What Makes a Successful NBA GM, Head Coach and Star Player in 2026?

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Welcome to the RealGM Radio Summer Roundtable. I'm Wes Goldberg, executive producer and host of RealGM Radio, and on today's show, I'll be joined by Mo Dakhil and Jared Dubin of the Double Dribble podcast, and my Good Take co-host and the author of basketball poetry, Mike Shearer, to discuss what makes a successful GM, head coach and star player in the NBA in 2026 Then I'll wrap up the show by asking the team if they could have a superpower, what would it be? Let's jump in.
All right, welcome into the RealGM Radio Summer Roundtable. Today, we're talking about what makes a good general manager, head coach and star player in the NBA in 2026 I'm Wes Goldberg here with Mo Dakhil, Jared Dubin and Mike Shearer. These are the four voices that you know already from the RealGM Radio feed. And for the rest of August, we're gonna be doing these weekly roundtables instead of our usual shows, mostly because the news and the buzz has slowed down. We're gonna use this as a chance to zoom out and talk about some bigger picture topics in the NBA. We're gonna be going live on YouTube on Wednesday mornings and then posting the show to your podcast feeds soon after that. So make sure that you hit subscribe on YouTube right now so you don't miss the live stream next week. But let's jump right in. We're gonna start at the top with General Manager. Then we're gonna go to Head Coach and then Star Player. Mo, I know it's early on the West Coast and so it might not be fair for me to go to you first, but I'm gonna do it anyway. When you think about a successful General Manager in 2026, what qualities does that person have?

**Mo Dakhil** (1:56)
First, I just want to point out that this is geographically discrimination. All you guys on the East Coast and then making me have to get up early and actually get ready to do this. It's discrimination. We're still on the West Coast. I think the most, there's a lot of things in terms of what you need from a General Manager and I think this is gonna be an underrated skill that I don't think most people will understand.
But it's managing up. It's managing your owner is the most important skill you need as a General Manager. I've seen this on many levels, working with the Clippers during the Donald Sterling era, working with the Spurs, which was Pop and then Peter Holt as the owner, such drastic differences in the way things worked. I think the most important thing a General Manager can actually have, and this goes beyond scouting and evaluating, and those are all important skills, but being able to manage up and manage your ownership and being able to communicate effectively with your owner in terms of what you need, how your team's gonna succeed, how we're gonna build and how these things are gonna work out, and when things aren't going right, how we're gonna fix it, all those things. Being able to manage your ownership might be the single most important skill a general manager can have.

**Wes Goldberg** (3:24)
Jared, what do you think? Because obviously the managing up part of this is a big part of this, but is that a whole lot different than where it's been over the past two years, if you think about currently in 2026?

**Jared Dubin** (3:37)
I don't know if it's different than where it's been. That's always probably been the most important thing, because if you don't have the permission structure, I guess, from ownership to be able to do everything else that you want to do, then you actually don't have anything, because you're not going to be able to do all of the other most important things.

**Wes Goldberg** (3:58)
What else are you thinking of when you think about a successful general manager in 2026?