Bob Myers Hopes to Bring Perspective to NBA Media Ecosystem
By Liam McKeone
The 2023-24 NBA season will not be the first Bob Myers spends in the media world-- but things have changed a lot since the last time he held a press pass. Way back in the early 2000s, before he was the agent-turned-executive who helped build the Golden State Warriors from laughingstock to powerhouse, Myers was a radio analyst for UCLA basketball. He left the gig in 2002 and became a well-known agent for players like Brandon Roy before he was hired by the Warriors in 2011 as an assistant GM. After 12 years of incredible success with the organization, Myers stepped down after his contract expired earlier this year. A few months later, he announced he was joining ESPN. And thus, the full-circle moment was complete.
Myers is about as recognizable a face as you'll find in the NBA executive division. He was the face of Golden State's upper management before, during, and after the time they spent as the best team in the league and one of the best of all time. ESPN is going to spread Myers' talents around; he'll have roles in pregame and studio coverage while also joining a few broadcasts as a color analyst. He hopes the different variations of inside access he's enjoyed over the course of his career will be an additive element to wherever the network puts him.
"What can I provide? Perspective on what it was like to be an agent, what it’s like to be a GM," Myers told The Big Lead. "What thought processes go into building a team. What you might do in a situation where there’s tension. I went through enough with the Warriors where I’ve seen quite a bit. There’s the weight of expectations and dealing with that. There’s the weight of controversy. All those things, maybe having some lens into that might be interesting for people to see.
"Obviously doing the agent stuff for as long as I did I may have a perspective on what players might be thinking and certainly what agents are thinking. Just being around the business for 25 years. It’s a pretty small world. When you’re at games or out and about, the network, the connections you have, you hear all about what’s going on in the league. It’s access to information from my relationship."
Access to information is, in many ways, what defines this era of NBA media coverage. Right now, Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania are the most famous basketball reporters in the world. Not because they are great on television or are especially talented writers with a resume of incredible features. But because they are the pipeline between the "small world" Myers mentions above and the general public.
Myers has had a front-row seat to seeing how coverage around the NBA has evolved in the last decade because he was the one getting covered. Now he's doing the covering and he know what the fans are most interested in.
"I think media coverage keeps getting closer and closer to the game," he said. "As far as access, as far as storylines, as far as analytics. There’s a dramatic part of it, there’s a mathematical part of it, there’s a predictive part of it. There’s just so much information for fans to pull from. I joke around, I didn’t know who the GM of the Warriors was when I was growing up. Now people aspire to be GMs. I don’t know if, when I was a kid, anyone raised their hands and said, ‘I wanna be the GM of a sports team.’
"It’s a much more educated fanbase. If I were to say what’s changed in the media, there’s a lot more to write about. It’s not very stale. There’s so much change all the time. One could argue maybe too much. It provides storylines that are interesting to fans because you never know what you’re going to see each day when you wake up."