The Warriors have announced that Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa will both join the team in front office roles.
Leandro Barbosa and Shaun Livingston both spent parts of the latter-half of their 14-year NBA careers contributing to Golden State Warriors championship squads.
Now, the two long-time guards will begin the next chapter of their respective basketball journeys helping the Warriors compete for titles from the sidelines and front office.
On Monday, Barbosa, 37, announced that he was officially retiring from hooping and will join the Golden State staff as a player-mentor coach. Barbosa last played in the NBA in 2016-17 for the Phoenix Suns and had spent the past two years competing in his native Brazil.
What do Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa mean to the Warriors?
Barbosa spent two seasons playing for Steve Kerr in the Bay Area, winning a title in 2015 and reaching the Finals in 2016. Kerr expressed his enthusiasm for Barbosa’s hire on Twitter.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Barbosa revealed that he had already been texting with Kerr. He expanded on their relationship and Kerr’s repeated encouragement to seek a coaching role after Barbosa’s playing days.
He’s been my coach when I was here. He also was my friend. We had a really close relationship when he was a GM for the Phoenix Suns, so every once in a while, we used to talk. And he mentioned to me what I want to do after I play. I always told him that I wanted to be an assistant coach, not a head coach, but, be able to talk to the players, kind of teach them. I think I’m kind of good at that, and he gave me the opportunity. And I talked to the family, my wife and she said ‘yes, let’s do it.’
Like Barbosa, Livingston, who retired in July 2019, had been eyeing a role in basketball for his post-playing life. Livingston has long been interested in a front office position, and he’ll have an opportunity to satisfy that desire with the organization for whom he played the final five seasons of his career and earned three rings.
Plus, with the title of Director, Players Affairs and Engagement, Livingston will become the highest-ranking Black executive in Golden State since Mitch Richmond in 2008.
“I always wanted to take this path,” Livingston told The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson II about joining the front office. “At the same time, with everything that’s going on, there’s more purpose in this job now, although I think there has always been purpose with it. I understand I may be the only brother in the office doing this. At the same time, there’s more purpose in me doing this job, especially as a Black person right now.”
Livingston informed Warriors GM Bob Myers of his front office ambitions a few years back. As Thompson II reports, Myers was “elated” and devoted the next few years to “recruiting Livingston, working to keep his talent in house.”
“I always knew that door was open,” Livingston said. “I just had to walk through it.”
Kerr, who previously expressed hope that Livingston would remain with the franchise in a front-office capacity, was unsurprisingly ecstatic to share that news on Monday, as well.