering your entire life.