Warriors assistant general manager Kirk Lacob has been camped out in Las Vegas for the last week, watching Golden State’s summer league squad and now soaking in the Team USA practices with Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
Lacob got one of the first up close and personal views of Durant’s new tattoo, an homage to rapper Tupac Shakur wrapped around his entire leg.
“It looks really good,” Lacob said. “It’s pretty impressive.”
Quietly, it’s the younger Lacob who has been equally impressive to people around the NBA.
As he continues to gain experience building a championship contending roster, Lacob’s role with the Warriors continues to increase with more and more on his plate. He joined the organization in October 2010 as the team’s director of basketball operations, doing everything from personnel evaluation, draft preparation, scouting and serving as the GM of the Santa Cruz Warriors, the Warriors’ D-League affiliate, before shifting his post underneath Bob Myers.
Perhaps most noteworthy of his rise within the team was his presence at Durant’s recruiting pitch in The Hamptons alongside his father Joe, Myers, Steve Kerr, Steph Curry, Andre Iguodala, Myers, Thompson and Green. Those are the heavy hitters. Kirk Lacob is one of them.
Myers told KNBR.com he was a nervous wreck after the Durant meeting and thought there was no shot KD was coming to Golden State. Joe Lacob was more on the fence, saying he thought there was a 50-50 chance the former MVP would leave OKC. But it was Kirk Lacob who was the most upbeat during the waiting process. The assistant GM had a strong read on Durant and kept the mood within Golden State’s front office calm, collected and hopeful during the now famous Fourth of July weekend.
“I may be the most optimistic person we have,” Lacob said. “I really thought we had a good shot. I think Kevin wanted to come based on everything I was hearing. And being in the meeting, I could tell it was something he was really thinking hard about.”
Las Vegas in the summer time is always a place for important NBA people to flock — players, coaches, front office types, agents and media members. Lacob got his first hands-on interactions with new assistant coach Mike Brown, and said he learned a ton by the way the 46-year-old handled himself with players. Brown was hired by Kerr to replace Luke Walton, and originally coached Kerr as an assistant while the two overlapped with the San Antonio Spurs in 2002-2003.
But Lacob was also observing the players, and just like Thompson said earlier this week, the assistant GM can already sense the chemistry building between the trio of Warriors during these Olympic preparations.
“It’s learning the little small pieces of each other’s games that maybe they didn’t quite know,” he said.
Lacob’s scouting expertise is perhaps where he helps the Warriors the most. When asked a question about the summer league, Lacob couldn’t contain him enthusiasm for rookie guard Patrick McCaw. The 6-foot-7 second round pick out of UNLV averaged 15.8 points per game, hit three-pointers and played lock down defense. Without hesitation, Myers and Lacob traded $4 million cash to the Milwaukee Bucks to land McCaw and it appears like the move could help the Warriors right away.
“I love what I saw from Patrick McCaw,” Lacob said. “I was so impressed with the way he came out the first game and played well — and then came back and played really well the second game. That showed a lot of maturity to me.
“When he was there at No. 38, we knew exactly who we wanted. We were excited. We thought it’s a guy who can really grow with this team, but can also fit with them today. I really believe his game is going to be better than what you saw in summer league. He’s going to fit so well because he doesn’t want to score every time down. He wants to play basketball the right way. He wants to pass and wants to defend. That’s what we saw when we scouted him. At UNLV, he only played two years, a coaching change, a lot of roster turnover. And yet he was still a really good player.”
The Warriors currently have one roster spot open. Lacob wouldn’t commit to whether the team has decided to use that spot to develop a younger player, or grab one last key veteran piece.
“We don’t have any specific plans yet,” Lacob said, “but there’s a lot of options were looking into… We want someone to come in and take that spot, we don’t want to give it to anyone.”