For those who don’t follow the NBA, allow me to provide a brief history on the work Bob Myers has done as an executive.
Bob Myers was hired by the Golden State Warriors in 2011 as an assistant general manager. He would be promoted to general manager a year later.
Under Myers’s leadership, the Warriors would go on to draft Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green in 2012. This came a year after drafting Klay Thompson and three years after drafting Steph Curry. They signed future NBA Finals MVP Andre Igoudala to a four-year deal in 2013. They also extended the aforementioned Curry to what wound up being a team-friendly contract, thanks in part to his early career injury history dampening his value.
Those players wound up forming the core of what would become multiple NBA championship teams in the Bay Area. They won the title in 2015. They would’ve repeated in 2016, a season where they went 73-9 in the regular season, had it not been for a historic performance by LeBron James in Games 5-7 of the 2016 NBA Finals for the Cleveland Cavaliers to erase a 3-1 deficit and win the title.
The way the NBA was set up at the time, the salary cap exploded going into the 2016-17 season. The Warriors had the cap space and flexibility in terms of assets (aka, they renounced the free agency rights to Barnes) to convince a former NBA MVP and one of the 15 or so greatest players ever in Kevin Durant to join them as a free agent. The Warriors would go on to win the next two NBA titles and may have won yet another in 2019 had it not been for an Achilles injury to Durant and a torn ACL by Thompson in that Finals against the Toronto Raptors.
Golden State would have a couple down years in the aftermath of Durant departing as a free agent and Thompson’s lengthy recovery (he wound up tearing his Achilles during a workout prior to returning from the torn ACL), but the core of Curry, Thompson, and Green managed to win one last championship together in 2021-22. All in all, they won 4 championships and reached two more NBA Finals in a six year span and became a modern day NBA dynasty. Myers’ leadership and vision was a big part of the reason why the Warriors accomplished that.
Myers would eventually step down as GM of the Warriors and do work in television before taking his next executive job as president of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which oversees operations of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils among other organizations.
The 76ers, well into the post-“Trust the Process” tanking era under former GM Sam Hinkie, had consistently been a good but not great team in the Eastern Conference. As a team, their ceiling was reaching the Eastern Conference semifinals. Joel Embiid is the longest-tenured Sixer, and while he’s oft-injured, he’s an MVP-caliber player when healthy. Philadelphia nailed a late first round pick on Tyrese Maxey, a 2-time All-Star, and the future is bright with VJ Edgecombe, a former high lottery pick.
Teams are always looking to improve, and when the opportunity to acquire a perennial All-Star and NBA champion in Jaylen Brown presented itself, the Sixers were positioned to pounce. Philadelphia sent an albatross Paul George contract and draft picks to Boston to acquire Brown. And while I’m not necessarily saying that move was the reason why Philadelphia all of a sudden became an attractive landing spot for LeBron James, it certainly didn’t hurt Philly’s chances. LeBron, at age 41 and looking to win one last championship before retiring, chose Philadelphia over potential reunions in Cleveland and Miami for what may be the final chapter in his Hall of Fame career.
Myers has been quoted in the past saying that he wasn’t necessarily looking to build superteams in the NBA. The goal is to build, compete, and ideally, each subsequent decision makes you incrementally better. It’s one thing for Myers to tell Rich Paul and Max Kellerman on their podcast that his pitch to LeBron would be that the Sixers gave him the best chance to win. It’s another thing to show your work by making the correct requisite moves beforehand to set up that possibility. It’s easier to show you’re serious about winning when you can point to trading for a perennial All-Star weeks prior as proof.
When you consistently make good decisions, and you consistently build upon a strong foundation, you position yourself to be in the mix for the move or moves that can put you over the top.
Look at the Florida Panthers, for instance. For most of their history as a franchise, the Panthers were a joke. Florida has always had the advantages of having great weather and a favorable tax situation, but when previous management groups there couldn’t get out of their own way and built losing hockey teams year after year, nobody wanted to go South Florida unless the team grossly overpaid or there was no other alternative when it came to being in the NHL.
It wasn’t until the last decade or so where they began to turn things around. It started with the drafting of key players like Sasha Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, and Jonathan Huberdeau to give them a foundation off which to work. They also added a key free agent in Sergei Bobrovsky who gave them stability in net (and would wind up being a key reason of why they won championships)
Once Bill Zito (and eventually, Sunny Mehta) came aboard, the Panthers made a series of decisions that made them incrementally better. Drafting Anton Lundell. Acquiring Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett via trade. Adding Gus Forsling off of waivers. Signing Carter Verhaeghe after he wasn’t qualified by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Was there a bit of luck involved that they were able to pluck a top pairing defenseman and a top six scoring winger off of the scrap heap? Sure. But by using the data and tools available, you make those smart, calculated risks. And those moves ultimately added to the foundation Florida already had where they were able to move Huberdeau and Mackenzie Weegar for Matthew Tkachuk, which ultimately led to them getting Brady Tkachuk last month.
Smart moves by a smart management team didn’t just turn Florida into a winner. They turned Florida into THE premier destination in the NHL. To where Florida became THE team that everybody wants to go to. Fans might be envious and/or annoyed when Florida, Tampa, and Vegas keep popping up on a player’s preferred trade destination list, but those organizations are there for a reason.
Instead of being annoyed about that though, the other 29 or so organizations should be asking themselves how do I get on that list? What can I do differently to get on that level? Instead of moping around and whining and complaining about the lack of palm trees in Buffalo like a loser, teams should be looking in the mirror and ask themselves what they’re not doing.
Bob Myers might not be a traditional” 200 Hockey Man”, and neither is Sunny Mehta. But the philosophy of continuing to make those incremental improvements and making smart bets is one that can apply regardless of the sport. It’s something Mehta literally talked about in his introductory press conference, and its likely a conversation that came up when Myers sat in on Mehta’s interview to be the Devils general manager.
Once those improvements are made and the team is better off on the field (or in this case, the ice) as a result of it, it opens up the door to larger possibilities.
New Jersey And Being a Destination
The idea of New Jersey being a destination isn’t something new. It’s something that former GM Tom Fitzgerald talked about a lot during his time here.
Fitzgerald frequently referred to New Jersey as a “hidden gem”, and while part of that is the role of used car salesman that comes along with being an NHL general manager, he wasn’t necessarily wrong.
New Jersey has plenty to offer, from its close proximity to NYC, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and the Jersey shore to what Fitzgerald cited as “the best travel in the league” with so many teams in the Eastern Conference located along the I-95 corridor. If you like golf, there’s plenty of options. If you like world-class restaurants, there’s plenty of options. If you want “city living”, there are plenty of places in Hoboken or Jersey City to take up residence. If you want a quieter lifestyle off the ice, there are plenty of places where one can live in relative anonymity in the suburbs. The practice rink and Prudential Center are under the same roof. I can go on, but you get the point. New Jersey isn’t unique in offering these things per se, but they can build a compelling argument around those things as selling points.
Fitzgerald did succeed to some extent when it came to convincing players to either come to or stay in New Jersey. He ultimately convinced Dougie Hamilton, Ondrej Palat, Brett Pesce, and Brenden Dillon to sign here as unrestricted free agents. He convinced Timo Meier to extend here. Jake Allen and Jacob Markstrom waived no-trade clauses to come here. They certainly took a big swing to try to convince Johnny Gaudreau to sign here. Granted, Fitzgerald might’ve caved in a lot of negotiations where he ultimately offered too much term, too much money, too much trade protection, or some combination of the three, but when one is adding pieces through free agency, that’s the cost of doing business. You either bite the bullet and give the player what they’re looking for or you risk losing the player.
If there’s a critique though, it’s that the Devils haven’t had enough success on the ice to position themselves to be a contender for the truly elite level players when they do become available. They can get players, but they haven’t been able to get the difference makers that move the needle.
The Devils couldn’t get on Matthew Tkachuk’s list when he was available several years ago despite the Tkachuks being cousins with Fitzgerald, and they weren’t on Brady’s list either post-Fitzgerald firing despite Brady’s wife being from New Jersey.
The Devils haven’t been able to get on Dylan Larkin’s list either despite his close relationship with the Hughes brothers.
Ironically, the relationship with the Hughes brothers matters to some extent with Larkin since Quinn is there and Wild are on his list. As of this writing, the so-called Quinn Hughes contract extension to stay in Minnesota that we were told was a mere formality isn’t actually done yet (meanwhile, Quinn has spent most of his time with his brothers in New Jersey this summer but I digress).
Why is Minnesota on Larkin’s list? Aside from the obvious need for a top six center, they were one of the best teams in the league last season. They theoretically have a chance to win right now, even though their roster has taken a step back this offseason. The Devils have to prove they belong on that upper-echelon tier before they get that benefit of the doubt.
Winning matters. Players can make their money anywhere.
It’s why one organization located in a southwestern desert can struggle for decades despite good year-round weather being a selling point (Arizona) while another has done nothing but thrive since entering the league (Vegas).
Ownership matters. Having executives in place who know what they’re doing, who know how to build a winner, and will be aggressive in doing so matters. Having a winning culture matters. It’s why an organization like Vegas is on every player’s wishlist (despite their track record of treating players like a disposable napkin once they’re deemed no longer useful) while an organization like Arizona is, well, no longer located in Arizona.
It’s why teams like Vegas and Florida and Tampa Bay will ultimately be fine despite trading away so many futures. As long as they keep having the right people in place and keep building upon what is already in place, they’ll always have that next guy who will want to come in to replace the guy who ages out.
If it was simply about a favorable tax situation, an organization like the Kraken or Predators would have had nothing but success since entering the league.
Final Thoughts
I realize that my thoughts this week are sort of all over the place, but with the news that LeBron was going to Philadelphia and seeing Bob Myers, who works for HBSE, play a key role in convincing him to go there reassured me that the Devils are likely in good shape. Both with Myers in his larger role overseeing HBSE and Mehta as the Devils general manager.
Of course, its one thing to say you’re going to do these things and another thing entirely to be better. But I view the Devils similarly to how I’d view the Panthers pre-Zito and pre-Mehta, or the Sixers for most of the last decade. Where there are pieces there you can win with and are worth building around, but you need the right people in place at the top of the organization who know how to put the requisite pieces around them to win and will be aggressive when the time is right.
The one ‘yeah, but’ with all of this is that the players wield as much power as they ever have and aren’t afraid to use it. In many cases, not only do they have the no-trade clause, but they also have the power and wherewithal to utilize it to steer themselves towards a preferred destination. Those are roadblocks that even elite teams like Carolina and Colorado have had to navigate, and its certainly possible that even if the Devils do become a perennial contender, that’s something they’ll always have to deal with to some extent. At the end of the day, there will be players who won’t want to come to New Jersey no matter what they do to make themselves attractive to them.
I’m not saying that the Devils will definitely turn things around and join that upper echelon of NHL franchises with Myers and Mehta up top. The NHL is not the NBA, and what Myers accomplished there won’t necessarily work in the NHL. Mehta is still relatively unproven. But I do think there’s something to the idea of consistently making smart decisions and the mindset of “how do I get better today” rather than complacency. I also think there’s something to the idea of nobody is just going to hand greatness to you on a silver platter. If you want to be great, you have to grab the bull by the horns and take what’s yours. Of course, that process is different for players than executives, but the point is that it doesn’t just happen. Be aggressive, like Vegas consistently is, and go get yours.
It may take a little bit of time as Mehta continues to fix the mistakes of the previous regime and continues to reshape the roster, but the Devils are probably in good hands under Mehta and Myers’ leadership.
