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Draymond Green: Just going on to Nashville. Shout out to the owners. Don't charge them a relocation fee. They just going up the street and doing all us a favor. So, let's not charge Adam. Joe, I know you're on the competition committee. Joe Lacob. Um, let's not charge them a relocation fee. Please. Let them just do all Let them just do us all a favor and take the team to Nashville. No pro, no harm, no foul. The relocation fee, you got to leave that arena that I'm sure they own. Relocation fee, it's a swap. You leave that arena. You ain't got to pay the relocation fee. Go to Nashville. Do us all a favor, Adam. Nobody will be upset. Not one person will be upset. So GP said uh young GP GP2 my teammate GP said uh he'd request a trade immediately if if had a chance to play as a Seattle SuperSonic. I bet he would.
Could you have gotten more for Kuminga if you’d looked hard to trade him a year or two ago? “I don’t think so,” Lacob said. “People say I loved him as a player, I was protecting him, I was whatever. That’s just not true. I did like him. I like all our players. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be acquiring them if we didn’t all like them. But you know, it just didn’t work. It looked like it was going to work. It was off and on a lot.”
After the deadline, Dunleavy pushed back on the presumption that Draymond was actually offered because the Warriors and Bucks only spoke in the most general terms. Lacob backed that up. “He was never discussed in a trade; Mike was 100% correct what he said,” Lacob said. “I know he got a lot of crap for that. And it did look defensive. I mean, I think he would say that in retrospect. “But the truth is, the way these things are, you don’t just easily banter around names unless you’re getting serious. … We never really got engagement on some of the big deals to the point where you get into specific names. People can look at the roster and they can make assumptions about who might or might not have to go if you’ve got a certain person. “But I can tell you he was never shopped in any way. He’s a core person in our franchise. You don’t trade a Draymond Green simply or easily. You do it if you have to, and you’re getting tremendous value and you’re improving your team. Even Draymond has said he understands that. You have to look at these things. But his name was never specifically discussed with another team. And that’s the truth.”
“I saw where another owner came out today and spoke on it, [the Suns’] Mat Ishbia,” Lacob said of Ishbia’s social-media comments lambasting the idea of tanking. “I think you know, it is not in my DNA, nor in this organization’s DNA, to do that. … It’s not a good look. This is sports. We’re supposed to play to win. “And that’s just not a way I would be comfortable, ever, trying to improve our team.”
“Some of our fans, I’m sure — I hear it all the time — would love us to, whatever you want to call it, lose for a better draft position because they assume we’re not going to win this year,” Lacob said. “I could never do that. And I don’t think our coach is built that way or our team. “I don’t like it. It is happening, obviously, around the league. And it is a way to build a franchise, I guess, to get draft choices. But it also takes a lot of years to do that. … “So I’m sure there will be a day where we have to build our team through the draft more. But right now, I still think we’re formidable if we can just get healthy. Obviously, we don’t have Jimmy. We will get Steph back here, but we’re not fully healthy. In the NBA, obviously, when you lose a top-10 or top-15 player, that’s very difficult.”
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However, for Bill Simmons, Lacob’s desire to add the Padres to his portfolio may mean he ends up selling the Warriors. “I’m wondering, so let’s say he wins, and he gets the Padres. Is it inconceivable to think that would be the next team available? Because I’ve asked it from people, and they were like, ‘No way, he’ll never sell the Warriors,’” Simmons initially said on The Bill Simmons podcast.
The decision to draft Kuminga over Wagner, who has averaged at least 20 points per game the past three seasons, became a central tension point across the organization, a signature example of Lacob's personnel meddling in the post-Kevin Durant transition years, aiming for, as team sources said, style over the substance that made the dynasty teams hum. In the seasons that followed, team sources theorized that Lacob's outward public belief in Kuminga and his animated celebrations of Kuminga's big moments stemmed from his desire to be proved correct in his original assessment. It's also why, those sources believed, Lacob had a difficult time sending out Kuminga in potential trades.
Above them, team owner Joe Lacob had bonded with Kuminga at a Miami dinner during the 2021 predraft process and gripped onto the idea that Kuminga could still become a face of the franchise's next era at several forks in the road. But Lacob was too unwilling to move off a dream that didn't fit the roster or system, one his coaching staff didn't desire to execute, team sources said. "Let your basketball people make basketball decisions," one team source said.
General manager Mike Dunleavy and controlling owner Joe Lacob have maintained a motivation to get a trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo across the finish line and, as part of that, Green's name has been involved in the framework of available offers to the Milwaukee Bucks, league sources said.
The Warriors, according to multiple NBA sources, are indeed making a compelling pitch to add the Greek Freak, who has been a fantasy for years. Giannis might not have a bigger fan, outside his family, than Warriors CEO Joe Lacob. The Bucks, however, are in the power position. The Warriors are among as many as six teams, according to sources, showing sincere interest, with three or four – including Golden State – vigorously competing among each other. “The Bucks don’t have to do anything before the deadline,” one league source said Thursday. “Now it could get uncomfortable if they keep Giannis for the rest of the season when everybody knows he wants out. That’s an option if they don’t like what’s offered. “But any team that makes a deal with them will have to give up a lot. A whole lot.”
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The Warriors, according to multiple NBA sources, are indeed making a compelling pitch to add the Greek Freak, who has been a fantasy for years. Giannis might not have a bigger fan, outside his family, than Warriors CEO Joe Lacob.
Chandler Parsons: Is there a world in which Stephen Curry is not possibly a Warrior? Does he ask out? Do they let him like decide to mutually let him go and shop around? Like, how does that situation find? Sam Amick: No, I don't see it. No shot. It's funny because it's like the question, A, is fair, but B, it gets asked outside of the Bay and outside of Northern California a whole lot more than it gets asked here. Because there's just an energy here where it's like, first of all, Steph has never sent any signals that he has any intention of anything other than finishing his career with the Warriors. He still has good relationships with Joe Lacob and Mike Dunleavy Jr and the staff. He still has a level of belief, I think, in them. I mean it's pro sports, so never say never.
League sources tell The Stein Line that Butler has received strong assurances from the Warriors that they want him back next season as soon as he is physically able. Butler, I'm told, has been urged by the team's key stakeholders to tune out any noise about Golden State trying to use his $57 million salary for next season in a trade that would import his replacement — to use Jimmy's own oft-cited metaphor — as Robin to Curry's Batman. My sense is that such a move, as aggressive as this franchise is known to be at owner Joe Lacob's urging, is not in the plans.
Q, Mike, as you explore all the options and possible trade options, how much value are you placing on your draft picks, your future draft picks, and is it conceivable that could possibly be in play? Mike Dunleavy Jr: I think our picks always will and have been in play. You just, to give up our picks, it's got to be meaningful to get something back. And so for that reason, there's only so many players out there that probably warrant putting stuff like that on the table. But we're looking at everything. Joe Lacob is our owner, so you're always exploring all possibilities, willing to do any type of deal. And maybe stuff has changed a little bit with Jimmy Butler’s injury, but I'm not sure how much that affects our aggressiveness. We're going to have to kind of see on that.