Jermaine O'Neal Convinced Warriors to Stay Together the Call That Sparked Four NBA Titles
Jermaine O'Neal told Bob Myers not to break up the Warriors after 2014. That advice, plus Klay Thompson staying put, fueled four NBA championships.
What Jermaine O'Neal told Bob Myers after the 2014 playoff exit
After the Golden State Warriors were bounced in the first round of the 2014 playoffs by the Los Angeles Clippers, the front office faced an obvious temptation: blow it up. Instead, according to multiple reports, former NBA big man Jermaine O'Neal got on the phone with general manager Bob Myers and delivered a message that ran counter to the usual playoff-exit panic don't touch this roster.
O'Neal's advice was direct: "Do not break this team up" and "give these guys another year." He reportedly argued that the loss to the Clippers wasn't a sign of a broken core, but proof that Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and their teammates were learning how to compete at a higher level. In O'Neal's view, the Warriors' first-round defeat showed a team that "knows how to lose" the kind of hard lesson that builds a champion rather than one that demands a teardown.
He also pushed a "this is it" mentality on Myers, reminding him that windows in the NBA close fast. Injuries, coaching changes, and shifting rosters can derail a promising core overnight, so the priority wasn't to chase a quick fix — it was to protect the chemistry, hunger and shared work ethic already building inside that locker room.
How close did the Warriors actually come to trading Klay Thompson?
O'Neal's advice wasn't delivered into a vacuum it landed right as Golden State was seriously exploring a trade that would have reshaped the franchise's entire future. In the summer of 2014, the Warriors discussed a deal framework that would have sent Klay Thompson to the Minnesota Timberwolves as the centerpiece for Kevin Love, then one of the league's premier stretch forwards.
The talks were real enough that ESPN reported Thompson's name circulating in trade proposals at the time. But according to later accounts, the deal never reached a stage Golden State was ready to pull the trigger on. Longtime executive Jerry West reportedly fought hard against including Thompson, even threatening to resign over it, while Steve Kerr not yet officially the head coach but already involved in roster conversations started out cautious before ultimately siding with West's resistance.
Love went to Cleveland instead, pairing with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Thompson stayed in the Bay Area. That single non-decision, layered on top of O'Neal's counsel to Myers, kept the Curry-Thompson-Draymond Green trio intact at the exact moment it was closest to being broken apart.
What kept-together roster and a rookie head coach turned into
With the core preserved, the Warriors made one more move that summer: they hired Steve Kerr as head coach, a first-time NBA bench boss stepping into a locker room that O'Neal had insisted was already special. The combination of continuity and a fresh coaching voice proved to be the missing piece rather than a gamble.
Golden State won the NBA championship in Kerr's very first season, in 2015, then added titles in 2017 and 2018 — back-to-back championships that made it three rings in four years. The dynasty resurfaced again in 2022, when the Warriors beat the Boston Celtics in six games for their fourth championship in eight seasons and the franchise's seventh overall.
None of that run was guaranteed in the summer of 2014. Had the Kevin Love trade gone through, or had Myers followed the standard playbook of reacting to a playoff exit with a major shake-up, the roster that eventually featured Curry, Thompson and Green as the backbone of a dynasty simply wouldn't have existed in the same form.
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