The Golden State Warriors fired Mark Jackson last season, mostly due to his personality and inability to get along with others in the organization.
Team owner Joe Lacob says that Jackson refused to hire the best assistant coaches that money can buy, and that no one (except for his fiercely loyal players) wanted him around.
New head coach Steve Kerr has thrived this season, leading the Warriors to an NBA-best 17-2 record.
Per Inside Bay Area:
“Right now, (Kerr) looks great,” Lacob said at the Western Association of Venture Capitalists/National Venture Capital Association luncheon Wednesday. “I think he will be great. And he did the one big thing that I wanted more than anything else from Mark Jackson he just wouldn’t do, in all honesty, which is hire the very best. […] Carte blanche. Take my wallet. Do whatever it is to get the best assistants there are in the world. Period. End of story. Don’t want to hear it. And (Jackson’s) answer … was, ‘Well, I have the best staff.’ No you don’t. And so with Steve, very, very different.”
“You can’t have a staff underneath you that isn’t that good,” Lacob said. “And if you’re going to get better, you’ve got to have really good assistants. You’ve got to have people that can be there to replace you. We all know this from all of our companies. It’s … Management 101. A lot of people on the outside couldn’t understand it when we (fired Jackson).”
“Part of it was that he couldn’t get along with anybody else in the organization,” Lacob said. “And look, he did a great job, and I’ll always compliment him in many respects, but you can’t have 200 people in the organization not like you.”
