I did not find this book about making the Warriors dynasty. I found this book to be about Kevin Durant, which is not bad just don’t say one thing and then don’t deliver. He would have sold just as many books if it was just about Durant.

For a book called "The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty", there's not much time spent on the "making" part of the Warriors. I wanted to be able to cheer on with the Warriors as they come into their own. I mean they did win 3 championships, making it to the Finals an impressive 5 consecutive years. Instead, Strauss focuses on Kevin Durant and his dislike for the mercurial Kevin Durant. The book is very negative not only to Durant but the NBA culture in general. Yes, there are some very valid points. It doesn't mean I want to read a rambling account of all those negatives.

The Victory Machine||Ethan Sherwood Strauss
#thestacksreview
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The Golden State Warriors rise and fall is documented through the eyes of one sports reporter, Ethan Strauss. We learn about this exciting franchise and the workplace dynamics in Oracle Arena.
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I must admit I’m a huge sports person and a life long Warriors fan, so this book is right in my wheelhouse. I loved getting an inside look at some of my favorite players and a better understanding of what made this team so special. I had a great time reading all the juicy bits.
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There were for sure parts of this book that felt like a personal vendetta between Strauss and the emotional superstar, Kevin Durant. I found it a little petty and also sort of great. I’m not sure that the personal drama between the two makes for the most accurate of interpretations but it made for a fun read.
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Strauss does a great job of making this book into a workplace drama which means it’s accessible even if you aren’t a sports/Warriors fan. There are pieces of the book that feel disjointed, but Strauss’ vocabulary and writing style make up for a lot of the structural issues.
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You can hear Ethan Strauss this week on the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-111-ethan-strauss-the-victory-machine/id1362164483?i=1000474444197&mt=2&app=podcast&at=1000lLiX
#thestacks

In THE VICTORY MACHINE, by Ethan Sherwood Strauss, the reader is guided through the creation of the perennially competitive and oft champion Golden State Warriors in the second half of the 2010s. All aspects of the team's formation is covered, from the owner and the GM, to the coaches, to the players and how all of these components melded together in a way that created this unique mini-dynasty. All the while, though, as Strauss declares in the subtitle "The making & unmaking of the Warriors dynasty", there were seeds of tension, weakness in the ranks, and indications of collapse in the near future.
Because Strauss writes for the Warriors regularly, he has insight and understanding about the franchise like few others. He sprinkles in some stories, particularly about Kevin Durant, that are sometimes humorous, but often poignant, about the kind of team the Warriors were during their window of extreme success. Speaking of Kevin Durant, or KD as he is referred, Strauss clearly places KD as the catalyst of the collapse and spends a long time defending that theory. I am a fan of the NBA, but by no means an expert on today's game nor a well-studied basketball historian either and I felt like some of the references and comparisons made in the book went right past me because I wasn't fully educated in all things NBA.
THE VICTORY MACHINE is an insightful book about how a franchise works in today's sports world and in particular, how the Warriors franchise rode the wave of success but perhaps didn't see the signs of its own demise.

Do you miss basketball? In this unprecedented time of school closures and stay-at-home orders, I’m surprised by how much I miss basketball. But if you’re anything like me, I have a drug for you. It won’t cure the sickness, but it will lessen the symptoms. It’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss’s new book, The Victory Machine. Strauss is a beat reporter assigned to the Golden State Warriors for the Athletic, and he’s been covering the Warriors since before they won their first title. In other words, he saw the whole saga up close, and he has a story to share. In his own words:
This is a story of ultimate success. It’s also a story of why ultimate success cannot sustain.
Strauss begins the story in 2010 before Joe Lacob bought the Warriors. It continues through Joe Lacob’s “lightyears ahead” interview, the birth of the Warriors dynasty under Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, 73 wins, Durant’s arrival, a few NBA titles, and Durant’s departure. It’s a story a lot of us know well, but Strauss tells it with the connections and the knowledge he has gained over the years. That turns The Victory Machine into a brand new story: one about professional athletes’, owners, and basketball operations guys, who they are, and what they’ll do to win.
Strauss’s perspective also has a fresh pop of honesty and humor. His writing style is casual in its use of language, a necessary quality in a book about athletes and Ops men with a wide-ranging vocabulary of profanities, and he is not afraid to use the first-person whenever necessary to add personal anecdotes, insights, and true-to-life panache to the narrative. My favorite parts of Strauss’s writing, however, are the unique perceptions he gleans from his time spent with the athletes we love to watch from afar. He sets the stage early on in the book:
Superstars show more loyalty to their brand than to their teams. LeBron James is on his fourth NBA team, having gone from savior to villain to savior again in his home state of Ohio, and then on to Hollywood for a new conquest. Through all of that, he stayed true to his lifetime deal with Nike. It figures. Nike boasts the ability to extend his sphere of influence long after retirement, across time and across the world. An NBA team is impotent by comparison.
Maybe I’m just not as connected to the NBA world as I like to think, but this changed so much of what I thought I knew about player movement when I began to think about basketball players and teams in this way.

Strauss also gives insight into specific players such as Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and especially Kevin Durant. Durant is probably the most dominant subject in The Victory Machine, and you will probably think differently about him after his portrayal. (Hint: Durant will not be happy about this book.) It’s also about the relationships between players and personnel. I especially enjoyed his characterization of the D’Angelo Russell deal and its possible effects on Warriors staff:
Of course, nobody quite knew if Lacob and Myers were Russell’s new bosses. If Russell faltered and lost value, Lacob and Myers retained their authority. If the twenty-three-year-old exceeded expectations and turned into a bona fide star of the future? Then Lacob and Myers would lose control and lose authority. They were hoping for this, even banking on their own usurpation. These were highly successful men whose hope was to be subservient to the whims of a twenty-something. In other words, they were at the top of the food chain in Basketball Ops.
But sprinkled into Strauss’s book are understandings that apply to all of us, whether rich and famous or middle-class and unknown. He writes:
When we feel attacked and that fight-or-flight drive kicks in, we tend to remember the experience. I often hear from media members about how awful the fans on Twitter are. I’ll take a glance at their mentions and often see mostly anodyne or positive responses. Those don’t stick, apparently.
Strauss is describing players’ relationships with fans, but he’s also employing a concept that applies to everyone. Whether you’ve seen it on Twitter or not, you’ve experienced the disproportionate effects of insults on your mind and behavior. And sometimes it’s encouraging to know that players, coaches and media members fall into the same mental traps as you do.
The Victory Machine is a helpful salve for the pain of missing basketball games and basketball content. But it’s not just that. The book is a window on the basketball world and a foggy mirror to our own. I highly recommend it to any basketball fan. Enjoy and stay safe.
I received an eARC of The Victory Machine courtesy of Public Affairs and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

While the structure of this book was as disjointed as the Warriors 2019 season and while the book does assume a pretty detailed background knowledge around the NBA in general and the warriors in specific, it is notable for four reasons.

First is the inside story to the dissolution of the Warriors' dynasty. The journalist's inside take is well trodden in sports books, but the details of this team are still interesting to see. Second is the focus on the business side of the NBA, the GMs and agents and owners and Nike reps that the fans mostly like to acknowledge doesn't exist. Third is the exploration of the power of stars and the influence of brand culture in this era of the NBA (including toxic relationships with media and social media). And finally is the interesting focus on the coach, not as a guru of Xs and Os, but as a motivator. How to you get (and what happens when you fail to get) buy in from superstars who may be earning more money from their shoe deal and may (rightly) see little reason to sacrifice for a team that will just trade or cut them when they are no longer of value? This is sports as late stage capitalism, and it's fascinating.

The 2014-2019 Golden State Warriors may go down as one of the most famous dynasties in sports with perhaps the unhappiest and most sudden ending. For as much coverage from the media and envy from the league this version of the Warriors received, this book does an excellent job of uncovering the reasons for the rapid rise and success of building these teams, as well as the conditions for which the dynasty fell dramatically. I picked this book up because I enjoy the business and front office perspective of developing a winning team in sports, but I was pleasantly surprised that much of the book dug into the culture of the NBA,and its personalities and egos.

The book begins with the pre-Durant Warriors, a look into the irreverent and competitive owner Joe Lacob and the story behind how he came to own the club. A front office analysis is conducted on whether the Warriors "got lucky" with inheriting Steph Curry and drafting Draymond Green and Klay Thompson comes next, coinciding with the league's transition towards wing players. Then we get a treat inside the mind of Steve Kerr, who the author has an extensive interview with, digging into Kerr's philosophy as a coach and as a leader. We also get a look at the big business of basketball sneakers, and how NBA superstars have come to work for Nike or Under Armour more than they do for their own teams.

The protagonist of the story, though, is Kevin Durant. In fact, practically all of the storylines within the book lead to Durant in one way or another. We get a look inside how KD lived in the shadow of Steph in the eyes of Warriors fans, and in the shadow of LeBron in the eyes of league fans. In the middle of the book, the author of the book becomes a character in the story, having his own troubles and encounters with KD. He tells the expanded version of his side of the story in the media spat with Durant in 2019. There's plenty of interesting commentary surrounding KD's personality and behavior here as a reflection of the NBA and even society as a whole. For one, KD's obsession with social media and his tendency to argue with fans directly online is emblematic of society's addiction to social media, the "someone on the Internet is wrong" mentality. Within the NBA, the role of the media, the fan, and the player is explored, whether winning really is the end-all be-all, all in the context of Durant's Warriors career.

It does get quite meta. The author is doing his job as the media where he is part of the story he is trying to tell. Yet the author writes in a way where one piece of analysis of an event leads to the next piece and to the next piece in a captivating manner. It read like one ~200 page article on The Athletic (for which the author and his cohort write for), a quality journalism site that mixes storytelling, interviews, and analysis well.

There's a lot to analyze about Kevin Durant's departure from the Warriors for sure. But this book presents itself as a start and end to the Warriors dynasty. Because of that, I came to feel that the book disproportionately underrepresented other key members of the Warriors. Besides owner Joe Lacob, general manager Bob Myers does have a chapter. But it seemed Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Andre Iguodala are all barely mentioned other than quotes/opinions on KD. Even Steph's impact is analyzed largely in light of KD. It's still great storytelling, but here is a case where the cover of the book (KD with his hands on his hips) more accurately describes the book than the title.

Still, this is a riveting tale of sports business, superstar personalities, and NBA culture. Especially of note is the ongoing tension between media and players. I'm sure much of this is not news to most Warriors fans who are familiar with the author's and other The Athletic Bay Area writers' work. But for general sports and NBA fans, this book was a fun mix of juicy gossip and big money business, uncovering so much about how the modern NBA truly works.

I would like to thank NetGalley for sending over an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Had a chance to read @SherwoodStrauss's The Victory Machine. Would recommend if you like basketball, the Warriors, or, for my @raptorshq family, books that involve the Raptors winning the NBA championship to some degree. Really great work.

For many years, I was a hardcore NBA fan. My theory was that anyone who said they didn’t like watching pro basketball had never been to a live NBA game. Although my fandom died off when things changed so the games and teams were all about individual glory (rather than team effort), my appreciation came back with the rise of the Warriors, who played as a team and seemed to love it. So I was fascinated when I read about The Victory Machine by Ethan Sherwood Strauss, and was happy to receive a copy from Perseus Books/PublicAffairs and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

The subtitle is “The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty,” and the author seemed to be in a great position to know all sides of the story: he was the Golden State Warriors beat reporter for both ESPN and The Athletic, and has gotten more than his share of publicity for his “interactions” with superstar Kevin Durant. He has written a fascinating history of the Warriors, focusing on the glory years from 2015 to present day. And if you are hoping to read a feel-good tribute kind of book, this isn’t it. As Strauss tells his readers clearly, “Most sports books are celebratory in nature, but this one dwells on the sadness that comes with success.”

Huh? How could a team that had made it to the NBA Finals for five straight years and won the championship three times during that run experience sadness? Were the widely admired owners and GM something other than the geniuses they appeared to be? After all, when the Warriors appeared in the 2015 NBA Finals, it had been forty years since they had even gotten past the first round of the playoffs.

In 2010, it was widely expected that billionaire Larry Ellison was going to buy the Warriors from owner Chris Cohan, despite the fact that they didn’t get along and Cohan was “something of a Keyser Soze of failure.” Joe Lacob and Peter Guber were seen as underdogs in the bidding war for the team, but as Strauss notes, “When the Warriors were sold, the underdog won. The underdog then oversaw the birth of the ultimate overdog, the team that would ruin basketball.” Wait, what? I don’t get this line at all!!

Lacob and Guber, along with GM Bob Myers and basketball genius Jerry West (hired as a consultant), are widely credited with totally turning the team around, with Lacob being the most visible. Strauss doesn’t hold back in discussing his opinion of Lacob, for whom he says he has “…more tolerance…than many of the people who compete against and work for him.” Although he admits that when he interviews him “…it’s gold…Reporters will appraise players as “great guy, terrible quote.” There can be a correlation. Assholes sometimes make for better quotes.”

While the rise of the Warriors dynasty can be traced to shrewd moves by Lacob, Guber, Myers, and West, the downfall is harder to define, although Strauss points out that “Rarely in the NBA does basketball nirvana die of natural causes. Egos get in the way, often before Father Time arrives on the scene.” He further identifies some key factors in the Warriors’ demise: money, egos, and “chemistry.” Teams are made up of “sneaker salesmen who play the role of basketball players.” The whole relationship of players, fans, shoe companies and NBA overseers is laid bare by Strauss, who notes “So much of the NBA is artifice, or at the very least, contrivance.”

The fifth key in the administrative side of the dynasty is head coach Steve Kerr, widely regarded as a genius acquisition: “The Kerr era brought great success, all the while promoting the idea that success could actually be enjoyed.” His ability to manage the diverse personalities and egos is legendary, and despite being so successful, managing the players was a delicate skill. After all winning “… is generally good for all, but your teammates’ exploits can easily come at your expense…Resentment runs deep, as does paranoia.”

Enter Kevin Durant, a brilliant player whose rough upbringing may have contributed to his inability to feel like he truly fit in to the Warriors’ team environment. He never could accept that while fans appreciated him, the Warriors fans were clearly more appreciative of Steph Curry, and “…cheered loudest for the smaller MVP’s baskets.” Steph personified the type of player the NBA wanted: “… winsome heroes beamed into televisions across the world, They didn’t want sneering, petulant dicks.”

The book has a huge amount of space devoted to KD’s quirks, paranoia, and battles with Coach Kerr, and while Strauss tells those stories in great detail (and it’s not a pretty picture), he is equally hard on fans: “Even if the fans were often thanked at public team events and retirement ceremonies, their existence is mostly just tolerated… their love looks ghoulish and horrifying from the recipient’s vantage.” And he notes that “…with the rise of the importance of …Social media, the power of the asshole fan is disproportionate.”

There are a few things that will stick with me long after reading this book. First, the Warriors lost the services of Jerry West because he quit “over having been told to take a pay cut.” WTF? Second, KD was a miserable person and definitely detracted from the elusive “chemistry” quotient, and his departure was never in doubt: ”Few will ever admit to being motivated by factors beyond winning but at a certain point, winning with misery just isn’t an appealing path.” Third, Klay Thompson is a fascinating guy: “… an apathetic, charismatic, half-wise, half-oblivious, Keanu Reeves character with a jump shot.”

Will be appreciated by basketball fans in general for the inside look at the nature of athletes, contracts, etc., although the painful truths about the players’ view of the fans and the personality of Kevin Durant will perhaps not be appreciated by some. And it will be devoured by Warriors fans in particular who may or may not agree, but will likely learn quite a bit about the reasons why their team rose to such success…then fell. (But I still don’t get how they are “…the team that would ruin basketball.” Four stars.

One of the best sports books I've ever read. Kevin Durant's decision to join the Golden State Warriors "super team" after they eliminated his Oklahoma City Thunder in the previous postseason will always follow his career like a cloud of doubt.

Durant's life is the main fascinating readers will get from this book. Every area from the coaching to management to the players' interaction with media is examined in this book. Everything I wanted to know about Durant's life as a Warrior was answered here along with countless other tidbits about the Golden State environment. A must read for any avid NBA fan.

The book is structurally mess with little cohesion, but it serves as a tremendously empathetic look into the moods and behavior of Kevin Durant and the fallacy of "happiness."

This book was OK, but the writing-style keeps me from fully recommending it to anyone. The subject matter was fairly interesting, but wasn't presented in a way that kept my attention.

This is an excellent basketball book. ESS gives different perspectives of Durant, Kerr and Myers within the Warriors organization without resorting to play-by-play. Winning yet unhappy Golden State makes for an interesting team.

Most books about NBA dynasties, or rather the dynastic periods certain franchises go through, focus almost exclusively on the beginning and middle and pay lip service to the end. Or they hone in on the end and examine how ugly it was and somewhat denigrate the heights experienced beforehand. Ethan Strauss's book finds a way to fully examine the basketball excellence and unique league circumstances behind the Warriors' period of unprecedented dominance, while still spending time on the big personalities that drove it all, from players and coaches to the C suite. It also looks at some of the uglier aspects of how the NBA's sausage gets made, including the simultaneously public and invisible hand of agent machinations and the brute forces of capitalism, and does so without seeming preachy or condescending.

Some may argue with the decision to focus a significant portion of the narrative on Kevin Durant and the ultimately combative relationship he and Strauss developed. And this is, in isolation, probably the least compelling part of the story. That said, Durant - as both a generational basketball talent and a mercurial personality - is inextricably tied to this period of Warriors history, and Strauss can only chronicle his story from the angle of it he experienced and researched.

THE VICTORY MACHINE takes a refreshing look at a story that every NBA fan, writer or commentator likely thought they'd already heard every version of in the past several years. No easy feat.

When the Golden State Warriors failed to win a third consecutive championship and fourth in five years by losing to the Toronto Raptors in 2019, it signaled the end of the latest NBA dynasty. How the Warriors got to that stage and some of mechanisms behind their success is told in this great book by Ethan Sherwood Strauss.busine

Rather than recapping the games and playoff series wins, Strauss takes a different approach to telling the reader about Golden State's success. He concentrates on the business side of the game for insight into the team, starting with Peter Guber and Joe Lacob were able to take control of the team from Chris Cohan, under whose ownership the franchise became a laughing stock. What Guber and Lacob did was nothing short of brilliant by not only finding players to complement Stephan Curry and bring out his best, but also how they were in tune with what was going on in professional basketball and how to either lure players (see Kevin Durant) or keep players even it would mean a reduced or different role (see Andre Igudala.)

The only player in which Strauss writes about in depth is Kevin Durant and his appearance of being annoyed. It is a complex situation and not something that is simple as he didn't like being second fiddle to Curry nor just that he wanted out of Oklahoma City and became a target of the rantings of angry fans. In the book, this goes well beyond fans at games – social media and its influence in today's NBA players is examined in depth and is one of the best subjects addressed.

Strauss also pulls no punches when he talks about the current state of the game when he writes that the Warriors "somehow rose up in this atomized, clownish world…" or about the current reduction in accessibility to the players for the media. He states that NBA stars are "merging the aloof with the confrontational" and that "walls were coming up." This type of writing is the main reason why this book is one that all NBA fans, whether they are saddened or overjoyed at the end of the Golden State dynasty, should add to their libraries.

I wish to than Perseus Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Excellent book about the Warriors dynasty. Chapters on the ownership and the general manager. Chapters on the previous roster and how they tweaked and made moves to acquire one of the games best players in Kevin Durant. Chapters on Steve Kerr, the warriors coach and a more in depth chapters on Kevin Durant’s Star, how he wanted to be perceived and some insight on what possibly was going on with his through the 2018-2019 season.

I really enjoyed this book and was glad to be able to receive an ARC from Netgalley for review.

Pick up this book if you like the warriors, enjoyed the games as a spectator and couldn’t get enough coverage from small articles on sport networks and news papers. This will give you your fix/fill.

Good insight into the Warriors and the rise and fall of their basketball dynasty. Some of the stories you will know, some you likely will not, especially if you are not a die hard fan of the Warriors. The background on the new ownership and GM is the most illuminating, the insight into the Kevin Durant drama is the most tantalizing. However, I did feel that the book focused a bit too much on Durant and his insecurities. The books would have been even better with more exploration of the background of Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. Overall, this is a solid read for any basketball fan, regardless of your rooting interest.

An interesting read which delves more into the financial and management side of the NBA business as opposed to following a particular player. The Victory Machine is a case study following the Golden State Warriors and their climb from laughing stock of the NBA to the top of the mountain and how this was achieved from the business side of things. The only negative I have to say about the book is that the author seems to be having a feud with Kevin Durant and lets these feelings cross into the book especially in one chapter which doesnt make much sense in the overall scheme of the book.

I have read many books about basketball, but this is by far one of the best. It focuses mostly on the management and business side of the Golden State Warriors over the last few years, rather than game by game summaries. There was one weird chapter which describes where the author got into a public feud with Kevin Durant, but the rest of the book was very much enjoyable & would recommend it to anyone who follows basketball.