Should Lacob and Guber Replace Warriors Management? By Jason The Golden State Warriors have two roster spots left and they need to fill it because Ekpe Udoh is injured and out until late January and Brandan Wright needs to prove to his critics that he can take the pounding of the NBA and not get hurt. Joe Lacob said he wants a relatively “young” coach. Clearly, Don Nelson does not fit the description. However, we get news that head coach options may be limited. Afterward, there was news that Lacob wants a test drive of the head coach and GM. One test drives a car. If they test drive a manager, usually it comes with an interim label. Not one that has been in place for years. Somewhere in all of that, there came news that Warriors President Robert Rowell knows team secrets, so he should be kept on as a consultant, at least, for the transition. Already the Warriors old management under Christopher Cohan have been releasing Warriors news, feeding BS to the media, in order for them to keep their jobs under new ownership. And new ownership has been reluctant to have new management ready to go such as highest bidder Larry Ellison. I am not the only one to ask why? Critical thinking Warrior fans have done the same. The answer lies in the fact that the Warriors have been ahead of the game in getting season ticket renewals. I do not know the exact numbers, but compared to the Sacramento Kings who got into the six thousand range after the 2010 NBA Draft, the Warriors easily beat their closest competition. They are close to double that, if not more, than the Kings’ numbers. To look at the Kings, once season ticket sales dropped in early 2009, the Kings started to clean house. However, season ticket sales have not dropped for the Warriors. They continue to remain strong. It’s the San Francisco Bay Area with the educated sports fans who make basketball a close second to the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders. If there was another team in the San Jose area, then things would be different. Lacob and Guber would be fighting to sell season tickets and they would do what is necessary to attract them and that would be to replace the sixteen years of misery under Cohan and his management group. Even Major League Baseball has two teams in the area and are careful to distinguish which part of the bay they reside. Other teams such as the Philadelphia 76ers were able to get former Nets President of Basketball Operations, Rod Thorn, as their president. This was not out of circumstance, but planned. It would be a pleasant surprise to this Warrior fan if Lagoober had someone in place already such as former Portland Trailblazer President Tom Penn, who is a NBA salary cap expert, and former GM and ex-Warrior, Kevin Pritchard, as replacements to come in when Lagoober gets approved. As for head coach, there are the likes of Leonard Frank who will cost $$$$s or Brian Shaw, an Oakland native, who would cost less, but play the triangle, a style different from the run and gun Warriors. You see the facts of life are that owners want to 1. Make money. 2. Make the playoffs. 3. Win championships. After #1 is accomplished, then several are not motivated to do what it takes for #2 and #3. If owners are guaranteed before the season to make money, then there isn’t much incentive to change things. It’s like paying rookie quarterback Sam Bedford all that guaranteed money even before he takes an official NFL snap. Jiminy Crickets, it’s more than what established star quarterbacks in the league make. With the Golden Steate Warriors, its just the law of supply and demand and just seeing the evil bastard, Christopher J. Cohan, go was enough to get fans buying season tickets again. What do you think the new Warriors owners should do?
Definitely get rid of Rowell, there's no need to have that fool around, because he offers nothing to the team, and seems to have never even dribbled a basketball before. But Riley/Nellie, there's no need to push the panic button with them, if Jerry West wants to come here then yeah, fire Riley, but until then it will make for a smoother transition to have them around for a while and take your time finding the best replacements. Immediately firing everyone will not suddenly jumpstart this team to the playoffs, it will just cause more confusion and distraction. There's no overnight fix.
The fishy smell around the sale of this team has not gone away IMO. http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawaka... with Tim Kawakami)&utm_content=Google Reader How can you buy a team without all of your partners together? I mean, hadn't Ellison reached out to the minority owners to finalize his group months ago? Also Rowell and his gang got extensions right before the sale of the team. I don't have any other sale of a team to compare this to, but this one just seems disgusting.
I don't think this is atypical. In the VC world, when you start a fund (in this case, the Warriors), you can't start fund raising until you actually have something to sell. In Ellison's case, it wouldn't have mattered since he is so cash rich. Lacob and Guber, although cash rich, can't afford to just outright buy the team without investors as it would sacrifice their flexibility in other unrelated ventures. The league approval is set to be around mid-Oct, which I think was the time frame we were originally given, no?
I always thought the idea was that Lacob and Guber did have enough money between them to cover the purchase cost which allowed them to bid for the team and set up a minority ownership group later. They have the money but obviously if they get investors they have to pay a lot less out of their pockets and still maintain majority ownership and thus complete control. I believe the issue is that every minority owner has to be financially investigated and cleared by the NBA which lengthens the process greatly. Fwiw I didn't read the above posted TK article lol.
If that mid-October approval date was set long ago, then maybe there is less to worry about. I can't recall the original estimate. October may be correct though. The fishy part that remains is: If you are sure that you are going to be the owner then you should have no problems dealing with the issues of who is going to be the head coach, who is going to be GM, etc. But this is not the case with Lacob/Gruber. If none of these decisions are going to happen until mid-October, then it just seems like it could be another waste of a season. Deal with the basketball stuff first if you have the money to buy the team, and this minority ownership stuff later; or at least simultaneously. I'd give him about 7 to 10 days to really sort this stuff out, at least with Don Nelson.
I don't claim to know anything about this process but I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than we think. Sure, Ellison, the sixth richest man in the world, would have made it a pretty simple process...
