Betaball: How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History

The NBA champion Golden State Warriors are considered a budding dynasty as well as a well-run business, and here journalist Malinowski, who covers the team for Bleacher Report, adroitly details the franchise’s long and bumpy road to success. The team’s drafting of point guard Stephen Curry certainly helped, as did the business plan of co-owners Peter Guber, a Hollywood producer, and Joe Lacob, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist. According to Lacob, the Warriors are not a basketball team but “much more than that. We’re a sports, media, and technology entity.” Lacob formed a collaborative framework for the Warriors that relied on both traditional basketball men such as team president Rick Welts and unconventional hires such as general manager Bob Myers (a former agent) and head coach Steve Kerr (a player and general manager who had never coached). The team employed science as a tool—including to refine players’ sleep patterns—and embraced fan interaction: Guber set up an email address so that fans can ask questions of coaches and players. Malinowski describes the on-court action with humorous flair while also capturing the sophistication required to properly run a professional sports team. (Oct.)