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

Moneyball meets The City Game in this compelling look at how the world champion Golden State Warriors embraced savvy business practices, next-generation science, and Silicon Valley's technocentric culture to not only produce the most talented basketball team ever assembled but revolutionize the modern NBA.

 

Betaball is the definitive, inside account of how the Warriors -- under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Hollywood producer Peter Guber -- quickly became one of the most remarkable success stories ever witnessed in sports or business. In just five years, the duo turned a declining franchise with no immediate hope into the NBA's dominant force, facilitated the rise of All-Star point guard Stephen Curry, produced the best single-season record in league history, and won two championships over a three-year span.

 

Lacob and Guber (along with their executives, coaches, and players) did so by urging employees to speak out; encouraging cross-collaboration; investing in bold, new technologies; and never resisting the urge to innovate, no matter how successful they became. In the tech industry, the term for this development stage -- when your product isn't quite fully baked, so you're always in flux and open to change yet focused on the end-goal -- is "beta."

 

By operating in "beta," the Warriors morphed into a model organization for American professional sports, instituting the best workplace principles found inside the world's most successful corporations and instilling a top-down organizational ethos that allowed all of their employees to thrive, from the front office to the free-throw line.

 

With in-depth access and meticulous reporting on and off the court, acclaimed journalist Erik Malinowski recounts a gripping tale of worlds colliding, a team's reinvention, ordinary people being pushed to extraordinary heights, and the Golden State Warriors' unending quest to remain the best.