41SPORT S ILL US TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
“It wasn’t about July 5,” Clippers president of basketball
operations, Lawrence Frank, said in Honolulu, sitting un-
shaven and baseball-capped by the sea. “It was about all the
days, over two years, preceding July 5.and let Rivers just coach. They’d rather not discuss the thun-
derous finish they slammed home on July 5.
Frank, who served stints as head coach of the Nets and the
Pistons between 2003 and ’13, says, “I don’t need a f---ingword ever written about [the front office]. Ultimately it’s
about our players. You see all these organizational charts;
some are I-formations, some are T-formations. Ours, the
players are in the middle and we’re all just spokes in the
wheel. Ownership, coaching, front office, performance and
medical, scouts, we’re all serving one thing. My wife joked
one time, ‘It should be called the back office.’ And she’s right.”
Frank began building his back-office roster by hiring first-
time GM Michael Winger, a bald, 39-year-old salary-cap
whiz with a nose for talent and an eye for detail (Clippers
ball boys better know how to pass during warmups), and
assistant GM Trent Redden, who had worked with Winger
in Cleveland. Frank added another assistant GM, a scouting
JOHN W. MCDONOUGH and player-relations expert named Mark Hughes who, at a