Barber: GM Bob Myers is spoiling Warriors rotten

Somebody give Bob Myers some parenting magazines. He needs to leaf through a few articles with titles like “8 Reasons It’s Good to Say No.”

Myers is the general manager of the Warriors, and he is trying to make spoiled brats of everyone in his professional household. Especially his coach, Steve Kerr.

When the 2016-17 NBA Finals ended in a shower of confetti and the Warriors’ victory parade faded into dim echoes and the offseason formally began, Kerr presented an early Christmas list to Myers. It was an outlandish overreach. Kerr asked for the expensive new mountain bike AND the X-box AND the Beyonce tickets AND the golden lab puppy. And Myers was like, you know what? You’ve been a good kid. You’re getting all of it, and I’m throwing in a skate party for 20.

This is no way to build character.

Consider the situation. Today is the first day that NBA teams can announce free-agent transactions, and it’s one of the worst-disguised shams in professional sports. The past week has been a never-ending chyron crawl of basketball news, with sources claiming that Player A or Player B has verbally agreed to terms with Team C or Team D. And to the dismay of the other 29 teams, a lot of the lines connect to the Warriors.

You think fans in Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Cleveland hated the Warriors last year? Wait until January. This team is going full Evil Empire right now, and Myers is pulling the strings from his underground lair in Oakland. Don’t let the goofy haircut fool you.

Let’s recap the action: The Warriors are about to re-sign Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and David West, and will welcome newcomers Omri Casspi and Nick Young. People who know better than I feel Golden State has a decent chance of bringing back Zaza Pachulia and/or JaVale McGee, too.

The entirety of that should not be possible. With 10 free agents of their own and the rest of the NBA seeking to strip them for parts, the Warriors should have been hard-pressed to tread water this offseason. Instead, they’re catching a second wind in the final 50 meters.

True, Myers has had some help. When he says “aw, shucks” and accepts the NBA Executive of the Year award next June (as he did last month), he will have some accomplices to bring to the podium. Foremost among them will be co-owner Joe Lacob and forward Kevin Durant.

Lacob is a silent partner in all this talent hoarding, but let’s not forget that it’s primarily his and Peter Guber’s money that Myers is spending like a trust-fund baby. And believe me, it’s going to be a hell of a bill that the Warriors owners receive down the road. The luxury-tax threshold for 2017 is a little over $119 million; current Warriors salaries, as reported, amount to just under $132.5 million. With more to come.

Bobby Marks, the NBA front-office insider for ESPN, estimates Golden State’s luxury tax at $42.8 million for the coming season, and $554.5 million over the next four. These guys are going to have to sell a lot of Omri Casspi jerseys in Israel, or a lot of Swaggy P Warriors mixtapes.

Meanwhile, Durant’s benevolence made some of this possible. The silky scorer was entitled to a max contract of $31.8 million for 2017-18 under the NBA’s convoluted salary structure, and would have received it within minutes on the open market. But he agreed to stay in Oakland for $25 million this season.

That compromise not only saved Lacob and Guber a stack of dollars, it initiated a cascade of transactions that, beyond any reasonable expectation, keeps the band together.

Myers took the money that would have gone to Durant and applied it to the offers he made to Andre Iguodala (who will make $17.4 million in 2017-18) and Shaun Livingston ($8 million), the Warriors’ most important reserves.

There was no guarantee that Myers could afford to re-sign either of those two. Iguodala, in particular, was coveted by several NBA teams. He’s an NBA Finals MVP (in 2015) and a former All-Star. He reportedly met with the Rockets, Spurs, Lakers and Kings. And then Myers took him off the market.

And the GM got Livingston, too. And West, another solid bench player who added much to the Warriors’ second unit and locker room last year.

Let’s be honest. Retaining the core of the championship team was enough to constitute a successful offseason. Myers did that before the July 4 holiday. But he wasn’t done.

This overindulgent parent went out and grabbed a pair of shooters, Casspi and Young. They were surprise moves, even in a league steeped in rumors.

And make no mistake, both should help. Casspi, who is 6-foot-9, averaged 11.8 points per game for Sacramento just two years ago. In December of 2015 he engaged Curry in a memorable shootout at Oracle Arena, the two men swapping 3-pointers like stock traders late in the second quarter. The 6-7 Young, a frustration when it comes to passing and defense, is a well-established shooter. He averaged 13.2 points for the Lakers last year, and his 3-point percentage of 40.4 was the second best of his 10-year NBA career. Both newcomers are streaky scorers and incomplete players. But the Warriors don’t need them to be great. They need shooters off the bench - something the team didn’t really have last year, even as it breezed to the NBA title. So Myers found a couple.

The GM is scheduled to address the media today. Myers will sit at the podium and talk about all the hard work still before him and his staff. He’ll make a few jokes at his own expense. He’ll express his gratitude to Durant and Curry, and repeat how happy he is that Kerr is feeling better. But don’t be fooled by Myers’ disarming smile. All the while, he’ll be scanning the room for the next available shooting guard whose soul he can steal.

As a prep for that press conference, let’s visit the checklist of Warriors offseason needs. Tie up the superstars for at least a year or two? Check. Bring back key reserves? Check. Find some scoring for the second unit? Check. And possibly mate.

Less than a month after winning the NBA championship, Myers has done the unthinkable. He has made the Warriors better.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.