Warriors Front Office Drama Destroying Team
On Friday, the Mercury News‘ Tim Kawakami (a great source for Warriors info) posted a column that breaks down Golden State’s front-office dynamic and the tension between GM Chris Mullin and team president Robert Rowell. Tim’s column was interesting enough that we wanted to post about this morning.
Long story short, Mully is a ballplayer who is almost always on the side of the players, while Rowell, despite lacking any real basketball credibility, has the ultimate say in all things. The two apparently don’t get along and there’s a growing divide in the front office that is manifesting itself in the mess that Warriors fans now see on the court.
Some highlights of Kawakami’s article to follow. The first is about the general front office culture and Mullin’s future with the team:
Chris Mullin vs. Robert Rowell doesn’t seem like a fair wrestling match, I know.
Mullin: Popular and credible to large swaths of the Warriors fan base. Rowell: None of that, in any way, shape or frown.
But Mullin vs. Rowell is developing into a Rowell landslide because the team president isn’t merely Mullin’s opponent in this intensifying front-office showdown.
As it stands now in the Warriors’ hierarchy, Rowell is the boss, negotiator, banker, judge, jury, arbitrator and Supreme Court majority.
So, pending something large occurring while the Warriors hang out in China this week (two executives leave for China… only… one… comes back!), Rowell is king of the Warriors.
Unless Rowell is dethroned or Chris Cohan de-owned, it’s likely that Mullin will either leave after his contract expires in June or that he will be forced to sign a new Warriors deal on Rowell’s terms.
And this bit about how Mullin didn’t want to crush Monta Ellis over his moped incident, but was disregarded by Rowell:
And now, Mullin’s contract is coming up, and Rowell is playing hardball, as Rowell almost always does. Like he did with Mikael Pietrus, Matt Barnes and even this summer and fall with Baron Davis and Monta Ellis.
Remember, Mullin is a player at heart, and he hated when moneymen made his teammates squirm and beg for the last dollar.
I think Mullin fears that the Warriors could turn back into an unfriendly place for players — back to the days when no free agents ever wanted to come to the East Bay.
Last June, Mullin had a tentative three-year, $39 million extension set up with Davis, until Rowell vetoed it and off Davis went to the Clippers.
More recently, Mullin stressed to Cohan and Rowell that Ellis’ scooter accident was just an accident and should be forgiven. But Rowell fined Ellis $3 million and said there might be more punishment later.And in doing so, Rowell went out of his way to note that Mullin argued for leniency and that his position was disregarded.
It’s all really too bad that it’s playing out this way. The resurgent Warriors were one of the best things going for the NBA in recent years and now it’s all on the verge of falling apart. A few years ago, I remember Allen Iverson being horrified that the Sixers were talking about shipping him to the wasteland of Golden State. The Bay was destination where talent went to die – a stigma that was turned around by Chris Mullin, Don Nelson and the players. It’s a franchise that has come a long way in a very short amount of time, but now is painfully close to being cast back into the dark ages of Warriors history.
Source: Mercury News
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October 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am
evan says:
Welcome to rich guys playing big stakes fantasy basketball. You don’t run a basketball team the same way you run the business that got you there.
Ask those assholes from OKC management.
Interesting old blog post :
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-R30l5qA1a6dC4GcoHbJF?p=175F
October 20th, 2008 at 11:25 am
sans says:
Mullin fixed that franchise, and for two seasons they were relevant again. This is a fucking crime.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Coop says:
The crime is that mullin brought in a bucket load of fly-by-night overpaid chumps. He also drafted badly. They hilariously messed uo with C-Mag. They gave Ellis too much money.
And owning a team IS a business. You try putting your hard-earned into a team then be cool when some ex-players says ‘dont punish him for violating his contract’ or ‘yeah dont negotiate contracts hard’.
Get outta here!
October 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Spliff 2 My Lou says:
Is Rowell a dictator or a dickhead? He sounds like both.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Spliff 2 My Lou says:
I don’t agree with some of Mullins off season moves most notably letting Baron leave, signing Corey M and overpaying Turiaf but it seems to me that Rowell had to approve these moves if he’s the boss, negotiator, banker, judge, jury, arbitrator, etc as stated above.
Team Presidents will always blame the GM’s or coach and never take the blame themselves. It happens all the time. The front office will never fire themselves no matter how many stupid moves they sign off on. That’s the world of corporate business. Sports is no different from Wallstreet. The Presidents/CEO’s run the business into the ground and walk away with millions while everybody else gets the bill or this case the blame.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Brown says:
I’ve worked for a boss like that before. I did the job the way I thought it should be done, but my boss pretty much changed everything I submitted. Needless to say, I don’t work there anymore. A good boss gives their employees the freedom to do jobs. Rowell doesn’t sound like that type of guy.
I can see the same thing happening with Mullin. As much of a Warrior he is at heart, Rowell will run him out of town because he won’t let Mully do his job.
It is a business, but fans are not like shareholders, who only care about the bottom line. The majority of fans care about the product on the court, not the financial management of the team.
Mully gave us Warriors fans a reason to believe again. He turned the team into something we were excited about. This offseason was a potentially huge step backward. We’re all waiting to see how the season pans out, but our faith in the team has been seriously shaken.
If the team falters (for various possible reasons I won’t list here), the fans that came back to the arena the past couple years and supported the team will not be so supportive this year.
Less fans = less money. It’s a simple equation, but one Rowell may not be able to grasp. Hopefully it means his ass will get canned and not Mully’s.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
B-DIDDY says:
coop– youre an idiot—
when players– employees are unhappy there performance lags– mullin is a legend– rowell is ruining the team by trying to “negotiate” (screw the players) what happened to the playoff run two years ago when mully nad nellie made one of the worst teams in the league the previous season to one of the funnest to watch
yeah basketball is a business but unhappy employees make an unsuccesfull business. mully should not be let go
October 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
YOUNGFED says:
FUK’EM
October 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Diego says:
Mullin’s biggest success has been his ability to unload the guys he has signed to absurd contracts right off the bat: Foyle, Dunleavy, Murphy, and Fisher (who actually panned out–who’d have thought back when he was signed away from the Lakers for $30 plus mil.).
He was a great player, is a Warrior legend, but does not have any business mind. He simply lucked out a bit with a couple of picks and trades. (Plus, the one time I met him, he was an unprecedented jerk.) Dump his beer-chugging ass please.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Celts Fan says:
This is the Clippers, Version 2. Stink forever, pop up just long enough to inspire some hope, then find a way to crush that so convincingly and thoroughly, that fans wish they’d never been given that hope in the first place.
How long ago does it feel like that EB was getting the Clips to the 2nd round and BD was CROWNING AK47? Might as well have been the 60s at this point…
October 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Meica says:
At least with the Clips, no one really bought too much of the hype, but after the Warriors underdogged the Mavs I thought we might be on the verge of a very fun and exciting team—everything the Suns want to be—but I guess I was wrong, and this is just the last nail in the coffin.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
dagwaller says:
This might be a dumb question, but what is the difference between team president and general manager? What’s the difference between their roles?
October 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
xstatic says:
Damn. I was starting to love bay area sports again and this just takes the cake. The Giants and Niners suck big time and the Warriors were coming up. Now it’s just being destroyed by upper brass. Good thing the Sharks are kicking ass. For now.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
nabeil says:
fuck you robert rowell you son of a bitch for not knowing what your doing and fuck our dumbass owner cohan, you deserved to get booed when we had the all star game here, we have the best fans in the nba and are fucking everything up for us. I wish both of you die in a air plane crash you scum and burn in hell you fucking greedy fuckers fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1